Journo Verse: Journalism and Literature

Max Reif has attempted to answer one of the unanswerable questions: what is art? He ponders on if journalism is literature, which reminds me of when sculptor Richard Serra was interviewed on Charlie Rose. Rose asked if architecture could be art. Serra looked disgusted. What’s next? he asked. Furniture? 

We live in a time when art has little meaning outside the marketplace, where strippers are artists, and even our president is a self-professed artist of the deal. Reif doesn’t even get that far. He’s stuck on the classic five W’s, unable to even get past the first: who.

That should be a clue our poet is deep in metaphysical waters. “Who am I," he writes, seemingly less interested in defining the struggle between art and commerce, than identity. Reporters might be tasked with gathering the facts, their publishers with selling ad space and seeking distribution, but Reif is writing a poem. 

Poetry, journalism, and literature all stem from the same dirt, but each has different ends. For Reif, it’s the existential query more than a definitive answer that interests him. This poem takes what could be one of those dark nights of the soul and shines a humorous light on our human condition. 

He fails at defining journalism and literature. This isn’t a comparative essay. It’s the worm on a hook he uses to catch the poem. 

And he fails at that, too. “My pencil hasn’t written a word” ends the poem. I see Reif in the phantom schoolroom he conjures, dropping the pencil on his imaginary desk, with a wise-ass smile filling his face. 

Over the short time with us, he’s created a portrait of a man of a certain age. He has witnessed culture obscured by “a cloud of advertising,” workers alienated by the Industrial Revolution, but he still is thinking, creating and viewing the glass not half-empty nor half-full–it’s spraying him in the face with seltzer. 

What can you do but laugh and maybe write a poem?

The Difference Between Journalism and Literature

by Max Reif

Who what where why when, 
the 5 'ws', the lead of the story 
are supposed to tell the reader, 
I'd learned in this journalism school, 

but I'm stuck on the first 'w', 
haven't even gotten to the story. 

Who am I? Doesn't the writer 
need to answer that question 
before he can write the news? 

Before I put down the first word, 
a thousand speculations 
cross the surface of my mind, 
and the pencil never moves. 

I sit at my desk asking myself, 
who is writing this? 

I try to go back 
and remember: let's see, 
I was born after World War II. 

A cloud of advertising 
brought our country 
forgetfulness in the '50s. 
Not so long before that, 
the Industrial Revolution 
alienated labor. 

The world, in which 
all these dramas were enacted 
arose out of cosmic dust, 
which itself came 
out of a big explosion... 

'Turn in your papers. 
Class is dismissed, ' 
I heard the professor say. 

My pencil hadn't written a word. 

Max Reif is an writer, artist, musician and preschool teacher whose work can be viewed on his website.