Reflections on the Writing of Political Poetry

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The idea that there is such a monkey as a "pure lyric" can be traced back to John Crowe Ransome's book, The New Criticism. (1941) According to Ransome, Tate, Leavis, Brooks, Empson, and Warren, the heavies of the "N.C", the-pure-lyric-monkey did not live in a real tree, but in some ethereal space uncontaminated by history. The-pure-lyric-monkey does not piss, shit, copulate or eat bananas.

The Pure-Lyric is a Whoopee-Cushion academics put on their chairs. But it makes for a very light farting, and has no smell. Some students and/or poets-to-be mistake these poofings for the real thing.

Advocates for "TPL" wear tinted glasses that screen out the working class, and the underclass. TPLers also wear up-to-date earplugs that block out the rich vernacular and polyglot of "the street".

The United States has been at war, and been the planet's biggest bully, since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, August 6 and 9, 1945. Place TPL in this historical context, and the very idea of a pure lyric is vaporized.

The language with which North American poets work is the very same language in which the United States Constitution is written. To say that there is a separate pot of paint set aside for the pure lyric; to say that there is a style of poetry that is not political, is dumbfounding. We all live in cities, counties, states and the United States itself. We all are in a polis, whether we like it or not. The concept of the pure lyric assumes that there is a seamless class system, or, rather, no class system at all, in which the most educated citizens can enjoy the pure lyric.

Do not forget for a moment that Condoleeza Rice and Paul Wolfowitz were both academics. Their specialty is the manipulation of language, and, therefore, thought. In a reversal of gender and ethnic roles, Condoleeza Rice is Iago and the American public is Othello. And Wolfowitz is Polonius hiding behind the curtain. Some Hamlet please step up and use the rapier of the political poem!

Myself, I started out, as often most young poets do, writing poems about nature and Eros, and these are both still means, and sites, for inspiration. Nature, Eros, and poems about Literature and Art are mostly the domain of the pure lyric. But in the last fifty years of my life I have seen Nature savaged; landscapes that I loved logged off, opened up to mines, oil drilling, manufacture of aluminum and, of course, nuclear wastes. How can a poet stay silent before such desecration?

Perhaps the single poem held up to me in my younger years, as the kind of poem to strive for, was Archibald MacLeish's "Ars Poetica". "Ars Poetica", and no need to quote it here, is one of the templates of the modernist aesthetic - or, to repeat myself, the pure lyric. It is impersonal; it doesn't sweat; though musical, it is somewhat muffled. Though I don't recall at the moment the time of its writing, it may have been written during the Korean War? Anyway, to be brief, "Ars Poetica" is still the lyric style advocated by the likes of Dana Gioia, who is now the head of the National Endowment of the Arts. To set over against "Ars Poetica" I want to end my ruminations by quoting one of my favorite "political poems", W.H. Auden's "August 1968" written near the end of the Vietnam War.

August 1968

The Ogre does what ogres can,
Deeds quite impossible for Man,
But one prize is beyond his reach,
The Ogre cannot master Speech.
About a subjugated plain,
Among its desperate and slain,
The Ogre stalks with hands on hips,
While drivel gushes from his lips.