Poetry and Politics

The discussion was raised in class on Thursday, as it usually is at some point in an American Lit course-"Should poetry be political?"

There are two ways to answer such a question. Giving my opinion is one way, but there is also another way, which is less easily defined, but more legitimate in the eyes of most readers. This second method is founded upon a lineage of poets writing for change, whose voices were acknowledged in all corners of society. These poets, who have sustained a proven historical impact, i.e. poets who are taught in schools decades, or in some cases, centuries after their active period of writing, are hard to argue against, even if you are a poetic figurehead like Billy Collins or Rita Dove. If you break social and societal barriers with your poems, then there is a truly unique, and often undefinable force at work within them. Whether you view this force in a positive or negative way depends largely on your political stance and investment in literature as an agent for change.

It is my belief that all poets are inherently political, as each is writing in a language that has been acquired across generations of violence and unrest. For instance, I am an American poet writing in English. In it's most primary form, English came to the British Isles with multiple Germanic tribes sometime around 5 AD. The language previously spoken in this string of islands was a version of the Celtic, possibly with a Britannic dialect. Through savage violence, the English Speaking tribes displaced the Celtic speaking natives, forcing their language and beliefs upon the land. The new way of writing and speaking was introduced violently, leaving the population no choice but to conform.

Granted, the above example may be an oversimplification, yet when thinking about the dominance and cross pollination of languages within any society, it is hard not to read or write EVERYTHING in a slightly political context. If we really want to think about languages and their political undertones, we need go no further than a novel written by an author in a post colonial country, a place where a dominant language has changed every aspect of the way a people read, think and write. Or, we could look at the counter culture's use of slang in the American 60's and 70's, a phenomenon born out of anti-war movements, sit-ins, and the growing drug culture. Language changes with the times. In many cases, these times share the symptoms of a turbulent political climate. Sometimes words protect a people from an oppressive government, other times they protect that government's military from it's people. The tide goes both ways, but no two waves ever look or sound exactly the same.


My opinion is just that-one man's idea about a subject. Yet, I am using language to put these ideas out there, to share information, to symbolically open myself up to the world. What I say is different from what one of my seventy year old professors would say. Language has changed drastically in a few decades, and will continue to change, just like politics. I have a political slant, as do you, and it has changed with the passing of birthdays. No one is really as "apathetic" as they might wish to believe, especially when it comes to choices impacting their lives. Those choices are changing everyday, whether we are for them, or against them. It's the way we live, day to day, thought to thought.


Many poets have become famous on political grounds,-Allen Ginsberg, Amiri Baraka, Gregory Corso, Niki Giovanni,Robert Lowell, the list goes on and on. Of these same poets, many have been publicly reprimanded for using poetry to air their political grievances. There seems to be levels of social acceptability within the ranks of modern political poetry. Amiri Baraka, for instance, was removed as Poet Laureate of New Jersey for "Somebody Blew up America," while we read some of Shakespeare's sonnets aimed at the throne and laud them for being audacious. Although a disparate comparison, it still drives me crazy that these levels exist. In twenty years will "Somebody blew up America" be read as reverently as "Howl?" In five hundred, will it be acclaimed for as a poetic snapshot of a pivotal moment in American history? It is hard to guess. Maybe Baraka's race and vitriol will cast him into obscurity within two decades, causing someone like Denise Levertov to rise and assume his place. Perhaps this poem will be seen as a point in which America had to change, as it coincides with Obama's election. The future is infinite, but will always be political, until the sun burns out. This is such an interesting subject. I am all written out, and have to go to work now. Bye.