american political poetry in the 21st century - STIBA Malang

INTRODUCTION 15
“impotent” to engage the public sphere (39). Hirsch writes that
poetry is primarily a communication between strangers and a private
exchange between writer and reader (How to 16), and Walter
Kalaidjian points out that contemporary poetry has reproduced rather
than contested formalism’s “swerve from social change” as he claims
that the poetics of private lyricism are the “symbolic form par excellence
of the more recent American impulse to contain and repress the
social text of contemporary history” (Languages 4). Vernon Shetley,
for his part, suggests that the modernist legacy of “difficult” poetry
has been inherited by post-WWII poets and audiences (14). Potential
audiences may avoid poetry because they see it as difficult and
inaccessible, a perception that has opened a gap between poets and
audiences, a gap that hip-hop artists have seized upon. It is not outrageous
to claim that teenagers and college students may have read
poetry in the 1960s, but now listen to hip-hop. Even so, Shetley
argues that poetry should become more difficult. Further, the
“romantic persistence” of American poetry, as described by Pinsky in
The Situation of Poetry, can prevent poetry’s engagement with social
and political spheres if it is viewed as insular and primarily concerned
with internal mind states rather than public issues.
Similarly, poet and current NEA chair Dana Gioia describes “the
energy of American poetry” as focused inward toward a self-contained
community of relatively homogenous readers, which leads to (and is a
product of ) a lack of a broader public role for poets (2), something
we see changing with a broader public activist role for many hip-hop
artists. Further, Goodman points out, then elides, the fact that Joy
Harjo and other engaged poets address their poetry to two
audiences—the broad literary community and those readers who
share the poet’s political perspectives. Problematically, she discusses
how Harjo’s poems work to transform readers’ attitudes, without
acknowledging the circularity of her argument (41–42). This situation
seems pertinent for many political poems—who reads them but those
who already agree with the political positions and sensibilities therein?
How is this form of address a political strategy, unless a political poem
is intended simply to mobilize people and to crystallize or articulate
their views?
Hip-hop music, on the other hand, has a greater potential to mold
latent opinions, generate interests, and spur burgeoning educations.
Partly because teenagers listen to hip-hop music at impressionable
ages, hip-hop lyrics can lead them in a variety of directions. Hip-hop,
unlike much political poetry, often does not merely “preach to the
choir,” a problem that engaged artists often bemoan about their work