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

[JforJames at aol.com]

Reginald Shepherd tends to agree with you, though he uses the term  
'uselessness'...
_http://reginaldshepherd.blogspot.com/_ 
(http://reginaldshepherd.blogspot.com/) 
A  citizen-baker might bake pretzels shaped like peace signs. A 
citizen-barber  might shave his head. A citizen-artist might paints Guernica. People will  
often protest injustices or rail against barbarous policies in way  that 
relates to some skill/trade they possess. Citizen-poets, of  course, might well 
write political poems. Efficacy is beside the point. 
 
Meanwhile, the citizen-gunmaker may be boring rifle barrels in his  basement, 
which in the end may prove quite efficacious to the struggle,   but which may 
not be the means others would choose.
Finnegan
 
In a message dated 10/8/2007 4:37:17 PM Eastern Daylight Time,  
bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net writes:


--
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/_ (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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