May I kiss you? The prostitution of writing

(ARTICLE)

Some time ago there was a book incepted with love searching for the worlds significance to fit in with its resplendence of poetical statement. It wandered across the canvass of reality like an Alice of values in a hoped-for wonderland, painted with the palette of her own dreams. Along a tortuous road, poetry, its amphitryon, turned out to be a veiled noa in a censored industry still craving for a tapu quality.

Business or pleasure?

Ive never thought that poetry itself could be the wanderer of many guises, subdued to a censorship matrix with business-type highlights, stemmed from external (political, social, economic) and inherent (individual) forms.
In a European market, where over 2000 bookstores have closed down (UK, Lapwing Publication), authors income has dropped by 4,3% (Italy, La Repubblica), where in France they talk about crisis as poetrys normal congenital status (J.M. Gleize, La posie morte ou vive), and where Germanys book market is subtly referred to as undergoing a transformation process (Brsen Radio Network AG), Asias apparel and the no-risk print-on-demand mentality has changed the concept of poetry into an app-like downloadable form, endorsed by the economic needs of booksellers or the business practices of most literary publishers who nowadays survive from subscriptions or government financial aids.
The cultural snobbery (the label, the fame) is a spotlit reminiscence added to the whole mystic labyrinth, while poetry becomes the beautiful mistress of its dark, tall and handsome business pimp: the publisherI mean the public, or was it rather the chainstore-like distributor? All of them together?!
Yet, this mistress passion to generate and garner emotions, faithfully and constantly, still wants to stay a digressed parallel in the parallax of Benjamins.

The pimps

In its attempts to please its lovers, poetry has become an exhibitionistic performance of an almost frustrated avatar, boosting up with a smooth distinguished talent from beneath a strong colloquial oratory, in a tedious setting which needs the jolt of a red light to stop; and to listen.
On the publishers side, the shock and the newness still run the parade over an oxymoronic playback demand of a precise apparel where you are disciplined from make sure you are double-spaced when you submit, or you will end up in the recycling bin to the conservative allusion be similar in trend or we will dislike you, while we still appreciate originality and ingenuity. False notes of an abstruse, uncertain song.
On the other hand, the public rather expects short, spoon-fed physical encounters, from which to learn to move on, over the all-night-long poetical love-making, when the slow typing of a machine would have almost been pictured in the imaginary scenery of an intimate sharing: feelings. For sharing versus giving still bejewels the main chorus theme of the whole writing symphony.
Yet, why does it seem to be more and more about a fast-forwarded sense, in a world which still wants to be labelled with a rewound sensitivity?

The wordsmith: physical encounter or love-making?

A little of both. Spoken word is a currently ever-growing poetical form, incepted as a new wave of the postmodern art movement, made up of soliloquies, meant to share taboo social themes or individual sentiments in a soap-opera-like settingor was it soapbox the right word to use?!
Poetry has become an active nakedness of feelings, out of a carefree painted canvass of an array of hues into a motion picture of sweated skills, to render in tune with the original muse, where the reader is a passive viewer, publicly enjoying both the attire and the skinso far without 3D glasses, nor popcorn.
And so, the multi-task adroit writer displays, presents and performs, sometimes with eyes closed on a stage, the veil of his/her own passion and emotions in an attempt to arouse the reader to the culminant love-sharing point: the applause.
A hippy-note add-on, where everything is openly directed and where metaphors and analogies are served on the silver platter of visuals: the show always wins over the written form. How does it feel now? (Poem by Akua Naru)

May I kiss you?

Here it is my gentle kiss of poetical contribution between the physical encounter of economic or social aims and the unconditional love-sharing of my writings manifesto; among the gap of tenets and the abyss of metaphors, where my reader is not Oh, Captain! My captain (Walt Whitman, 1865), rather the warmth of hand I hope to hold in my literary journey.
In a world attuned to loneliness and individuality through ever growing virtual networks and business-framed societies, my utmost belief is that love and truth are the only treasures worth breathing and sharing, regardless of any seasonal outcome.
Its not the time to stay obsolete, yet neither to play confused in a myriad of anti-/avant-/post- trends with contradictory tendencies. Rather, its the time to bring out the best from within, with charm and originality.
Between the high and the low tides, its still the horizon that I am heading towards. And I want to kiss my readers with the meaning of my own lips, while I would never show them how and what to experience; rather wait, respectfully and eagerly, for them to unravel their own meanings and feelings from my own blueprint.
I will gladly wear colourful miniskirts upon white sheets of settings ensconcing the motion of my emotions, yet I wont prostitute my writing to fit in the stretch outfits of the given industry. A touch of life is more than enough purpose to me. Hopefully.

Soar

(The prostitution of writing, May 2012, www.soaring-words.com)

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