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Why Has This War Brought Out the Poets?
02/10/2003

To lose beauty in terror, terror in inquisition.
I have lost my passion: why should I need to keep it
Since what is kept must be adulterated?
— T.S. Eliot, "Gerontion"

I have never seen so much written about poetry, outside of its enclaves, in my entire life! With the war on terrorism, particularly its current Iraq stage, poetry and poets have found the will to make their voices heard. Unfortunately, that hasn't recently been a good thing. Immediately after September 11, the voices were of mourning and loss and resolve — and they were myriad. A Google search for "poetry 'September 11'" yields 97,000 Web sites. Replace the event with other notable phrases or names from recent history, and the number falls dramatically. My contribution to the wave of verse was "Safe at Home, September 11, 2001" (read, listen).

Other, less palatable voices have crept in as time has progressed, and unfortunately, these have been the ones to make the news. First, there was the drivel from New Jersey Laureate Amiri Baraka, who blamed the Jews for September 11. Baraka may have had a last word, of sorts, because the world of poetry has shifted toward peaceniking about Iraq. British Laureate Andrew Motion seems to have kicked it off with his "Causa Belli," which inspired Tim Blair to hold a response/parody contest. Here's my entry:

The Poet Laureate's Plea
by Justin Katz

I'm a busy man, with barely breath to rhyme;
my stipend goes less far than in Lord Alfred's time.
So, whatever your opinions on the issues lying 'round,
just speak them to yourself and consider me profound.

Since then, a planned literary guerrilla attack led Laura Bush to postpone a symposium. That action, in turn, inspired the creation of Poets Against the War, a Web site on which one can find such charming material as this by Williams College professor Cassandra Cleghorn:

Talking to my mother about the prospect of war
makes me want to go to war. Talking to my mother
about the space shuttle makes me want the astronauts
deaths
to have been painful, sustained, makes me want pieces
of their charred bodies to have rained down on Texas
in recognizable bits, more than ash, more than the airy
transmogrification their end surely was.

But the rim of sunlight around this dark cloud may lie in the contrarian nature of many poets. Rhode Island poet Henry Gould lists as the second of his five reasons for considering arguing for the war:

Because all the poets seem to be marching lockstep, of one mind. I have a reflexive need to differ (learned in the Poetry Wars). I question some of the self-righteousness of those who are always ready to impugn the motives of the ones they disagree with (ie. perhaps it's not just "oil profiteering by Bush & Co.").

What I find fascinating — another inadvertent treasure of the blog format — is the obvious progression of Gould's thinking. For example, the "perhaps it's not just" oil from this 2/10 entry relates to a sentence in a 2/7 entry in which "control of the oil & the region" is parenthetically mentioned as the self-evident "underlying motives of the US." In other words, over the course of the weekend, the concept of "perhaps" made its way into this line of thinking. I don't want to blow the writings of a few established poets out of proportion, but I sense a nation-saving cultural shift in process. Its effect on poetry might be interesting to watch in a canary-in-the-mine sort of way. In the meantime, the United States goes on, ear open to all:

A Patriot's Rejoinder
by Justin Katz

Oh America, indulgent friend,
whom I've so late come to prize —
in awe of your composure
'spite too simple truths that yearn for lies.

So tolerant of those who buck,
with their tame teeth bared in cliché,
bloviating about censorship
then are free to prance away,
with glee that their too easy snorts
still leave them free to prance away.

(Incidentally, my Just Thinking column this week is a parable sonnet that fits into the topic of poetry and the war on Iraq.)

ADDENDUM:
I blogged this above, but it seemed appropriate to mention, here, the creation of Poets for the War, among whom I am one.

Posted by Justin Katz @ 07:47 PM EST

2 comments

How about Oliver Wendell Holmes wonderful "Old Ironsides" - the opening lines of which are:

Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!
Long has it waved on high,
And many an eye has danced to see
That banner in the sky;
Beneath it rang the battle shout,
And burst the cannon's roar

Mitch @ 02/12/2003 02:48 PM EST

It seems some modern poets have no appreciation for, say, Kipling, and no real respect for the military or any concept of a just or necessary war.

Self-righteousness has replaced careful thought.

Dean Esmay @ 02/12/2003 05:47 PM EST