[New-Poetry] Does Poetry Have A Social Function?

[Chris Stroffolino]

I like the way you (Suzanne) set up the binary aspects of the issue  
to flesh out a starting point...

Maybe I've never been so good at seeing the boundaries that others see,
or walking through the 'chartered streets' (behind a 'marraige  
hearse') as if I live there...
but I'm trying to get better at ("without losing track and coming  
down a bit too hard")

so these thoughts about social function
bring up the question of form vs. something like infinity
which also can becomes a binary that needs to be fleshed out

So, in bringing up Dickinson, who for many still has the REPUTATION  
as not much that is "social" in her work,
I don't think I'm just reactively gainsaying, or playing 'devil's  
advocate,' if I want to emphasize the aspects of her work that are  
social--
but part of what attracts me to her work is the way, taken as a  
whole, I get a feeling of Dickinson at her best
as transcending the 'social' 'non-social' split (insofar as such a  
split can even be said to exist once one gets past the
allegedly more shareable 'surface' of the 'chartered streets'  
etc...)....
Or, if not transcend per se, at least see the common roots obscured  
by the municipal divisions...
For instance, even in some of Dickinson's most famous, bumperstick- 
like sayings (and I don't mean that as a put-down at all)
like
"Some keep the sabbath going to church"
or "I taste a liquor never brewed" etc....'"
she's using the conceit of contrasting (but also showing the  
similarities)
between solitary forms of intoxication and social forms.
One COULD validly say these poems have a "social function"
and one could equally validly say these poems have no social  
function....

And then Dickinson often gets contrasted with her roughly  
contemporary ("one of the roughs")
Whitman, in part because it makes a nice seemingly binary historical  
narrative,
the lions at the gate of the american empire poetic tradition,
roughly parallel to the British Caedmon's Hymn vs. Beowulf
or the Greek Sappho vs. Homer dichotomy.

Yet, one could equally make the argument that
Whitman is no more public ("social"), and no less personal  
("private") than Dickinson,
and not just because of the feminist koan, "the personal is the  
political"
(though there's something there too)....

Chris
On Jan 3, 2007, at 11:23 AM, Suzanne Burns wrote:

>
>
> On 1/2/07, JforJames at aol.com <JforJames at aol.com> wrote:
>
> So does poetry have a social function? If so, why? If not, why
> not?
>
>
> My first thought was to be a terrible wise-ass in reply "Well Jim,  
> considering how many young swains use poetry as a way to get  
> laid...."  Seriously: do we not hear the clinking of ice in glasses  
> as yonder poetry reading? :-)
>
> Then I read the discussion, and thought about it less  
> sardonically.  I have to say I really loved Daisy Fried's  
> contribution, especially her question (Im paraphrasing) "Why is it  
> that poetry is expected to always do more than just be what it is?"
>
> Obviously there are plenty of poets who are deeply social in their  
> consciousness, and the role theiy play in a community is a huge  
> part of their vision (I'm thinking of Adrienne Rich and Denise  
> Levertov here).  They want to change the world.  Are they less as  
> poets because they aren't hermits on the mountaintop?  Does being a  
> hermit on the mountaintop have to preclude changing the world?
>
> On the other hand, what about Emily Dickinson (everybody's favorite  
> recluse)?  I don't see very much that I would call "social" in her  
> work. Emily Bronte?  Robinson Jeffers? Han-Shan? They are all  
> rather like looking at "social" through the wrong end of a telescope.
>
> So I guess my answer would be that poetry is about as social or  
> anti-social as people are.  That's covers a pretty wide spectrum.
>
> Suzanne Burns
>
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