american political poetry in the 21st century - STIBA Malang

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Conclusion Part One In this book I have tried to chart what I perceive are the major rhetorical strategies of political poems in the United States from the mid-1960s to the present. In order to explain the general distinguishing features as well as the subtleties of each strategy, especially their attendant figures of voice, I chose poems that best represent that strategy’s overall qualities. However, many of these poems push, challenge, and sometimes overrun the boundaries I established. I fully believe that the strategies are distinct, but they can overlap in interesting ways. I leave it to the reader to make the overlapping connections between strategies within individual poems. I tried to strike a balance between having firm, well-delineated categories and flexible ones that are critic-, reader-, poem-, and poet-friendly. In other words, I did not want to isolate strategies in a mutually exclusive way. Levine’s “They Feed They Lion” exemplifies a poem that shades into another type of poetic agency. Though its primary strategy is particular equivocal agency, Levine draws heavily on his own experiential agency. Yet he abstracts, disguises, and redirects that personal experience so as to conceal its connection to him in a transparent way. Further, this connection is understandable mostly due to his comments in interviews about the poem. “They Feed They Lion” thus shows primarily equivocal agency; only an extensive investigation reveals how experience shapes the poem. Poems that evade strict categorization reveal the limitations of my (or any) theoretical framework, but they also reveal much about poets’ nuanced approaches to political poetry. In this same vein, the poetry left out of this “comprehensive” book reveal much about my strategies, proclivities, and commitments. The political party “big tent” platform inevitably excludes capable participants and constituencies (or takes them for granted and thus ignores them). My big tent approach similarly leaves out some forms of political poetry. I did not include spoken word, performance, or slam poetry; I have thus omitted poems performed at vibrant, multicultural, political spaces such as El Puerto Rican Embassy, Nuyorican Poets’ Café, Tía Chu Cha Café Cultural,
190 AMERICAN POLITICAL POETRY Def Poetry Jam, and local sites across the country. 1 A simple explanation for their exclusion is my knowledge of and passion for printed poetry and hip-hop rather than spoken word, but another is more convincing. Spoken-word poetry embodies voices and strategies that draw on the types of poetic agency detailed in this book. Performance pieces could conceivably fit into any of the agencies described here. Much slam poetry, moreover, utilizes the language/vernacular and contestatory urban agency of hip-hop music; hip-hop also draws on spoken-word traditions and grew out of them—Last Poets, Black Arts poets, signifying, and playing the dozens inform the fundamental aesthetics of hip-hop as well as spoken word. Some readers may take issue with the poems I have chosen to discuss here. It is possible to find countless other poems that fit into the strategies I outline. I view this not as a problem but as a positive generative quality of my categories. That generation, after all, is part of the purpose of this project. To reiterate, I also chose to discuss poems by living, working poets. Thus, I did not include political poems by deceased poets (with the exception of the Notorious B.I.G.) such as June Jordan, Gwendolyn Brooks, Robert Lowell, Allen Ginsberg, Etheridge Knight, Audre Lorde, James Wright, Denise Levertov, and Ricardo Sánchez. Others may see an oversight in my decision to exclude Language Poetry (while yet other readers may cheer). 2 I believe, as many other critics and readers do, that though Language Poetry is certainly political in its conscious subversion of poetic tradition(s), commodified corporate language(s), and MFA workshop poetry, it fails as a language of politics. Another reason is the lack of human agency in most Language Poetry, which is one of my primary concerns in this book. Alicia Ostriker claims that Language Poetry is politically vacuous, despite its practitioners’ insistences to the contrary, because it denies that “the morally responsible human subject is even theoretically possible” (“Beyond Confession” 35), a claim also advanced in part by Charles Altieri in “Without Consequences is No Politics.” As I discussed in relation to Michael Palmer’s “Sun,” if the political content of a poem is obscured or inaccessible, it will likely fail as a political figure of voice. In summary, then, this book explores the ways that poets engage pressing social and political realities and the ways they figure human agency. In chapter 1 I selected and analyzed poems of embodied agency, which include experiential and authoritative agencies. They support Adrienne Rich’s claim that a poem is “not a philosophical or psychological blueprint; it’s an instrument for embodied experience” (What Is Found 13). Poems of experiential agency, moreover, draw
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American Political Poetry in the 21
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American Political Poetry in the 21
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To the poets of the fields, village
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Contents Preface ix Acknowledgments
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Preface When I began reading, writi
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PREFACE xi printed poetry and what
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Acknowledgments In writing this boo
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Introduction: Political Poetry in t
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INTRODUCTION 3 always will be prima
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INTRODUCTION 5 spectacle of man-cre
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INTRODUCTION 7 is always a danger w
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eceived less attention from theoris
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INTRODUCTION 11 “political” and
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INTRODUCTION 13 Though defining the
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INTRODUCTION 15 “impotent” to e
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INTRODUCTION 17 for personal as muc
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INTRODUCTION 19 chapter title doubl
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INTRODUCTION 21 for “alternative
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the extant criticism about the isol
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INTRODUCTION 25 Laureate (2001-2003
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INTRODUCTION 27 insistence on the
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INTRODUCTION 29 Alegría once comme
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INTRODUCTION 31 be seen as a counte
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INTRODUCTION 33 not want to establi
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CHAPTER 1 Embodied Agency Introduct
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EMBODIED AGENCY 37 for poetry even
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EMBODIED AGENCY 39 peach halves. Th
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EMBODIED AGENCY 41 the same event
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EMBODIED AGENCY 43 The speaker-poet
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EMBODIED AGENCY 45 themselves. Des
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EMBODIED AGENCY 47 The eighth in th
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EMBODIED AGENCY 49 In Rodríguez’
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EMBODIED AGENCY 51 stems from memor
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EMBODIED AGENCY 53 Frequently groun
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EMBODIED AGENCY 55 The rhetorical s
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EMBODIED AGENCY 57 of revolutionary
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EMBODIED AGENCY 59 entire civilizat
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people who manipulate them for viol
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EMBODIED AGENCY 63 themselves from
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EMBODIED AGENCY 65 Jesse Helms were
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EMBODIED AGENCY 67 in using “Who
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EMBODIED AGENCY 69 that speaks of
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Ramirez, / who after years of confi
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EMBODIED AGENCY 73 justice. These p
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EMBODIED AGENCY 75 the task of poet
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CHAPTER 2 Equivocal Agency Seems, m
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EQUIVOCAL AGENCY 79 events, the poe
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EQUIVOCAL AGENCY 81 reflecting but
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EQUIVOCAL AGENCY 83 trauma theory,
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EQUIVOCAL AGENCY 85 (Engelmann 46).
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EQUIVOCAL AGENCY 87 suggests an asp
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EQUIVOCAL AGENCY 89 Simic’s terse
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EQUIVOCAL AGENCY 91 what Hannah Are
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EQUIVOCAL AGENCY 93 tongues.” The
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EQUIVOCAL AGENCY 95 out, Palmer is
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atrocities she writes about. Even s
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EQUIVOCAL AGENCY 99 Vietnam War—t
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EQUIVOCAL AGENCY 101 This move is p
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EQUIVOCAL AGENCY 103 Edward J. Brun
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He continues that “he had identif
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EQUIVOCAL AGENCY 107 out, the lion
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EQUIVOCAL AGENCY 109 one that sees
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EQUIVOCAL AGENCY 111 and below). Th
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mandate or “solution” to make a
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EQUIVOCAL AGENCY 115 Simic’s poet
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CHAPTER 3 Migratory Agency Introduc
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MIGRATORY AGENCY 119 with his claim
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MIGRATORY AGENCY 121 the essences o
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MIGRATORY AGENCY 123 challenge the
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“English” poem disrupts “trad
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Poems of Migratory Agency MIGRATORY
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MIGRATORY AGENCY 129 but of nuestra
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MIGRATORY AGENCY 131 In this final
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MIGRATORY AGENCY 133 muertos. / Los
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MIGRATORY AGENCY 135 primary intere
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MIGRATORY AGENCY 137 comparing the
Page 154 and 155: There is great facetiousness in the
Page 156 and 157: MIGRATORY AGENCY 141 highlights the
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Page 162 and 163: argues that these Modernist poets
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Page 170 and 171: CONTESTATORY URBAN AGENCY 155 their
Page 172 and 173: CONTESTATORY URBAN AGENCY 157 “Th
Page 174 and 175: CONTESTATORY URBAN AGENCY 159 agenc
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Page 178 and 179: CONTESTATORY URBAN AGENCY 163 celeb
Page 180 and 181: CONTESTATORY URBAN AGENCY 165 with
Page 182 and 183: CONTESTATORY URBAN AGENCY 167 acqui
Page 184 and 185: CONTESTATORY URBAN AGENCY 169 the s
Page 186 and 187: CONTESTATORY URBAN AGENCY 171 can a
Page 188 and 189: CONTESTATORY URBAN AGENCY 173 greed
Page 190 and 191: CONTESTATORY URBAN AGENCY 175 enter
Page 192 and 193: CONTESTATORY URBAN AGENCY 177 relat
Page 194 and 195: CONTESTATORY URBAN AGENCY 179 rhyth
Page 196 and 197: CONTESTATORY URBAN AGENCY 181 world
Page 198 and 199: CONTESTATORY URBAN AGENCY 183 venue
Page 200 and 201: CONTESTATORY URBAN AGENCY 185 Summa
Page 202 and 203: CONTESTATORY URBAN AGENCY 187 to ig
Page 206 and 207: CONCLUSION 191 from what Muriel Ruk
Page 208 and 209: CONCLUSION 193 to evidentiary justi
Page 210 and 211: CONCLUSION 195 The debate about the
Page 212 and 213: CONCLUSION 197 For example, I write
Page 214 and 215: CONCLUSION 199 a citizen-poet becau
Page 216 and 217: Notes Introduction: Political Poetr
Page 218 and 219: For background on testimonio, see B
Page 220 and 221: 16. See Ben Lee’s “ ‘Howl’
Page 222 and 223: NOTES 207 an epigraph indicate that
Page 224 and 225: NOTES 209 7. See Anne Shea’s “
Page 226 and 227: enthusiastic for, and knowledgeable
Page 228 and 229: References Primary Sources: Printed
Page 230 and 231: Villatoro, Marcos McPeek. On Tuesda
Page 232 and 233: REFERENCES 217 Folsom, Ed and Cary
Page 234 and 235: REFERENCES 219 McKenna, Teresa. Mig
Page 236 and 237: REFERENCES 221 Shetley, Vernon. Aft
Page 238 and 239: Listening: Poetry and the Performed
Page 240 and 241: REFERENCES 225 Hansen, Miriam. Fore
Page 242 and 243: abstraction, 78-80, 87, 92-3, 101-2
Page 244 and 245: Coetzee, J.M., 198-9 Colás, Santia
Page 246 and 247: institutionalization of hip-hop, 2-
Page 248 and 249: esponsibility and poetry, 28-9, 60-
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