american political poetry in the 21st century - STIBA Malang

INTRODUCTION 29
Alegría once commented that she would refuse to shake the hand of
any Nicaraguan writer who did not address the revolution and U.S.
intervention in the 1980s (Jaffe 3).
Consequently, the bilingual and transcultural Latino/a poems
I discuss in chapter 3 are emblematic of the heightened possibilities
for poetry as public discourse and as a way to create community, to
call disparate languages and experiences into communion—a type of
accord through discord—even though many of these poems are
laments for the difficulties of living in the United States. English alone
is insufficient for the kinds of political and social work these poems
attempt. Rather than serve as a supplement to English, Spanish is a
crucial partner in remaking “America,” where most people speak
Spanish, not English. Moreover, in poems such as Jimmy Santiago
Baca’s “Mi Tío Baca el Poeta de Socorro,” poetry itself has a palpable
agency tied directly to being Chicano, to speaking Spanish—the
speaker’s uncle’s “poems roused la gente / to demand their land
rights back.” Poems of migratory agency, therefore, traverse
geographical and linguistic boundaries and make apparent the political
character of language, migration/immigration, and community.
In chapter 4, I argue that hip-hop, especially when performed live
at small clubs, has the most political power of any contemporary
poetry because it can activate a powerful collective agency and a
participatory political experience. Some readers only familiar with the
hip-hop culture they see and hear on MTV and BET and in
McDonalds commercials may be tempted to dismiss this claim offhand.
My claim, indeed, requires qualification. Not all hip-hop is
politically progressive or resistant to corporate, governmental, and
societal structures of oppression, poverty, violence, racism, and injustice.
Much commercial hip-hop, especially the multi-platinum pop
variety, could be said to embody an individualistic, hypermaterialistic,
and consumptive agency. It no longer scares politicians, pundits, or
parents because it can seem ludicrous on its surface and because it
implicitly supports many dominant American values concerning consumption
and the pursuit of individual wealth. However, hip-hop
culture is richer, more varied, and much more complex than mainstream
radio and cable television suggest. Many hip-hop artists make
incisive, creative, and sociopolitically conscious music; these artists,
I would argue, have their fingers on the pulse of the nation’s multicultural
urban spaces more so than poets who work in print. Many of
these artists’ lyrics and live performances display a powerful type of
community-based agency, what I call a contestatory urban agency. 15
These artists, moreover, challenge not only the injustices of the larger