What accounts for the strange assumption, which I sometimes encounter, that only the politically enlightened, proud of their rectitude and eager to let you know it, read and write poetry? This is patently false. No real poet feels an obligation to toe a party line — unless, like Mayakovsky, he lives in a totalitarian state and must promote Stalin's regime, or die. (And die. )
Most political poems are acts of conformism.
Does one know, does one care, whether Wallace Stevens was a registered Republican or Democrat? Do you read Emerson to help you decide whom you should vote for?
In the 1960s it was urgent, it was fashionable, it seemed imperative to write a poem against the war in Vietnam. Many such were written. Nearly all of them were virtuous. Nearly all of them were bad and have perished.
It is always urgent to keep poetry as far as possible from propaganda. The quickest way to blur the line is to write a poolitical poem.
Ezra Pound's poetry is worth reading despite the ugliness of the political views he articulates, though these do their damage wherever they appear. They figure among the many reasons his Cantos are a flop.
Upon inspection, political poetry is usually fashionably correct — written to merit the seal of approval from the London Review of Books or some such haughty arbiter. There is litle risk in writing poems that are critical of Capitalism, US foreign policy, billionaires, the Republican party, and Fox News. It would take a lot more guts to write a poem in favor of any of these five things — even if only as an exercise to prove a point.
In his poem "The Lesson for Today," Robert Frost has this definition of "liberal," which I quote because it stands as proof that a great American poet may trumpet a politically incorrect view with pleasure and wit:
One age is like another for the soul.
I’m telling you. You haven’t said a thing,
Unless I put it in your mouth to say.
I’m having the whole argument my way-
But in your favor-please to tell your King-
In having granted you all ages shine
With equal darkness, yours as dark as mine,
I’m liberal. You, you aristocrat,
Won’t know exactly what I mean by that.
I mean so altruistically moral
I never take my own side in a quarrel.
Like Robert Frost, I'm a liberal, and whether it supports my argument or undermines it, I would defend Andrew Marvell's "Horatiian Ode," about Cromwell's invasion of Ireand, which is a great political poem because you could argue that the poem is for Cromwell, or you could argue that the poem is against Cromwell, and the greatness of the writing has nothng to do with indeterminacy, everything to do with the poet's skillful command. On the surface it is a poem of praise; but Cleanth Brooks doesn't see it that way: Marvell's "Cromwell is like an elemental force–with as little will as the lightning bolt, and with as little conscience."
Here are the final sentences of Emerson's essay "Nominalist and Realist."
<<< How sincere and confidential we can be, saying all that lies in the mind, and yet go away feeling that all is yet unsaid, from the incapacity of the parties to know each other, although they use the same words! My companion assumes to know my mood and habit of thought, and we go on from explanation to explanation, until all is said which words can, and we leave matters just as they were at first, because of that vicious assumption. Is it that every man believes every other to be an incurable partialist, and himself an universalist? I talked yesterday with a pair of philosophers: I endeavored to show my good men that I love everything by turns, and nothing long; that I loved the centre, but doated on the superficies; that I loved man, if men seemed to me mice and rats; that I revered saints, but woke up glad that the old pagan world stood its ground, and died hard; that I was glad of men of every gift and nobility, but would not live in their arms. Could they but once understand, that I loved to know that they existed, and heartily wished them Godspeed, yet, out of my poverty of life and thought, had no word or welcome for them when they came to see me, and could well consent to their living in Oregon, for any claim I felt on them, it would be a great satisfaction. >>>
If that is a political statement, I'll sign on. The ending is a marvel. — DL
[pictured: Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, Andrew Marvell]