by Ren Powell
Not that many years ago, I tried to start a discussion with the members of our local writers’ group regarding writers’ responsibilities. They threw spitballs at me and called me a pedagogue, which is a really bad word I had to look up. This whole conversation began when I read a children’s book about a little girl who was angry with her mother, so she peed all over her toys. End of story. There were no consequences for the peeing. I said I wouldn’t read that story to my kids if it were the only book in the library: I don’t like cleaning up pee. My colleagues said that the book was in fun, and that kids wouldn’t emulate the character. (I wonder if any of them have kids themselves.)
Do you think the writer was responsible in regard to her audience (or her audience’s families*) when she wrote the book? Is that even a question that should be asked?
A more complex question keeps turning in my head: do we, as adults, learn from what we read? If we read poem after poem that pairs poverty with race, women with head-in-ovens, violent behavior with high social status, are we subconsciously influenced in the way we perceive reality? If so, do we poets have a social responsibility?
When we talk about socially responsible poetry, we aren’t only talking about rhymes concerning potty manners, but about the way we communicate our experience of the world — and how we want to experience it. We describe the state of politics: the distribution of power, even if we write of nothing more than accepting the authority of our god or satirizing our high school algebra teacher.
I believe we write the kind of poetry we read (or are told to read), and that after a while, we think what we write (as opposed to writing what we think)! And it’s clear that governments agree with me. In many countries dissident poets have been forced to write government propaganda as a way to rehabilitate them. Among them are Aleksandrs Caks (1901-1950); Maksym Tadeyovych Rylsky (1895-1964); Serge Prokofieff (1891-1953) … and even today, Sinan Antoon in Iraq.
When we talk about “political poetry” we almost always mean poetry that speaks of current political events — specific wars and economic inequalities and injustices: rallying cries we recognize and understand quickly. This poetry intends to convert people in regard to a specific cause. But here are two definitions of politics we rarely consider:
- The exercise of power, often, but not always, through formal institutions
- The study of the nature of the common good
A poem that says “vote for ABC” or “stop the war in Iraq” is very different from (though no less legitimate than) a poem that says “Look what people have done/are doing to one another; be a part of the common good”. When Thomas Mann said, “In our time the destiny of man presents its meanings in political terms,” he wasn’t talking about the result of any single election.
Poetry that intends to communicate a condition and influence long-term changes in power distribution is also political.
“American History” by Michael S. Harper demands action without providing us with a slogan. With ironic nonchalance, he lays out reality and appeals to our “nature of the common good.” He may be preaching to the choir, but it’s a big choir. It’s possible to substitute the African-Americans in the poem with any marginalized group, in any country. He’s not trying to convert; he’s trying to light a fire under choir butts.
And in his “In a Country” Larry Levis just dreams. No slogans, no explicit demands, but the communication of a dream of the common good. (And look where some people’s optimistic dreams — dreams like those of Martin Luther King — have led us!)
I admire good poetry that has propagandist intentions. But I don’t believe good propaganda is the criteria for good poetry. Ever. There are two sides to every story, yes, but there is a lot of complexity in between those poles. The responsible poet is brave enough to deal with that complexity and still communicate the depth of his or her convictions.
Good poetry is effortlessly socially responsible, because telling the truth is always responsible, and good poetry is inherently truthful.
Wilfred Owen’s WWI poem “Dulce et decorum est” says explicitly that it is not “sweet to die for one’s country.” It communicates that war is horrific (in a way that just writing the word horrific never could). If the poem is read within the context of today’s war in Iraq, it could be interpreted and utilized as an anti-war rallying cry without corrupting the poem’s intention or manipulating its meaning.
If this same poem is read in the context of WWII and the fight against Nazism, it shows us war as the most tragic of human circumstances. Our soldiers make gruesome sacrifices. It is not an “anti-war” poem with the intent to rally the public to put a sudden end to the war. I doubt any of us (save Quakers) would say that the Allied Forces should have lain down their guns and gone home in 1942. There is no reason to believe Owen would have either.
Read in either context, the poem de-romanticizes war. It tells the truth. War is horrific. Owen’s poem has outlived many wars because it is honest. Political. Responsible. It makes us want to put an end to all wars forever.
Personally, the poem affects me most deeply when I read it within the context of a “justified” war. I believe there was a purpose in WWI. And, in my eyes, this poem demonstrates that the less polarized the poem, the more politically significant it is. In the face of the truth (i.e., the poem), I have to ask myself, “Is the horror the soldiers endure greater than the horror of the status quo?” My answer would be different for every war, but the question would be posed with the same force by the same poem in every case.
Of course there are plenty of transient political poems that are unabashedly propagandist, and they can serve an important purpose. But going back to my earlier question about how what I read and what I write influences what I think … can’t biased writing in large doses encourage biased thinking?
Political poetry isn’t just verses about war and protests for justice. Political poems include all those great poems that make us think about power and the distribution of power. Political poetry is poetry of conscience. Of being conscious, or inspiring consciousness in a people — a politic.
A writer has power, limited only by the number of readers he or she has. So what intention does your poetry have? The personal is political. Should the poet be accountable for the reader’s response?
When I read about Basho’s frog, I hold him accountable for the fact that all I want to do is surrender to the frog. When it comes to the distribution of power — in the face of everything in this world — there is always the invisible, joyfully relentless powers of love and humor.
*Personally, I think if you are writing a children’s poem about a kid peeing on her toys, you might want to tack on a couplet about the tragic (and gross) drowning of Raggedy Ann.
“…there is always the invisible, joyfully relentless powers of love and humor.”
They are truly remarkable Ren, and it is in this direction I now steer my poetry, for the most part. Perhaps I’m the ‘disney ostrich’, but I’ve had far too much loss, sorrow, and personal conflict in my life — and I’ve absorbed as much pain, discord, and chaos as my soul can accommodate at age 61. It exists, I acknowledge it — I just don’t want to continually ‘study’ it any more. “don’t want to study war no more…”
I no longer choose to pursue the poetry and literature of injustice, war, politics – of ‘cause’… neither my strength nor endurance remains to shoulder that weight.
I am disillusioned by we humans as a species, but I have great affection and hope for us as individuals… and perhaps in the development of each of us as a whole, realized person, lies the promise of a civilized future for Homo sapiens.
I leave the dissidence and protest to the young – and I support those that seek social balance and fairness in this world through the elevation of our herd dynamic. I just doubt our society will change fundamentally in ‘group therapy’.
I embraced the ‘cause’ of changing society full measure in my college years and a decade or so beyond – I lead a politically active ‘protest rock band’ for two decades, and faced my share of police lines in battle dress… until I became too sad and tired to go on.
Do I still have my moments of anger, frustration, and outrage – yes. When it surfaces in relentless overflow, I write it from my gut, unfiltered. I keep an anonymous blog into which I pour my real-time, stream-of-consciousness fear, fury, and even occasional surprise.
However, I now feel it my responsibility (your term) to use my poetry primarily to point to the beauty and mystery of the world, and stimulate the personal search for peace and self-actualization – in the face of pain, sorrow, even horror… to strike a chord that might resonate wonder in the reader. Being a writer of modest ability, I succeed in this endeavor far too seldom with my work — but I seldom fail to make that the focus of my writing.
If I can stir the wonder, even for a brief moment, in my reader – make them consider the mysterious, and go wow, even ah ha, just once… then I believe my humble tools were put to good use! There are far too few ‘wows’ in this world today, in spite of its amazing wonders.
and yet peeing in any adult novel will get you an instant rejection. Go figure!
“I leave the dissidence and protest to the young – and I support those that seek social balance and fairness in this world through the elevation of our herd dynamic.”
No brave new worlds for me
In case it wasn’t clear- I do see the honest celebration and elevation of joy as a political act.
Surrendering to the frog is a wonderful thing! Politics as the distribution of power is not necessarily engaged through dissidence. Nor does it mean an attempt to muscle or furtively lay one’s own political visions over others’.
Joy and attention to power are not mutually exclusive – look to a poet like Mary Oliver, for example. In haiku the amazing importance the poet places on a withering leaf in the natural world (our world) is all about distributing power. The poet chooses how to distribute power. The poet’s role is political in regard to her or his reader.
I absolutely do not see all political poetry as “studies” of the sorrows of the world. Nor those poems that do as superior in any way.
You might be venting your pain publicly through an anonymous blog instead of poems, but the blog is no less a real and affective contribution to the world than the work you put your name on and have attributed to you. We all have varying ideas of what responsibility is and to whom we are responsible.
Diversity is a great thing in all things. In the end, I find life with my poets and you with yours. And if the poetry is honest, we are both wow-ed on common ground.
(If people write to you asking you for the url to your anon blog, I think it’s because they are hungering for honesty as much as balm.)
I agree with you Ren that Owen’s poem de-romanticises war and that its power lies in its fidelity to truth. I’d also say that it was instrumental rather than propagandist; part of its purpose being to undermine ‘the old lie’ of sentimental and unthinking patriotism in the poetry of Horace (source of the poem’s title) and Pope. In poems like ‘Dulce et decorum est’ and Anthem for Dead Youth he is writing elegies for the soldiers. In his own words:
‘Above all I am not concerned with Poetry.
My subject is War, and the Pity of War.
The Poetry is in the Pity’.
I also agree with you that Owen isn’t writing a call for pacifism. Where I differ is that I don’t think the word ‘propaganda’ applies to ‘good poetry’ so it’s in the intentionality. Owen is writing authentically from experience.
It is of course open to anyone to read the poem in different contexts, including WW2 or the Iraq War. I’ve written very few ‘political’ poems but I have written one warning of the consequences of the British Govt. ignoring the UN and going to war in Iraq. It must have been a bit obscure as not everyone who read it knew what it was about. The point I’m making is that it didn’t start out as an anti-war poem but as a description of a room. It’s also better I think to allow our political leanings to emerge rather than using them as a starting point. When we do the latter there is a danger of writing propaganda.
If anyone is interested, the poem can be found herme. I was studying aestheticism and instrumental literature at the time!
I didn’t say that Owen’s poem was propagandist (although, technically, the denotation of the word…
Propagandist doesn’t mean superficial at any rate. Whether a poem is written from “authentic experience” doesn’t play into my evaluation of poetry. I realize that other people have other views and respect that.
I don’t think that propagandist intention necessarily precludes “good”. Is that what you are saying?
It is a fascinating question – how much the poet’s intention should or is a part of the poem’s aesthetic value (as opposed to it’s social value)… I have strong views in regard to this – but will keep them to myself and listen to what others have to say
Personally, I am a bleeding-heart liberal who believes that responsibility is part of being a productive member of society. I think that poets and writers do have a little greater responsibility. It doesn’t always have to be something political, but if people learn something from you or think differently after reading your work, isn’t that the point?
In a gross generalization, I would say that the American culture has been pulling away from the idea of personal responsibility (let’s play the blame game) for years and years, but if you are a citizen (poet or not) and feel that you have no responsibility, isn’t that a bit chaotic?
Personally, I think that anytime we, as writers (or humans), ask people to listen to/read our words or even (*gasp*) ask them to pay for the honor of our work, we have stepped up to a different level and should accept a little bigger slice of the responsibility pie.
It was mentioned by Rob that he didn’t feel like shouldering the weight of injustice but instead focusing on the beauty of the world around us. I don’t see the two as mutually exclusive. I think pointing out the beauty is another level of responsibility as well. Responsibility doesn’t have to be served up as nagging or shaming people into action; shining the light on positive things is another way to draw attention to a particular situation or to make a point.
I don’t know. I just think that it is important for people to share their voices and impact the world around them.
You ask tough questions, with no easy answers, as you illustrate in your essay. Sometimes a poem or a story, even a newspaper article, has to be evaluated case by case.
As far as the children’s book goes, to me that’s the
hardest question, because it enters the terrain of censorship, either of the self, or as a society, of others. It’s more important for the parents to talk about why peeing on toys is unacceptable, in case the kids happen to find the book. Because they will find those books, no matter how hard we may try to keep them from seeing them.
Should the author never have written the story? I’m not sure. Where do we draw the line in the gray area between weird and inappropriate and hate-filled tracts?
It’s like the old saying about porn, I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it.
I can’t really answer for what all poets need to do. To be honest, the word ‘responsibility’ sort of rubs me the wrong way. It reminds me of drudgery and chores, things I have to do rather than what gives me great joy and pleasure. Poetry brings me joy. My social responsibility is not demonstrated through poetry, but rather through my day to day acts as a human being, by doing no harm and treating others with compassion.
Maybe a poem or two will surface regarding social justice, but they are born out of organic experiences, out of moments I feel deeply, like Owens’ poetry, born in the trenches of WWI.
I just don’t think I know anything that anyone likely to read me doesn’t know. I don’t see where I’d get off imagining I was educating anyone. If I were to be responsible, in the sense of going on to tell people they shouldn’t pee on their toys — I’d simply have to shut up and say nothing. I don’t know what people should do. I don’t know what I should do. I don’t know how to fix myself, let alone anyone else, let alone the world.
(That said, as an experienced parent, that book would make me grumpy too :->)
What is one of the most widely “read” (actually, listened to) forms of poetry today? I would say, rap. (The link is to the experience of a 6th grade teacher, and the younger of a whole generation far removed from mine – in years.)
Protest-y, sure. Propaganda? I would say so, too.
I think, while most poetry is written in more general, universal terms, poems that use concrete particulars and historical events and may be read as propaganda in a pure sense (‘Abu Ghraib’, ‘Dick Cheney’, ‘Satar Jabar’, ‘Barack Obama’, ‘Sarah Palin’, ‘Rosa Parks’, …) and may seem to be glued to particular people, times, and places, can be made, if done in the right way, to express universal principles as well as their more general counterparts.
So much for my little piece of propaganda.
I’m with you, Christine – I think we need so many more words. Especially one to delineate between the kind of self-censorship that is the result of fear for repercussions for expressing one’s views, and self-censorship that is a choice according to what we personally feel is appropriate in certain contexts- like not discussing certain topics in front of your five year old and not burping loudly at the table (at least not in company).
But isn’t poetry intrinsically one of your acts as a human being?
I don’t mean it is set off to the side, but a public extension of our demonstration of our existence.
I do censor myself when I write. I don’t spill all the vile out (if I do, I don’t publish it- although I see the worth in some people doing so – in public that is – because I guess other people want to know they aren’t alone with their feelings–that’s where things get really complicated for me. I guess – a bit like porn
I *think* I know what is productive. I turn off /walk out of movies I think are corrupting my thoughts if there seems to be no other purpose (there are just some images I don’t want in my head – and some I may not want but do “good”. But I’m not demanding other people think like me.
(for the record- I’m not saying she never should have written the story, just that I don’t know if I would have).
Nate- Do you really think that being responsible means to tell other people what to do? I hope that’s not what I appeared to say. Nor that I know things other people don’t – unless it is the people, say, mistreating their children, parents, “others”… if the neighbor is beating her child, I am calling CPS. But if the neighbor is writing books about peeing, I am not going to call the censors, or even the PTA- but I’m going to think about why I cringe and choose not to read it to my kids. (I was making an extreme statement for the sake of humor. At least I thought I was
)
i think it would be hard even to settle on an agreeable definition of “what’s political,” so this is from the get-go a tricky subject. and as with all tricky subjects, at least in my book, it’s great to talk about and consider.
my definition of political is pretty narrow. i consider political things to be those things that relating to governments or organizations and their impacts on the world.
using that definition, i don’t think i have any responsibility as a poet. none that exceeds my responsibilities as a citizen anyway.
and when i write, i don’t think about responsibility (political or otherwise) at all. i just try to be honest. but not for anyone’s sake other than my own.
there is a residual effect of honesty in the world, of course, of individual voices being heard in a world ruled by the mainstream and the bumper sticker. but it’s never something i intend to or try to be part of. it’s incidental.
i’m a selfish poet. i write only for myself.
Re, I think that you and I probably have a different understanding of ‘propaganda’ and ‘propagandist’. For me it is definitely a ‘bad’ thing’
propaganda n. An organised programme of publicity, selected information etc. used to propagate a doctrine, practice etc. (Oxford English Dictionary)
Owen was writing against the spurious propaganda used to recruit soldiers in WW1. You are concerned with protest something which I’ve always endorsed. I am in the process of revising my views on the starting point or intentions of a poem. I think I just feel that there is a danger, at least for me, if I start off with my political (or religious) viewpoint. I don’t think it’s always necessary to start from personal experience but it is what Owen did.
On the question of aesthetics and what I will call instrumental purpose rather than propaganda, I find poetry to be a less effective vehicle than the novel or drama (I realise this is a personal view only). My favourite dramatists include Ibsen, Arthur Miller and Brecht. Scottish novelist Lewis Grassic Gibbon thought literature should be both aesthetically good and revolutionary. Almost all good literature does have an instrumental purpose. Elizabeth Bishop’s The Fish ends with a moment of illumination and counters the usual ‘macho’ perspective on fishing.
I think what I’m really trying to say is that it’s more difficult to write good poetry than a novel or a play when the the motivation is political. We can but try to write a truthfully about the world as we see it.
The new remake of the movie “War of the Worlds” does a fairly good job of expressing my feelings about the pettiness, posturing, and pontifications of the human race/virus, as it spreads and spreads like a cancer devouring the earth.
We are so busy building our castles, creating our isms, and making our segregated self-serving points that we’ve missed the real point — that we are just one of the countless species that inhabit the earth.
Unfortunately, we are the one most globally destructive, and the one most out of step with the primary responsibility that rises from the heart of our very existence; namely, learning how to be in balance with this earth upon which we ride through time and space, and of which we’ve been horribly despicable guests to date.
Politics shares one critically fatal flaw with religion — the belief that this intellect/soul with which we, as humans, are blessed/cursed, somehow gives us ‘dominion’ over the earth, and all other species with which we share this earth.
We are about to wipe out all these precious miracles around us because we are so damned arrogant as to create politics and religions, conceived to impose our individual dogmas on the other — and enslave, brutalize, and rape the natural world.
Intellect schmintellect — in the short time we humans have roamed, littered, and defaced this planet, we’ve learned nothing about being a good companion on this earth… which is our primary, and only real responsibility.
We are so busy staring each other down, waiting to make our point for the others to realize as superior, and thus, to follow — that we have forgotten how to look up, look around, and look outside of ourselves.
In spite of our intellect, which we vainly worship, we have sadly proven to be the most ignorant and dangerous species ever to come aboard planet earth.
These gadgets and constructs we create and with which we are so enamored, are destroying us, and everything around us.
That’s what I humbly and feebly attempt to do with my poetry, coax people to look up, look around, feel the wonder, be awe struck, see the real ‘big picture’ — become an aware and ‘responsible’ part of the whole, finally in step and in balance.
As Klaatu said so profoundly when asked why he’d come to our world, “Your world?!”
Will we ever ‘get it’?
“I think I just feel that there is a danger, at least for me, if I start off with my political (or religious) viewpoint.” snip – I am with you there. Not Brecht, but the other German (Durrenmatt) said that “I don’t start with a thesis, but a story.” I have that on my desk.
I know when I set off writing, it is a matter of sounds and rhythms before it is either story or thesis. I guess I believe that poems (and plays) are extensions of our thinking and therefore the depth of social engagement or the force of truth in the poem reflects the poet’s humanity and intelligence (using the term as critical theory jargon, not a judgment about a person’s “smarts”): the acknowledged attitudes and beliefs that are the subconscious impressions that COULD become conscious beliefs, or prose, but sneak into poetry instead. If that if that makes any sense.
Have to say I prefer O’Neil to Miller a bit. I wonder if story or thesis came first to Miller when he wrote All My Sons, though? What do you think of Becket? Do you think he began Godot with the thesis or with an image of “Lucky”? I am always curious where playwrights and poets began…
I think the writer’s only responsible is to tell the truth.
Clay
Rob- your comment sounds like politics to me. And propaganda- “Information that is spread for the purpose of promoting some cause”.
I am not an anarchist and have never understood the concept in practice or even desire. And I believe that even your attitude is pure politics. You want to redistribute power and attention to where you think it is necessary. It is exactly what I defined political poetry to be in the essay. I don’t think there is a thing wrong with that. But I think that any poet who wants other people to read his or her work (i.e. “puts it out there”) who claims not to have an agenda to promote something (if only oneself) is being disingenuous. Celebrating joy in your diary is just a celebration- publishing it is promoting that celebration.
I DO think I have something worth saying. I have no idea what other people are thinking, whether they agree or have already said it better themselves (as have so many others) or they disagree and think I am an arrogant fool. Makes no difference. If I didn’t think my thoughts were of worth, I wouldn’t pain people to read them.
And I do
This one is asking good questions, but difficult questions.
I would definitely not read that book to my children – I do not like to clean pee either.
But I would read them –later, when they are older – political poetry. That is because I would like them to try to understand one thing I have a hard time to explain to all my friends and acquaintances that were born on the other side of the iron curtain: how it is to be born in a world where a wrong word or gesture could send you to jail.
I think that our responsibility as poets is to write about the world’s worst as much as about the world’s best. I also think that we should avoid slogans as much as possible, but that is not easy. It might not even be possible…because we all do have a value system, and we all do stereotype and we are all biased – and that is all part of the I. That “I” who is so present in the western poetry. So one does end to write about the things she believes in mostly…
Are we responsible for our reader’s reactions? Definitely. (To a certain extent of course: not as responsible as a parent for his children but maybe more or the same as a teacher for her children). But one that writes publicly has to assume this responsibility; the one that does not assume it should keep her poems locked in the secretary.
I also think that after reading this post I would probably ponder more what I post –or how I post it. I shall try to surrender to the frog – though in a corner of the “I” there is this feeling, the worry that once the frog jumps in the woods it might be burned alive. It happened…
while i agree poetry should be responsible for its messages, poetry shouldn’t always *have* a message. look at aram saroyan – wtf is that about?
anyway, i would love to write some bad poems for pennies. hire me?
I’m frustrated with myself. I allowed myself to be drawn into a discussion of “politics” Even as a general concept, I so dislike discussing, or even considering politics — no matter the form or interpretation… it is tedious and life draining.
I’m going back to producing my poetic ‘balm’ — it is much more fulfilling and soul satisfying.
Love you Ren!
…rob