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BRITISH-IRISH-POETS  1998

BRITISH-IRISH-POETS 1998

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Subject:

Re: Political poetry

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Date:

Wed, 22 Jul 1998 13:20:27 EDT

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Basically, I don't think Peter has any substantial issue with me: he simply
has a different point of view about the kinds of poetry that are worth
writing. I personally believe in being utterly unprescriptive about poetry's
scope and genre. And I believe that his different view casts a faint mist of
quietism across the scene, not quite redeemed by the acknowledgement that one
might protest occasional injustices. There just aren't any rules about what
kinds of poetry can be written in any one age -- all that business about our
powerlessness and the retreat of politics into realms far beyond our ability
to affect it makes no difference at all to the central argument, which is one
of ethics not results.

I prefer to Peter's attitude, and to Jon's actually, that old Coleridge quote
which goes roughly, "The poet, described in ideal perfection, brings the whole
soul of man [sic] into activity, with the subordination of its faculties to
one another according to their relative worth and dignity" (don't have
Biographia by me, but I think that's right.) What Peter and Jon imply
(forgive me) is that a thinned down poet goes into this activity, one not
fully participant in the world.

No matter how many times one says that one is NOT recommending that poets seek
a direct political role -- agreed they are no better at politics than anyone
else -- we keep getting snagged on a pretended distinction between "poltiical
poetry" (= rants) versus "poetry", whose political effect is oblique. There
is ample historical warrant for thinking a political poem might be beautiful
and spiritual (even if "wrong") By point 2, above, it seems to me clear that
it is ethical to put one's fullest "soul" into poetry, whatever kind of poem
that may create at any particular juncture. All my cavils about poets of the
past and present were an acknowledgement that, unfortunately, in letting at
least some of our poetry have a more overt political edge it is highly likely
that we shall be wrong, for we poets are flawed individuals. To be "right" by
avoiding taking this step is what I'm calling quietism. It is to pretend to
be better than we are. Poetry, after all, is a public act, and we are
accountable and, unfortunately, fully responsible for it, as Pound in his
personal tragedy was responsible.

AGAIN, that doesn't mean that we have to seek actual political results from a
poem, though if on some occasion we think we should then, dammit, we should do
so. I mean, how else does ethics work, unless it means standing by what we
believe to be right action, without trying to coerce others unfairly and while
being always ready to relinquish standpoints either when convinced we are
wrong (in our own terms), or simply because the situation is ambiguous owing
to cultural differences and we should not press a merely individual viewpoint?
And so on, all down the long halls of morals and relativism . . . It's not a
question of "Who says what is right?" It's just a question, "I, poet, think I
should do/say this."

The more quietist or the intellectually-abstruse positions would welcome
Keston's unassailable point that poetry has to do with metaphysics. But this
is not the way that poetry may escape its dilemmas.

"Metaphysical" is currently the least understood of modern expressions. In
all physical description, for example, a metaphysics must be supposed. Even
to say that metaphysics is a blind and a delusion is a meta-physical
statement. Politics, too, always has within it a secretly taken metaphysical
position. This is because it has to be based on a sense of what it means to
be human, subhuman, superhuman, whatever, and what we should do about it. If
you say, the point about politics is to resolve conflict, for example, the
metaphysical question is "Why is it important to resolve conflict?" If you
say "Human politics is meaningless compared with the harm the whole species is
doing to earth", again, once you invoke meaning you have to consider
metaphysics.

If, instead, you take the view that poetry's job is to search out the
spiritual significance of life (and leave to the whole argument about "poetry
and metaphysics" the task of defining what that means), then I'd again agree
with the position. That's just why poetry cannot avoid the ethical, spiritual
task to put the whole soul of the poet into activity, and so on, and so forth.

Peter's excellent point about Chinese poets is taken. I thought I'd made this
point myself in a less informed, and had to go back over my postings to see
that I hadn't.

Best

Doug


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