[New-Poetry] 'Poetry can speak decisively to power'

[Bob Grumman]

>     Andrew Motion: 'The sacred duty of poets is to tell the truth
>     about humanity whatever those in authority have to say.'
>
>     The sacred duty of authorities is to do right by humanity no
>     matter what poets say.  Bob Grumman
>
>     Sorry.  I have trouble resisting the urge to counter pompous bilge
>     with its positive image.
>
> --
> The 'sacred' bit might be carrying things too far, but poets 
> traditionally, being word-slingers, have seen the need if not a duty 
> to be a vocal force for change when they feel their government has 
> gone badly awry. The word 'force' may be overstating the immediate 
> effect of their language acts, but if one believes in the 
> cummulative force of small acts, then the poems they write matter as 
> much as letters to the editor or handwritten placards carried in a 
> march or a celebrity wearing a peace-sign on his lapel at a photo op. 
> As we have witnessed in recent years under Bush-Cheney doctrine, there 
> are too many examples of the failure of "authorities to do right by 
> humanity," for certain citizen-poets to stand silently by.
>
> Yesterday at our downtown library, Martin Espada gave a talk on 
> Neruda. He spoke about Neruda's politicalization during 1930s, his 
> turning away from a poetry that was primarily concerned with beauty. 
> Espada read from the poem "Explaining A Few Things," which has that 
> telling 'metaphor': "and the blood of children ran through the streets 
> / simply, like children's blood."
>  
> I wrote a while back on my blog, poetry that cuts ifself off from its 
> socio-political ties is in danger of becoming nothing more than 
> an intellectual luxury good.
> Finnegan
> http://ursprache.blogspot.com/
You an' me ain't never gone agree on this one, James.  What is better or 
more important than "an intellectual luxury good?"  Although I'd call 
poetry at its best "a sensio-viscero-intellectual good," along with 
music and painting and the dance.  I do believe that anyone upset with 
politicians should raise their voices against them--but in prose, with 
rational arguments, not with sentimentality, which all political poetry 
reduces to.  But,.to each his own. 

--Bob
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