Jamie Reid - "byway of explanation"

byway of explanation

It has often seemed to me
that if those who hold power wealth and influence
do so on account of their correct thinking
then somehow there must be a need
for the opposite kind of thinking: inkorrect thots
for those who do not hold
wealth power and influence
and do not wish them, thank you,
preferring at the same time
not to be the blind unthinking victims
of those who think they think correctly
and believe that power wealth and influence
come to them on that account
this sense of need was finally serviced by the surfacing
of bill bissett’s poem by that name
which remained in my consciousness
for a very long time after it was first published in 1992,
dealing as it does with issues of human thinking
as related to language and social speech,
not to speak of
social silence,
imposed in diverse ways.

It seemed important to me that the importance
of inkorrect thots should somehow be brought to wider attention
as a way of assisting some people to liberate themselves
from the tyranny of correct thoughts and from those
who hold wealth power and influence, as they think, on account
of their ability to control correct thinking.

It seemed important to me to uphold the right to be wrong
or the feeling that it is totally wrong to be always right
that so many if us seem to have and cherish
in despite of all thinking that might be called correct.

Hence, a postering campaign on this subject
seemed a good, if not entirely correct idea,
especially in the context of the present federal election,
where we hear so much useless and unfeeling language
of which people are so profoundly sick.

bill bissett’s poem seemed to be
an obvious antidote and relief to this
general feeling of sickness, as it was for me.

I imagined people coming upon the poster
by accident at some unexpected place
and stopping for a moment
in their sometimes driven
movement from place to place &
reading the poem, at first puzzled, and then by degrees
awakened to the important nature
of their own inkorrect thinking,
and thereby liberated, if only for a moment,
from the tyranny of the correct, the accurate,
the conventional, the grammatical, the mannerly,
the meticulous, the orthodox, the suitable, the well-chosen
as well as from punishment, remedies, reproofs, and revisions--
in short, liberated from everything
having to do with the correct.

My friends at mailsnail, in their casually inkorrect way
kindly agreed to join me in this project,
and now the project has been launched
with great enthusiasm and, I think,
complete success already.

Hooray!