Political Poetry and the Current Moment

Right now I find myself thinking a lot about the nexus between politics and poetry. Of course there is always been political poetry appearing on this blog; I've always written political poetry in general. But there is something I think in this particular moment (and as I write this that moment is the moment of the aftermath of an armed insurrection against the United States capital; and I say armed advisory because besides guns there were pipe bombs were found in connection with the RNC and DNC) that invites poetry. Not just because there are in fact a number of poetry magazines and other venues that are asking for poems about this thing, but because there is something about a shock to the system like this that does not want to be understood solely through prose or through theater or through any other genre. Now when I say a shock to the system I don't mean necessarily that this came as a surprise. We have known for a while that there was inflammatory rhetoric, lots and lots of inflammatory rhetoric, in the American political system (in particular from Donald Trump). We have known, if we were paying attention, that there was a good chance of that coming to a head precisely on January 6th. But I mean a shock to the system in the sense of something that has not happened before or that if it has happened before has had serious consequences before, and that has serious implications for quote unquote everyday life as we know it. So in this case this was a shock to the system not because no one could see it coming but because normalcy, something that people have been trying to quote unquote regain for pretty much all of Donald Trump's presidency, is deeply threatened by these actions.

And I think that there is something about that, about that idea, that is demanding of poetry. Poetry at its best speaks to the thoughts and desires that we cannot express properly in other fora. One thing that I try to do, but don't always succeed in doing, in my poetry is to write a poem because a poem feels like it needs to be written and not because I just had a thought that I could have expressed in some other way. There is something about the heightened nature of a poem that does not necessarily insist on world altering events as a topic but that is most useful when it is applied to something difficult to express. I suggest that this moment is such a moment. This moment calls on these sorts of techniques for expressing our feelings about it.

Of course I do not mean that all the people who are writing prose about this or dialogues or any other media are somehow failing to meet the moment. I mean that in addition to all of that poetry is called for. I mean that in order to properly meet this moment we and I (and that all sounds very self-centered so let me just say societies as a whole) need poetry.

I (and if you read this blog you will not be surprised to hear this) think that in some ways it demands not just poetry but traditional forms of poetry. One thing that I have realized for myself at least in the last four years is that when the forces that are at play that seem most threatening and most dire claim for themselves the mantle of conservatism there is a positive and affirmative value in using traditional small C conservative techniques and values to argue against them. Sonnets, rhyme, meter, and all of the other attendant elements that make up traditional poetry in the Western tradition such as certain imagery and certain rhetorical techniques and so on are all strong weapons in this particular fight, or they should be. So there is a benefit of value to writing political poetry but also specifically political traditional poetry and for the purposes of this blog political sonnets.

That means you should expect to see some political sonnets on this blog. It also means that if I have the time (and given that the world is a madhouse I both have all the time in the world and none of it) you may see some analysis of past political sonnets on this blog. But the takeaway I want to have for this particular post is that it is the right and proper thing to respond to moments like this not just with impeachment, criminal charges, or a renewed resolve to use the organs of government for good, but also with poetry. Poetry has an affirmative value for helping people process express and understand the troubled times, the hard times and (of course we hope to return to) the good times.