By David Chorlton
01/16/02
The George W. Bush presidency
serves daily to challenge our perceptions of this as a literate, let
alone literary, country. Although terrorism has eclipsed the national
sport of tracking "Bushisms" in recent months, we cannot forget the
punishment the English language has taken since the inauguration. It
is hard to imagine much poetry being read around the White House and
in a country where hostility toward the arts is too often exploited
for political ends it is equally hard to believe that poetry has much
impact on political life. While poets and readers frequently look for
poetry and politics to overlap, politicians rarely invoke poetry. This
makes perfect sense to me, but I have a low opinion of political language
and expect nothing other than for the arts to be conspicuously ignored
by those in high office who are suspicious of any activity that flourishes
in the hands of creative and sometimes irreverent individuals.
Interest in poets with a
decidedly political approach is generally higher than that in others.
Carolyn Forche's book,The Country Between Us, sold more copies than
most poetry collections. Laurence Ferlinghetti's continued popularity
testifies to an appetite for poetry that refers directly to big issues.
Wendell Berry's work matters for what he has to say about our relationship
with nature and technology. Make your own list from here; Martin Espada,
Robert Bly, Margaret Atwood and others have all used their language
skills to illuminate areas otherwise clouded by the exploitive rhetoric
of public relations and political speech writers. What do they offer
that elected representatives do not? Certainly passion. Each time Ari
Fleischer delivers a message in his deadpan voice he drains vital events
of their urgency. John McCain is masterful at keeping his voice under
strict control as he speaks of possible military intervention. We, the
public, on the other hand, crave more than understatement when confronted
with injustice and war.
Should someone comment that
"Your poetry is quite political," listen carefully to the tone of voice.
This could be a compliment, translating into "I'm really glad you brought
that up; it is just what I feel," or just a backhanded insult as in
"You are spoiling your work by bringing ideology into it." I have heard
both, and found both to be missing the point that political content
comprises only one of the many levels at which a poem operates. My conclusion,
after reflecting on this state of affairs, is that external circumstances
rather than my intentions dictate what is or is not political in a piece
of writing. After all, we live in an age that has made oral sex a political
issue so how are we to categorize any activity? A poem about a tree
may once have been no more than that, but trees today are the basis
for heated argument, especially when Spotted Owls live in them.
I am fascinated by commentary
that lies behind the apparent innocence of writing. The Czech poet Miroslav
Holub wrote a poem about a man on a cliff who curses the sea, humorously
chastising it with invective to no avail. Finally he climbs down to
the beach and strokes it as if it were a little dog and then contentedly
goes his way. The story comes across as less trite when we consider
the regime under which Holub had to operate. Novels were written heavy
handedly on manual typewriters with several layers of carbon paper and
passed around subversively. The regime had no appreciation for anything
but the glorification of the leaders and confirmation of how well everything
was working under communism. Suddenly the sea becomes the force of a
government out of control and the man in the poem makes his peace by
befriending it. In contrast, Allen Ginsberg's approach was confrontational
when he wrote in America, "Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb." Here
are two distinct roles for poets, those of observer and reformer. Europeans
seem to tend to the former while Americans generally bring activism
to their poetry and push for change. I prefer not to make an argument
for one of these roles over the other, but I still can't help but admire
the subtlety with which Holub and others spun informative metaphors.
Perhaps Europeans are permanently
disillusioned with politicians and know better than to expect them to
improve. We see Americans as incurably optimistic, ever trusting in
democracy to make the world better. Even though two decades in the United
States have not made an American of me, I can't help but admire the
spirit with which committed writers stick to their course and find myself
stretched between philosophies. Neither in England, where I grew up,
nor in Austria, where I lived later, does optimism define the way of
life. We prefer to describe the state of affairs as it is rather than
to paint ideal visions. We like music in a minor key and cry into our
beer. Leonard Cohen's melancholy tone qualifies him for honorary European
citizenship, and his popularity across the ocean testifies to our liking
for thoughtful sorrow. I have been away from Europe too long to know
how much or how little impact poets have on current affairs there now.
Shelley's view of poets as the unacknowledged legislators of the world
still strikes me as an anachronism rooted in a romantic age when people
read more than entertainment magazines and the daily newspaper. Nonetheless,
we have chosen our medium and must deal with it as well as we can.
Nadezda Mandelstam's book
about her experiences and those of her husband, Russian poet Osip Mandelstam,
brings out the major difference between totalitarian and democratic
systems. In the former the ideas of an individual are valued and therefore
stifled at inception should they be critical of the prevailing power.
Osip eventually died because of a poem that was heard by a dozen people
in a private gathering, never mind its being published. Someone betrayed
the trust of a private reading of a poem describing Stalin in uncomplimentary
terms, and Mandelstam went first into exile, and later to his death.
Such was the paranoia of the dictatorship that ideas were stifled at
inception. Our system values groups of people that translate into voting
blocks, and therefore sees polls as more threatening than poetry.
The opinions of the individual,
no matter how scathing, are not viewed as threatening because they are
easily countered. It may well be the democratic yearnings of the United
States that create such difficulties for poets intent on taking on the
status quo, yet the relative success in terms of visibility of poets
whose work addresses more than the personal testifies to an appetite
for issues addressed in lyrical terms. There was a brief flurry of poems,
read over Public Radio for instance, as a temporary seriousness descended
on the country and it sought comfort and substance, but talk of a nation
united flourished as well and that is what disturbs me as we move on
with a shadow draped across any voice of dissent, regardless of its
eloquence.
