american political poetry in the 21st century - STIBA Malang

96 AMERICAN POLITICAL POETRY
however, are relatively obscure, and Palmer chooses not to footnote
them; the poem’s political reference points are buried in disconnected
allusions, syntactical dislocations, nonreferential pronouns, nonlinear
trajectories, and isolated, verbless sentence fragments such as “Pages
which accept no ink.” Selinger writes that Palmer is unwilling to
“indict, or witness to” American atrocities because “to name them,
would be both to ‘mis-appropriate’ them for the poet’s purposes and
to collaborate in a mode of representation in which naming and
power are uncomfortably allied.” Yet Selinger also suggests that
Palmer risks “evasiveness” (15), and it is this claim that I find most
illuminating.
Whether or not “Sun” evades some greater engagement with
politics is debatable, but it is clear that poems that utilize techniques
and strategies like the ones outlined above are difficult to recognize as
political. As a public discourse politics must be accessible to citizens,
not just those citizens who have the patience, theoretical background,
and intellectual capacity to understand philosophical inquiries into the
nature of language, knowledge, and representation. Further, Palmer’s
claims (and those of many Language poets) about the political
content of much contemporary poetry suggests that writers should
not address directly anything remotely resembling “politics” or
“atrocity.” Such a claim is dangerous; it discloses a longing for a purity
of language, of discourse, of politics, and an exclusion of “politics”
from literature. This position inadvertently makes politics strictly the
province of the elite, as any nontheoretical, linear poem about politics
or disaster always borders on appropriation and commodified pomp.
Indeed, only certain readers need apply.
Moreover, by opening the poem with obvious political work then
obscuring it and refusing to engage it throughout, Palmer too romanticizes
his own refusal, saying in effect look at me, my refusal to
appropriate atrocity is heroic and honorable. When asked about the
Language poets, Philip Levine said as much: “in the long run they will
undoubtedly enrich our poetry, but I dislike that heroic, embattled
stance” in which they style themselves as fighting a “war in which they
represent experiment” and other poets represent institutional staidness
(“Staying Power” 28–29). Palmer implies that atrocities should
not be discussed—in a mainstream media that Palmer and the
Language poets explicitly work against, or in a poetry that directly
addresses global events. To be fair, though, Palmer and Forché foreground
the act of writing about political issues and humanitarian
disasters and the difficulties inherent in it, albeit in dramatically different
voices. But unlike Palmer, Forché experienced first-hand the