There are many ways of making
political statements: speeches, nonfiction writing, posters—even literary
fiction. Why bother to use poetry, a much more labor-intensive and rarified
type of communication?
As a form of political
speech, I find poetry the most persuasive. By putting a political statement
into poetic language, the writer is challenged to make the diction as fresh,
immediate, and original as possible.
In his landmark essay
“Politics and the English Language,” George Orwell defines good writing as “picking
out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make
the meaning clearer.” That’s exactly what poetry does at its best.
Let me give you an
example of how poetry can bring to life a political argument. Here are the
opening lines of one of my favorite poems by June Jordan, the great poet who
passed away ten years ago:
Infinity doesn’t interest me
not altogether
anymore
I crawl and kneel and grub about
I beg and listen for
what can go away
(as
easily as love)
or perish
like the children
running
hard on oneway streets/infinity
doesn’t interest me
(“On a New Year’s Eve”)
If you were to make the argument of
this poem in nonfiction prose, it would most likely fall flat on its face: “I believe that
living creatures are much more important than abstract concepts.” Boring. It’s the way
that June Jordan tackles the subject in poetry that makes it unforgettable and
convincing. First of all, she takes on “infinity.” You can’t take that type of verbal leap in a speech.
That one word, infinity, evokes so many things. Here, June Jordan seems to be
alluding to the tendency of organized religions to focus on the otherworldly,
as opposed to the here and now. It’s much more interesting and verbally
efficient of her to take on “infinity” as her antithesis, instead of an
elaborate prosy construct like the one I put into the previous sentence, or the
paraphrase in quotes above.
Then June Jordan
gives such a specific contrast to infinity: children. But not just any children,
“children/running/hard on oneway streets”—an image as vivid as a film clip. June
Jordan also uses the hard rhythms of the language to suggest those sneakers
smacking asphalt. She mentions “oneway streets,” as opposed to the two-way
streets of genuine dialogue and opportunity. These children might not be
fortunate enough to live on those wider and more prosperous boulevards. June
Jordan uses all these strategies to keep
us involved in what is really a political and philosophical argument. Could
prose do that? And look: “infinity” appears again, but this time right after
the children, on the same line as their running on the streets, as if “infinity”
applies to the running children instead of being a mere abstraction, as it becomes again in the following line.
I could give many
other examples of poetry producing some of the most memorable
political statements. There is Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ozymandius,” mocking the
shattered statue of a fallen tyrant. What about Pablo Neruda’s hymn to the Spanish Republic, “I Explain A Few Things,” with its aching refrain, “Come see the blood in the streets”?
Or Paul Eluard’s lyrical
anthem to the resistance to fascism in World War II, “Liberty,” which was
actually scattered by allied airplanes as a leaflet when they flew over
occupied France.
There are also Nazim Hikmet’s great statements of the importance of life, such as
his poem “Living is no laughing matter.”
None of the political speeches made on those same subjects have endured as long as those
poems, or retain as much universality.
Other recent posts about writing topics:
Why Write Poetry? Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4
How to Get Published
Getting the Most from Your Writing Workshop
How Not to Become a Literary Dropout
Putting Together a Book Manuscript
Working with a Writing Mentor
How to Deliver Your Message
Does the Muse Have a Cell Phone?
Poetic Forms: Introduction; The Sonnet, The Sestina, The Ghazal, The Tanka
Praise and Lament
How to Be an American Writer
No comments:
Post a Comment