Don't see why we should expect a discussion of political poetry to be
conclusive.
Jon asks for a response to his two poems and I'm glad to offer one. The main
thing to say is that the villanelle and the general tone of "Incident" add
something, even if very small, to the amount of humane feeling "in the world".
To expect more than that is to exaggerate the role of individuals in a world
of five billion people. Then, more problematically, "Incident" slightly
incites the reader to envision violence (as do TV pictures of violence), and
that's a result of its personal-documentary style, perhaps partly taken from a
news report. The risk, always, is prurience in this kind of documentation and
the key to overcoming that is, quite simply, poetic quality. But the same
remark could be made, say, of many Reznikoff poems, which I believe retain
their political effectiveness and their aesthetic daring across the decades;
and it is difficult to see how our sympathies may be aroused in the abstract.
Jon's poem works warmly with its discomforting materials and is therefore
protected against being harmful.
Let me anticipate an objection. It would be a false political sophistication
to say that he is profiting from what he describes -- westerner making poetic
reputation by describing sufferings elsewhere (presumably elsewhere). "False"
because there's a kind of sophistication that would rather be "right", or at
least protected against accusations of being "wrong", than try to do anything
meaningful that could involve a loss of intellectual face. That is the real
elitism: the wish to have a completely clean poetic conscience.
I believe the villanelle, poised in nice ironies, labours with its form and
may need perfecting. For example, there is, to my ear, a minutely false
quantity (just a nuance) in the line "My inconvenience justifies your pain"
which takes from the incantatory effect of the villanelle without contributing
an interesting syncopation. But these are matters of proper poetic
consideration and, of course, of individual taste. (Strict forms can
sometimes keep political poetry dignified and save it from rant.)
I don't see how anyone could say that this isn't poetry or isn't useful, in
whatever tiny way poetry can immediately be useful, or that it doesn't add to
a tone that we would wish our generations' overall production of poetry to
have. Are the inhuman people in the world all going to read Jon's poem and
see the error of their ways? No, but the various forms of conscientious
objection in WWI, including the poetic revulsion from slaughter, remain beacon
lights in a disgusting five years. They did not prevent the horrors to come,
but had there been no protest at all our sense of human depravity would have
been that much deeper.
I welcome all poetry which works at spiritualising humane feelings. It's not
the only way to go in political poetry, or of course in poetry generally, but
it is one way to go.
Doug
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