I presume you're referring to "I'm criticizing no one's politics. I'm leary
of poetry being political in this way, as I'm leary of poets laureate and
writing degrees in
universities." There are, as I've implied, more than one meaning to the
word political, and more than one way to act in the world. Heriberto wrote
this poem as one writes a poem--out of inner necessity, and he reports what
he must. It's data. One's politics, like one's poetry, hopefully grow out
of the data of the internal and external world as one sees them, always a
selective process, whether conscious or not. Poetry in conveying that data
to the reader hopefully has an effect on what the reader is likely to
select from the world thereafter and his/her political understanding of the
world, but if Heriberto is leaving himself open to discoveries he can't be
thinking about the audience while in process. At every stage in the process
it's driven by the experience of seeing as if new. Different from the
prearranged format or the birthday poem, or the poem with a message for an
occasion, which derive from ideology rather than discovering it.
The function of poetry has changed. When Marvell wrote his political poems
verse was a medium for pamphlets, and not long before that it had been a
medium for scientific papers. Now in our capacity as poets there are
freedoms and limitations that are different from those of the other offices
we fill. I have my theories of how things work and how they could be
changed like everyone else, and I'm often fiercely determined about them.
When I write I have to strip those opinions away. It's a process of
learning, not of concluding. I have personally very little use for verse
that's political in the other sense, and I don't think that there's been
very much of it been written in recent decades that most of us would find
sustaining.
Mark
At 09:49 AM 12/29/2000 -0700, you wrote:
>Mark
>
>thanks for a poem from elsewhere in the midst of the complaints (often a
>laugh) & countercomplaints back & forth...
>
>but you don't think much of political verse? if this isn't that, what is it?
>
>Douglas Barbour
>Department of English
>University of Alberta
>Edmonton Alberta Canada T6G 2E5
>(h) [780] 436 3320 (b) [780] 492 0521
>http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/dbhome.htm
>
> Confessional verse
> an exercise in the liar's paradox:
> compulsion is my theme
> he said, four times.
> Mark Cochrane
>
>
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