Culture Is the Work of Many Hands

In my neighbourhood, you can find poetry in the elbow of a sidewalk, in the shelter of a covering elm. I walk my dog and detour so I can receive this gift – no purchase required. A stranger has erected a music stand on the grassy verge, a stranger to me but a member of the commons nonetheless. Its black plywood top is covered in a plastic sheet and beneath it, changed on a weekly basis like the linens, is a sheet of photocopied verse. Last week it was a poem by Marge Piercy. “I want to be with people …who are not parlor generals and field deserters but move in a common rhythm when the food must come in or the fire be put out”. It reminds me of the prairie. It reminds me of a place where food and culture are tenuous. They persist only through the work of many hands.

It reminds me of the homes on Echo Lake in the Qu’Appelle Valley, with their pastel siding and folk art lawns. It reminds me of the 20 ft. high chokecherry sculpture in Lancer, and the 30 ft corn stalk sculpture in Taber. It also reminded me of the mammoth slogans painted on barns, miles from any main roads. It doesn’t matter how many people read it, the farmers have something to say and by God, they are going to say it!

My poetic neighbour shares something with the artistic and vocal prairie farmer. They are reflecting on their lives, taking a point of view, expressing their identities, and adding to the beauty of their environment. They are making their own lives visible and in so doing, claiming public space for proper public purposes. They are engaging in activities that are open and accessible to all, that seek the general welfare of the community and they are doing it for the stimulation and enjoyment of all. This is the ancient meaning of the word – public. It is not concealed and in no way private.

Sadly, it is now common to find political leaders claim the opposite - that there is no such thing as a public purpose or a common good. There are only collections of private goods and interests. The notion of a public welfare and a common good is now so strange that we tend to treat public space as empty space. How easy it has become to think of empty space as commercial space that hasn’t yet been sold. By contrast, these poetry patrons, painters and rural activists are cooperating in the subversive activity of reclaiming public space for public use. They seek no commercial reward and work hard to promote the common good as they understand it. They remember a different world and they can imagine one too. All of us have this capacity but like any muscle or civil right, if we don’t exercise it we will lose it.

“Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.”

- from “To Be of Use”, by Marge Piercy, published in CIRCLES ON THE WATER, 1982, Alfred A. Knopf.

First Published in August 2005