I want to make two observations:
1. People who enjoy reading poetry, writing poetry, or thinking about poetry should check out the on-line political poetry journal Pemmican. I just discovered it and obviously I’m impressed. Did I say if you are a writer you should take a look at Pemmican? Okay, good. Progressives, socialists, and other of a leftward bent may be at home at Pemmican, but I hope those of us who are swaying to the Right will too.
2. Lyle Daggett wrote an extended explanatory essay on political poetry. The essay is titled Political Poetry. Imagine that! It is informative and entertaining, but it also sings the praises of mostly lefties with big names as well as the unknowns (too me anyway).
His essay begins:
“Political” poetry. All human activity is political because it takes place in a context–the context of history. Sending someone a recipe for crab meat salad is one thing if you work food prep in a restaurant kitchen. It means something else if you’re Nancy Reagan.
Poets have been political, in some sense of the word, from the earliest beginnings to the present. Enheduanna, Sumerian poet, priestess of the moon goddess Inanna, the earliest poet whose name is known. The Chinese government compiled collections of popular folk songs–for example, the Shih Ching, the Book of Songs–as a way of learning something about what the people were thinking. (Did Nixon listen to Bob Dylan or Joan Baez or Pete Seeger? Does George Bush listen to Billy Bragg or Tracy Chapman or rap music?)
Later in his essay, he writes, “We’re talking about poetry that expresses or reflects–either explicitly or at least by suggestion–politics that are left-wing, working-class, populist, or of a similar character.
“How to combine politics with creative work remains an unsettled question on the political Left. This is not simply a question of Socialist or Communist Realism versus whatever else.”
Here is a famous sentence that he wrote: ” Journalism reports facts; poetry tells the truth.”
Last but not … well not the last thing he wrote … that I don’t whole-heartedly agree with is this:
Let us state here for the record that political correctness, understood properly, is a good thing.
The expression “politically correct” originally meant “politically (and/or ethically/morally) the right thing to do.” It became a little confusing, sometimes, to talk about what was “politically right” because it sounded a little bit like “the political right” (who are, of course, politically wrong). So people got into the habit of saying “politically correct” instead, which sounded a little pompous sometimes but tended to be less confusing.
To write poetry with political content that is left-wing, working- class, populist, or of a similar nature, is the right thing to do.
Whether his views are right because their left is questionable, but his essay is worthy of being read.
