5 ms·
If your poetry is political, you're doing it wrong
by threevox 6y ago
If your poetry is political, you're doing it wrong
- richardwhiuk 6y agoLots of the best (by a number of standards) poetry ever written is deeply political.
- DoreenMichele 6y agoLots of art of all sorts is deeply political.
- adolph 6y agored-rag and pink-flag blackshirt and brown strut-mince and stink-rag have all come to town
- monoideism 6y agoIronically, this poem underline's cumming's general contempt for politics. Also, cummings would struggle to be published in today's literary world, since he leaned to the right and was an ardent anti-communist (which began after visiting the Soviet Union in the early 30s).
- slibhb 6y agoLots of art is political. But what makes art good has nothing to do with its politics.
- refenestrator 6y agoIt has to do with truth. Great art and comedy both can illuminate truth in a way that prose and rhetoric can't touch, because they can approach it obliquely and not get hung up on the details. This get missed by the overly ideological, and you can tell because they produce bad art and no comedy.
- antihero 6y agoAbsolutely untrue. Art is something that can make you think and elicit emotion.
- threevox 6y agoExactly. Years later, the political parts seem parochial and irrelevant, whereas the artistic parts remain relevant.
- thaumasiotes 6y ago> If your poetry is political, you're doing it wrong Seriously? All you citizens of Boston, don't you think it's a scandal how the people have to pay and pay Fight the fare increase, vote for George O'Brien and get Charlie off the M.T.A.!
- threevox 6y agoPoetry with a totally blatant political call to action in it isn't poetry, it's propaganda
- arp242 6y agoI was unaware there is One True Way™ to do poetry. It's like any other art: sometimes it's just a aesthetically pleasing series of words (or musical notes, or colours, or shapes) with no real deeper meaning, or just because it's funny. And other times it's something aesthetically pleasing intended to provoke thought about some aspect of life such as love, the nature of humanity, or something else – some of these might be deemed "political". Different people like different sort of art, and that's okay. Related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0la5DBtOVNI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0la5DBtOVNI
- threevox 6y agoArt generally, and poetry specifically, ideally elicits emotion based on its engagement with universal human experiences. If I'm reading a poem from 200 years ago, I don't give a fuck who the poet supported politically; I give a fuck that their poetry is artistically durable enough to make me want to keep reading 200 years later.
- skissane 6y agoTHE HEART of the rulers is sick, and the high-priest covers his head: For this is the song of the quick that is heard in the ears of the dead. The poor and the halt and the blind are keen and mighty and fleet: Like the noise of the blowing of wind is the sound of the noise of their feet. The wind has the sound of a laugh in the clamour of days and of deeds: The priests are scattered like chaff, and the rulers broken like reeds. Algernon Charles Swinburne, A Song in Time of Revolution. 1860
- threevox 6y ago"Roses are red Violets are blue Political poetry is dumb TS Eliot disliked Swinburne and so should you" me, 2021
- skissane 6y agoThat fragment I quoted is much better poetry than yours. Not all of Swinburne's poetry is so explicitly political as that poem. And some of his poems are better than others. But I don't see any correlation between how good (in my opinion) some of poem of his is and how explicitly political it is. I dislike TS Eliot. I'd much rather read Swinburne than TS Eliot.