american political poetry in the 21st century - STIBA Malang
american political poetry in the 21st century - STIBA Malang
american political poetry in the 21st century - STIBA Malang
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eceived less attention from <strong>the</strong>orists due to a widely held assumption<br />
that it depends on mimesis and <strong>the</strong> idea that language always conveys<br />
<strong>the</strong> unmediated presence of <strong>the</strong> speaker, essentialized referents, and a<br />
passive representation of <strong>the</strong> natural world (xiv). Never<strong>the</strong>less, for<br />
<strong>political</strong> poems, concrete referentiality and <strong>the</strong> tangible world outside<br />
<strong>the</strong> poem dilate attention on <strong>the</strong> “occasion” of poems, whe<strong>the</strong>r <strong>the</strong><br />
occasion is terrorist attacks <strong>in</strong> <strong>the</strong> United States or <strong>the</strong> abuses of a<br />
Nicaraguan dictator. Do events create <strong>the</strong> need for poems or do poets<br />
recreate events, or a comb<strong>in</strong>ation of <strong>the</strong> two? The answer must be an<br />
affirmative to both poles. For example, Carolyn Forché’s poems of<br />
El Salvador seem to substantiate <strong>the</strong> first whereas those of Charles<br />
Simic’s WWII Yugoslavia seem to affirm <strong>the</strong> later. In hip-hop, The<br />
Perceptionists’s “Memorial Day” (Black Dialogue 2005), which<br />
berates President Bush for go<strong>in</strong>g to war <strong>in</strong> Iraq, demands an explanation<br />
for <strong>the</strong> “miss<strong>in</strong>g” weapons of mass destruction. In this case, <strong>the</strong><br />
event itself spurred <strong>the</strong> creative response.<br />
Political Poetry and Indirection<br />
INTRODUCTION 9<br />
There has been much debate about <strong>the</strong> public functions of <strong>poetry</strong>, a<br />
debate that converges with ano<strong>the</strong>r important <strong>the</strong>oretical concern <strong>in</strong><br />
<strong>the</strong> discussion of <strong>political</strong> <strong>poetry</strong>—<strong>the</strong> <strong>in</strong>terstices between direction<br />
and <strong>in</strong>direction, or <strong>the</strong> supposed b<strong>in</strong>ary opposition between direct<br />
public speech and lyric <strong>poetry</strong>. 7 The latter usually works through<br />
figurative language, <strong>in</strong>direction, and obliquity, often display<strong>in</strong>g clarity<br />
and referentiality only <strong>in</strong>termittently. In a strike aga<strong>in</strong>st <strong>poetry</strong> written<br />
specifically to move o<strong>the</strong>rs to a certa<strong>in</strong> action or set of actions, Hirsch<br />
claims that “voice <strong>in</strong> written <strong>poetry</strong> is always metaphorical, never<br />
literal” (How to 103), whereas Barbara Herrnste<strong>in</strong>-Smith br<strong>in</strong>gs up<br />
ano<strong>the</strong>r problem for some <strong>political</strong> <strong>poetry</strong> when she writes that lyric<br />
<strong>poetry</strong> must affect its audience even as it must pretend that it has no<br />
audience to affect (141). Jenny Goodman, on <strong>the</strong> o<strong>the</strong>r hand,<br />
disrupts any private/public divide when she foregrounds her essay on<br />
Joy Harjo with a reference to <strong>the</strong> false divid<strong>in</strong>g l<strong>in</strong>e between poetic<br />
and public discourses. Poetry, she claims, l<strong>in</strong>ks to Aristotle’s understand<strong>in</strong>g<br />
of “language as a process <strong>in</strong> which a speaker uses language <strong>in</strong><br />
an attempt to move people toward action <strong>in</strong> public sett<strong>in</strong>gs,” even if<br />
for Aristotle art is cathartic and a way to prevent regular citizens from<br />
engag<strong>in</strong>g <strong>in</strong> public action (37).<br />
Goodman also refers to Kenneth Burke’s def<strong>in</strong>ition of rhetoric and<br />
its <strong>in</strong>clusion of literary forms. Accord<strong>in</strong>g to Burke, <strong>poetry</strong> as rhetoric<br />
is “<strong>the</strong> use of words by human agents to form attitudes or to <strong>in</strong>duce