american political poetry in the 21st century - STIBA Malang

EMBODIED AGENCY 75
the task of poetry is to “make images of a livable common life” and
“to make images of justice,” “ideal images,” “outraged images” or, he
continues haltingly, to “just do witness.” Hass implies that the poet
has a choice—much like Wallace Stevens said is the choice between
resistance and evasion—between discomfort and silence. Hass says,
“It’s [witness] part of the job of being a poet, but you’ll always feel a
little bit like a voyeur and a tourist writing those poems. And a little
uneasy reading them. But the choice is that or silence, and so you do
it.” For Hass, who perhaps takes on a more subtle embattled stance,
poems that engage sociopolitical issues and that deal with injustice
will make both poet and reader “uneasy.” There is the rub: we are
uncomfortable when we read or write about disturbing injustices. As
long as the poet understands that and inscribes it in her poem, it will
be difficult to suggest that the poet is assuming an embattled, heroic
stance. However, as I hope chapter 2 shows, poetry does not need the
self for it to be political. The poems I write about in chapter 2 are not
poems of witness and often not of outrage, but they are definitely
not the province of silence or evasion.