I-90 Manifesto

 

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Like the highway which we live on, we embrace the bicoastal and the local but disdain coastal pretensions and inland parochialisms.

We disdain cosmopolitan elitisms and rural anti-intellectualism.

We embrace the idea of wanting to be elsewhere while at the same time loving where we are.

We embrace the exploratory and the formal but never at the expense of each other.

We disdain intellectualism that loses the human. The human must come first.

We embrace the heart and the gut and believe all truly great art emerges from the body.

The body is the place of the only universals.

We believe in greatness of the natural, the great lakes and the mountains, the big sky.

We believe in toughness like the factory workers, the immigrants, and the indigenous peoples that guard our rails.

We sing the northern hemisphere and the four seasons.

We sing the salmon and the seal. We sing the mountain lion and the ram’s ghost.

We sing the empty factory husks and shadows of lost limbs.

We sing with images and music.

We believe Poetry can truly make a difference in the lives of those who need it, but too often it does not.

We believe this is the fault of both Poetry and The System.

We believe that too often Poetry has deluded itself as revolutionary only to become more obfuscating than the system.

We believe Poetry must be part of the great struggle for human dignity.

We believe a poem is not a bullet or a plaything. It is not a pastime or something that is “appreciated.”

We believe in readers. A poem is written to be read.

Sean Thomas Dougherty (Guest Editor) and Tom Holmes (Editor)
Redactions: Poetry & Poetics

If you believe, if you want to join the I-90 Revolution, put your poetry submissions into one attached document or paste into the body of an email and send to redactionspoetry(at)yahoo.com. (Replace “(at)” with “@”.) Also, if you live within 50 miles of I-90, please indicate that in your submission.

Please, no poems about I-90, highways, or roads.

For more information: http://redactions.com/I-90_Manifesto.pdf

You may also submit poems not related to the I-90 Poetry Revolution following the above submission guidelines.

TELL YOUR FRIENDS. TELL YOUR NEIGHBORS. BUT DON’T TELL THE COPS.//