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This poem is a journal construct,
which Michael created when faced with things happening right
now—sometimes being written all at once as he perceived
things happening along the road or at the festival—and as
a list that became a narrative, or a line or two mid-day or another
time, when a reflection wouldn't sit still. The journal is a
good way to both re-manufacture the moment by documenting bits
and pieces of time as well as to create a resource for a later
poem or even book of poems.
Michael is very much influenced by the works of Joanne Kyger and Philip Whalen, who use a journal as a "hothouse for poetry," or a resource for finished work. He has "morphed" on that and turned the journal into a poem. Joanne Kyger has encouraged him to do this exercise, and it pays off well. A list can be dry and dull, or it can be, in the case of "Burning Man Hell," the amount of the correct temporal and spatial detail to impregnate the writing to the point of a "finished" piece in its own right—because it directly brings the reader into the time and place and mind of the author. What is missing from otherwise potentially empty and superfluous poetic words is filled in by the reader who can picture himself there and now. And what is seen as missing, by well-meaning editors, is filled in with the choice of words themselves, which directly import time and space into something significant enough. Replace "choice" with craftful choice, and therein lies the poetic journal.
Michael's approach to journal-poem writing is to take things down as they flash by, "not figuring where it will lead, just that it catches my attention." And so, it also catches the reader's attention, because the affiliation and association is potent and eminent in context. Using a journal is similar to spontaneous prose, which Kerouac and Ginsberg tried. Because publishers are usually concerned with edited versions of things, and epics are thrown out in favor of delicate little concise pieces, the journal-poem, or spontaneous writing, is often not published or seen as finished or appropriate. It must be economized and formalized. But "Burning Man Hell" is realized, which makes it work.
This festival's origins go back to 1985. From Jim Graham (Media Mecca Captain of BM):
Burning Man was founded when Larry Harvey burned a statue that represented:
a. himself
b. his broken heart
c. his ex- girlfriend
d. his ex-girlfriend's new boyfriend
e .his ex-girlfriend's lawyer
f .all of the aboveAll of these answers are incorrect. This myth began in 1994 when Larry incautiously informed Larry Gallagher, a journalist writing for Outside Magazine, that, on reflection, he thought that the time and place of the first burning of the Man coincided with a sentimental anniversary of a lost love affair. He still thinks this is true, and adds that he can also attribute some part of the conception of the wooden man to his father—a man of more than ordinary stature and a carpenter. He adds that psychoanalysis could probably reveal several more personal associations. He is, however, adamant in insisting that Burning Man was never intended to actually represent anything, nor were any of the current associations with this act actually present in his mind in 1986. "It was simply," he assures us, "an act of radical self-expression." This genie, however, is now out of the bottle, and the story of Larry's intentions, in its myriad forms, seems destined (without your help) to travel around the world.
They burned a wooden man on Baker Beach in San Francisco, drew a small crowd, felt a unity with the crowd, a love and nearly inexplicable affinity for Burning Man, and knew they'd do it again and again. The ritual had been born, and each year the crowd grew larger, the place of burning the wooden man moved to the desert in Nevada, and the man got larger. The festival became larger, the crowd got larger, the man got larger.
Now the festival's a week-long, is comprised of thousands of participants (never just spectators), and is associated not with heartbreak, but with the revival of community, sharing, and art. The idea of common places is disappearing. Gary Snyder says in The Practice of the Wild, "The heart of a place is the home, and the heart of the home is the firepit, the hearth. All tentative explorations go outward from there, and it is back to the fireside that elders return."
But we don't have many, if any, of those common places anymore; rituals, crucial myths and narrative story-telling (the crux of belief systems), the passing on of wisdom and art, the environmentally safe local management of a group of homesteads, and so forth have been replaced by commodification, industry, and the resulting loss of identity and interaction with others. The lack of funding of the arts has dampened expression except by a few who can afford it, which creates a populist trickling-down effect. But not at Burning Man.
The Burning Man Festival happens around Labor Day, and an entire commons is built. Thousands come. Camps and villages and large art exhibits are erected in the desert, on a sandy playa (Spanish for beach)—amid the middle of nowhere and a large expanse of desert where the climate is inhospitable: triple digits during the day, potential of freezing in the morning, sand storms—and the community gets instincts for survival in apocalyptic territory. Self-expressive art calls for tolerance. There is no commodification, only the selling of ice and coffee (other vendors aren't allowed); people share and give—which is a centuries-old cultural tradition among peoples: the ritual potluck, trade, meeting place.
The festival, which because of its growing popularity and the growing number of participants each year, has evolved to accommodate that. Its evolution is in continual creation, a self-awareness of itself, actually, with thought and foresight being planned well in advance. Its representation of kibbutz has been compared to that found on the Internet, where expression ties people together, unlike other technologies that have created zombie-like noninteraction.
The festival culminates the Saturday night before Labor Day, when Burning Man is set on fire, each year the burning more elaborate than the previous year's. Then everyone goes home and dreams of next Labor Day, while some crews stick around for a couple weeks to clean up and make it so that the desert is as they found it.
The image of the desert as an anologue of cyberspace—as an interactive, spontaneous and anti-hierarchic medium—has profoundly affected the aesthetic of Burning Man.—and: A second attribute of art at this event relates to the world of nature and myth. The art of Burning Man, like work which has evolved within traditional societies, is tied to primal unities of time and place. The struggle to survive amid vast and inhuman natural forces has profoundly affected the character of this art. -Darryl Van Rhey, from the Art of the Burning Man.
