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
This article appears in Apr 28 – May 4, 2016.
Gee — I guess Brecht, Neruda, Sandburg, Homer, Dylan, etc. all suck. Here’s one of my own political poems:
A POLITICAL POEM
I went to a poetry reading recently,
university poets, mainstream.
One had promise; she said
she would read a ‘political’ poem,
but that she didn’t want to offend anyone.
She said that two or three times, that
she didn’t want to offend anyone.
An inoffensive political poem…is
at best a contradiction in terms. To
even speak of politics is to take a stand;
to take a stand must surely offend someone
who takes a different or opposite stand.
For example, a poem about peace
must offend those who favor war.
I recall poor Bertolt Brecht demanding
of the Third Reich, “Burn me! Burn me!”
He wrote political poems and believed that
if the Nazis didn’t ban them, he had failed.
The poet read her political poem.
It offended no one.
Except me.
To AVL,
I guess we must be reading two different articles, for in the version I read, nowhere does Jefferson Carter say that poets suck. In my version of the article, he criticizes political poetry and points out some timeworn cliches in the poems he presents.
You don’t point out where you disagree with his evaluation of the examples he cites. Does that mean you agree with his critique?
A more effective defense of your position would have been to have presented some political poetry from one of the great poets you mentioned.
Great poets write great poetry, regardless of whether it is political or not.
Jefferson Carter (I think) was commenting on the futility of political poetry as a device for social change. Poets may have strong feelings, but generally, writing poems as part of one’s faculty responsibilities or to secure a grant or attract devotees of the same or other gender — what many if not most contemporary poets do — are unlikely to effect revolutions. Though they may be coincident, it’s likely more was going on societally than going on on the poet’s page.