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Curbstone Press

Contents

Foreword by Adrienne Rich.............................ixPrefatory Notes.......................................xiiiRemarks on Political Poetry...........................1In Defense of Ideology................................7Demagogy in the Musée............................23The Dream of an Apolitical Poetry.....................47Scratching Surfaces...................................65Review................................................100Poetic Freedom and "Cuba".............................118Line Break............................................128

Chapter One

My first response to the symposium topic is to wonder what brings us to this pass, where we have a meeting about "politics and poetry." Not about kinds of politics, or kinds of poetry: just "politics" and "poetry." The issue, so defined, is so undefined it's quite crude. Not that we're to blame for this. It's remarkable that there even is such a meeting. Ordinarily "political poetry" is considered beneath comment. Nonetheless, if we look at the historical record, at the poetry that has been kept and revered, it's astounding that there are any reservations whatever about the viability of political poetry.

Of course there is a truth behind the assertion that poetry and politics don't mix, but one so warped it turns on itself. The truth is that much of what is called political poetry, or poetry that deals with politics, is hackwork. From this comes the generalization that politics destroys poetry. Yet isn't that an arbitrary conclusion? Most of any kind of poetry is hackwork, is slipshod, undemanding of itself. The work of idle hands that are maybe not idle enough. When you come upon an inept love poem you aren't likely to conclude that love and poetry don't mix. You may think the poet a bad poet, or even a callow person. And you may pass judgment on the work. But you won't jump to generalizations about the incompatibility of love and poetry.

There's a tendency to separate aesthetic quality and political poetry into mutually exclusive categories. Yet clearly anything we do has aesthetic quality (even wrapping a package: you do it well, or better, or poorly). Assertions that poetry and politics don't mix are not disinterested statements but political interventions in their own right. They presume not only that "poetry" and "politics" are autonomous categories, but also that there is such a thing as disinterested observation. Which is why, when one runs up against that particular pervasive bias, the result is seldom a discussion. There's nothing to discuss. Or so it's supposed to seem. In fact the attempt to dismiss, denigrate or suppress poetry that deals openly with political matters, or that has discomforting political implications, is just another version of the ongoing campaign-essentially a sociopolitical one-to determine what is or is not permissible in poetry. Not in poetry only, but in all expressive modes, from journalism through academic scholarship to cinema and pop music. (In one country the governing institutions call for "political" poetry. In another, the established consensus screens out all but "apolitical" poetry. Superficially they seem opposites, yet each has the same function: to block the mouth of poetry and/or cut off the view.)

Isn't it self-evident, as the Salvadoran poet Roque Dalton put it, that whatever fits into life fits into poetry? If we accept this in theory, why not in practice, where theory counts? Think what's at stake. Politics is not simply one more field or subject. The political dimension is not just another facet of life. It saturates and ramifies back into the most intimate areas of our lives, including whether we have jobs or don't have jobs, where we live or don't live, whether we have babies or don't have babies, and so on. We breathe it, we live it. It is more species-specific, more significantly human, than eating or sleeping or even procreation. How pretend that it doesn't exist or matter, or that it's off limits?

Earlier I made an analogy between political poetry and love poetry. In some respects that analogy, like any other, is misleading. Not all poetry is love poetry, but is there a poetry that is not political? An apolitical poetry? Well, yes and no. I mean, the very terms are up for grabs. There's poetry that's consciously political, and poetry that is unconsciously so; and either may be explicit or implicit in its politics. But the bottom line is that all poetry is political insofar as it bears a set of assumptions about the organization and priorities of life, and carries with it a whole network of lives interpenetrating it, just as it interpenetrates life. Even its silences—sometimes especially the silences—have political content. As used ordinarily, however, "political poetry" is not applied to work that goes along with the ruling ideology of a given place or time. At the mention of "political poetry" no one is likely to think of Eliot, say, because his ideological coloration blends so well with that of the cultural stratum where his work is honored and preserved. The term "political poetry" is reserved for work that goes against the dominant ideological grain. It refers only to poetry that exhibits a certain kind of politics. Were we to use a more honest language, we might call this "dissident poetry," because that's what it is: the poetry of political dissidence.

By rights we should distinguish dissident poetry from protest poetry. Most protest poetry is conceptually shallow. I think of the typical protest anthology: poems in opposition to the Vietnam War or to the coup in Chile, ecologically concerned or antinuke poetry (with a few devastating exceptions, mainly Japanese), even poems sympathetic to workers (notably those that focus on workers' oppression, a symptomatic issue that leads to poetic moralizing while ignoring the exploitation that necessitates the oppression). Such poetry is issue-bound, spectatorial—rarely the function of an engaged artistic life, but compensation for a politically marginalized one. It tends to be reactive, victim-oriented, incapacitated, lacking the theoretical and practical coherence that could give it muscle and point. (Look at the endings of protest poems.) But the telltale characteristic of protest poetry is that it seldom speaks the active rage or resolution of people on the receiving end. I mean oppressed and exploited people. The real subject is the poet's own tender sensibilities, not what is actually, systemically going on. Dissident poetry, however, does not respect boundaries between private and public, self and other. In breaking boundaries it breaks silences: speaking for, or at best with, the silenced; opening poetry up, putting it in the middle of life rather than shunting it off into a corner. It is a poetry that talks back, that would act as part of the world, not simply as a mirror of it. Obviously such a poetry rules nothing out. Dissident poetry does therefore observe connections—say, between social empowerment and valorization and human definition—that the dominant ideology declares that 'poetry' must ignore or suppress.

Most major poetry is consciously political, and always has been. 'Where do we want to start? With Aeschylus? Virgil? Dante? Can you imagine looking Dante in the face and saying poetry and politics don't mix? And these...