The critic Eleanor Wilner welcomes a "change in the reception of poetry concerned with current history," the "old pejorative" and "negatively loaded" term "political poetry" now replaced by the honorific "poetry of engagement." The March 10 Tucson Weekly featured the "poetry of resistance." At the risk of alienating my last two friends among Tucson's poetry community, I'd like to consider several of the poems of "resistance" featured in the Weekly.
No matter what you call it, "political poetry" presents inherent pitfalls: among them, predictability and sloganeering (ranging from formulaic ethnic spiritualism to self-dramatizing announcements of solidarity). Even the most accomplished poets stumble when waxing political.
For example, Francisco X. Alarcon writes,
from afar
we can hear
your heartbeats
they are
the drums
of the earth.
Clichés like "heartbeats" as "drums/of the earth" and later in the poem, "your faces/are radiant/as the Sun," are common to much of the earnest poetry that presumes to bear witness and provoke social change.
Odilia Galvan Rodriquez, in "Border Inquest Blues," asks
which of my
careful word choices
make a difference
to scorched tongues
that can no longer
. . . .
cry out for help
in a desolate desert
The answer is none. Poetry does not provoke social change. It may cheer up those who desire social justice. It may "bear witness," but those who commit injustices aren't swayed by "careful word choices." Sloganeering is given free rein in these last lines:
in an illegal world
full of legalized criminals
who form tempests
to tease out fear, and who
year after year
think up new ways to hate
at the same time take
even a person's last breath
if it benefits their profits
Although some critics welcome a renewed popularity of what they call "poetry of resistance" or "poetry of engagement," let's not forget that "by any other name, most political poetry smells the same."
—Jefferson Carter
