> Or attempts at discrimination. Some poems are more
> political than others.
> The Mayakovsky poem I cited is explicitly
> propogandist, intended to incite
> the reader to an action (join the Communist Party),
> the Yevtushenko poem
> makes an implicit political comment -- both are more
> political than many
> other poems, in the same way that Shelley's "Mask of
> Anarchy" is more
> political than his "Skylark". You may not like this,
> mate, but that's the
> way it is."
NB a maybe relevant issue which seems to escape here is that poetry is
nothing but a particular style of language;
it does not features as a domain where things have to be or not to be in a
certain fashion or about certain issues.
Poets are those who have chosen to express whatever they wish to express in
that special language and code and forms,
which exploits instead of prosaic tools and devices, rhetorical ones.
The reason why some poems are more political than other is because their
interests
concentrate on these topics. One is no less a good poets because his
interest range within the political.
And one is no more a better poet because his interests range within the
lyrical.
There have been political issues that have been better treated in poetry
than in treaties of Politics.
There have been lyrical issues that have been better expressed in a prosaic
fashion.
Poetry is the gathering together of tools and devices. It remains such even
when its subjects varies dramatically within the work of the same author.
It is the expertise of the use of Form that make a subject successful.
This is of course a rather formalist approach.
To recall Plato's "The Form of the Good", in Republic, the form of Good is
indeed the formal cause of the superlative goodness of kind of all other
Forms.
Therefore, the poetic form is in itself the ideal exemplar of all the
possible Forms which could express those ideas which are other than prosaic.
Propagandist, political, lyrical, erotic, satirical matters: it is not the
subject that decides what is proper and what lately will be acknowledges as
poetic. It is rather the mastery of the maker, his virtuosity.
In this light, every subject is legitimate can enter the realm and field of
action of Poetry.
Erminia
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