I take your point, Roger, & Jon's too, but note I said ' if it does so,
does it do so so slowly' that its effect isn't macro I guess but micro.
I know that thing I have read have changed me (my mind, my feelings,
the way I see the world), but I'm not so sure about how those changes
have altered my politics, & even less sure how such changes have had an
immediate effect in the political realm.
As Mark suggested, it's more like that they do in other countries where
to speak out is to make oneself a target (which, really, hasn't been
the case for poets in the US, UK, Canada or Australia, etc, for quite
some time now; because no one in power reads poetry!).
Doug
On 14-Sep-06, at 10:19 AM, Roger Day wrote:
> Poetry, and art, must have some effect: those same presidents and
> generals (and bishops) have spent an awful lot of time banning
> books[1], so they must fear something. In the UK, up until the 60's,
> plays had to go before the Lord Chamberlain to be censored if needed.
> This had been going on since Elizabethan times.
Douglas Barbour
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Where philosophy stops, poetry is impelled to begin. He was
a man, far away from home, biting his nails at destiny.
Susan Howe
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