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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52 AMERICAN POLITICAL POETRY<br />
experience and <strong>the</strong> ways that events shape lives. The speaker’s creative<br />
agency is after all an impassioned response to <strong>the</strong> very conditions of a<br />
collective experience of poverty.<br />
The preced<strong>in</strong>g examples of experiential agency suggest that <strong>the</strong>re are<br />
complex social frameworks for agency. Poets who write us<strong>in</strong>g experience<br />
elucidate <strong>the</strong>se complex conditions <strong>in</strong> part by us<strong>in</strong>g figures of voice<br />
that place poems <strong>in</strong> social space. Experience, for <strong>the</strong>se poets, is a <strong>political</strong><br />
force and a useful tool for writ<strong>in</strong>g <strong>poetry</strong>. Fur<strong>the</strong>r, <strong>the</strong> conceptions<br />
of agency <strong>in</strong> <strong>the</strong>se poems are evolv<strong>in</strong>g, shift<strong>in</strong>g, and constantly <strong>in</strong> play,<br />
which make any poem’s conception of agency difficult to capture.<br />
Pierre Bourdieu’s practice <strong>the</strong>ory shows that <strong>the</strong> reproduction of social<br />
practices, both positive and negative, occurs through agents ra<strong>the</strong>r than<br />
through laws, <strong>in</strong>stitutions, structures, or pr<strong>in</strong>ciples; as such, because<br />
agents can be unpredictable and precocious and because <strong>the</strong>ir experiences<br />
can be confus<strong>in</strong>g, this broad framework is always <strong>in</strong> motion.<br />
F<strong>in</strong>ally, like poems of authoritative agency, which often directly<br />
confront readers, poems of experiential agency do not recount a limited<br />
range of American experiences. Ra<strong>the</strong>r, <strong>the</strong>y are exemplars of a<br />
strategy unconf<strong>in</strong>ed to a type of experience or to a certa<strong>in</strong> set of <strong>political</strong><br />
and social engagements. I could have chosen Mark Doty’s “Homo<br />
Will Not Inherit” (Atlantis 1995), which abstracts somewhat <strong>the</strong><br />
poetic agency derived from experience, or one of numerous Philip<br />
Lev<strong>in</strong>e poems <strong>in</strong> lieu of “Then Comes A Day,” as Lev<strong>in</strong>e often employs<br />
similar strategies and time frames <strong>in</strong> his speakers’ experiences. Also,<br />
many recent and visible poems, such as Eliza Griswold’s “Buy<strong>in</strong>g<br />
Rations <strong>in</strong> Kabul” (The New Yorker June 27, 2005) and Billy Coll<strong>in</strong>s’s<br />
“Statues <strong>in</strong> <strong>the</strong> Park” (The New Yorker July 25, 2005) employ voices<br />
with poetic agency similar to those of experiential agency. 10 These two<br />
poems rightly imply that <strong>political</strong> poems that use experience and a<br />
recognizable first-person speaker are <strong>the</strong> most prom<strong>in</strong>ent of <strong>political</strong><br />
poems <strong>in</strong> <strong>the</strong> literary establishment and appear with some frequency <strong>in</strong><br />
magaz<strong>in</strong>es such as The New Yorker and <strong>in</strong> journals such as The Virg<strong>in</strong>ia<br />
Quarterly Review. Experience, however, also has a prom<strong>in</strong>ent place <strong>in</strong><br />
poems of migratory agency and <strong>in</strong> much hip-hop, but as secondary<br />
factors. Many poems <strong>in</strong> <strong>the</strong> next section are similar to ones discussed<br />
thus far, but with important differences <strong>in</strong> tone, attitude, and <strong>the</strong> ways<br />
that speaker-poets represent <strong>the</strong>ir relationships to <strong>the</strong>ir communities.<br />
Authoritative Agency<br />
Political poems of authoritative agency are usually confrontational and<br />
often didactic; <strong>the</strong>y are <strong>in</strong>sistent, demand<strong>in</strong>g, and unrelent<strong>in</strong>g.