I’m not familiar with Havel’s poetry but I expect it was more popular and more widely read than Sean or Andrea’s poetry is. Also, the political system he was writing it under was so tyrannical that it had a lot of people rooting for its downfall anyway, so Havel’s poetry was only a part of this, and not in itself the catalyst that toppled the system.
Original Message:
There seems to be a confusion about the political aspects of poetry,
"political poetry" and "poetry that effects political change"
(presumably, brings down the government - I guess here we have to
point to Vaclav Havel). I think there's a difference between all these
things, although obviously they're related. Do you really think
Cesaire or Rukeyser or Mayakovsky or Neruda didn't effect political
change? They were not politicians, but in their poetry they
articulated desires and aspirations and angers that mattered to
people. I'm not sure what else poetry can be expected to do in a
political arena. It seems to me that Keston or Sean or Andrea are
doing much the same kind of thing with their work, in an extremely
complex contemporary world. I also think the kinds of changes that
poetry can particularly effect are impossible to trace. "You must
change your life". That kind of thing.
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