It’s not the first (truth), and it’s not the second (human beings), but poetry has become one of the casualties of war.
Many a foolhardy critic has penned “poetry is dead,” only to have it rise again from its coffin. I know this. I’m aware that this mission is sure suicide. But ever since reading the following poetic lines dealing with the war in Iraq, I’ve lost the will to live:
“Isn’t it their duty to their Country / more to become a poet / than a brainwashed murder robot?”
“Why don’t you tell those bastards not to fight? For Pete’s sake, send an angel! Burn a bush!”
“I weep for justice.”
“Tell these eerie people that killing children is wrong, that the U.S. becomes everyday more and more frightful.”
Amateurs did not write these verses, nor preschoolers; they belong to past and present poets laureate in work collected by the organization Poets Against the War.
The PAW movement began in late January when Sam Hamill, longtime poet and pacifist, received an invitation from Laura Bush to attend a poetry symposium at the White House. Hamill declined in protest and asked his friends to write poems against war and the administration, which he could then send to the First Lady.
Within a week, over 1,500 poets responded, and by the beginning of March, Hamill had collected and posted over 13,000 anti-war poems on his Web site www.poetsagainstthewar.org. PAW has since created an anthology of the best anti-war poems from the site and recently published a companion book entitled “Raising Our Voices” that exclusively features Oregonian anti-war poets.
Let me be clear: My criticism is not about their politics; I too am against the war in Iraq and the policy of preemption. My criticism, put plainly, is: Their poetry sucks.
Over 99 percent of these poems are little more than glorified protest signs. Some use flowery language and elitist metaphor to say nothing more than “war bad,” while others dispense with the pretense and go straight to partisan name-calling.
W.S. Merwin calls Bush “a fraud,” and Lawrence Ferlinghetti calls his administration “the terrorists in Washington.” I found quite a few “bastards,” a peppering of “monsters,” a “tin-pot tyrant,” “usurper” and the old favorite of the left, “commander-in-thief.” Using gross hyperbole and moronic simplicity, these poems declare that Bush “wants blood,” has a “relentless appetite for war” and desires war to “appease his fury.” One poem compared him to Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot.
These words don’t sound like they came from the mouths of poets. These sound like words I would say. That’s exactly the kind of ranting tripe that us dime-a-dozen opinion columnists use to satisfy our quotas. Shouldn’t we expect more from poets? I know I do.
If not, then Michael Moore, Molly Ivans and Jim Hightower should be the greatest poets of the modern era. The person who came up with the phrase “Resident Bush” should win a Pulitzer.
Can good poetry be political? Absolutely! But it must dig deeper than “war bad,” “racism bad” and/or “sexism bad.” I agree that all art is political. But the flipside is that only bad art is only political.
As I was wandering aimlessly through the 14,000 anti-war poems, banging my head against the desk with each trite verse, I ran across this poem by Katha Pollit:
“What good are more poems against war / the real subject of which / so often seems to be the poet’s superior / moral sensitivities?” Is it great? Not really. But at least she understands that the nature of a poem is not to be a political statement but rather to be a statement on the political.
Most of the poets in the PAW anthology do not seem to appreciate the distinction. They speak as if they were Southerners proclaiming that God is an American. For example, the great Stanley Kunitz said in an interview, “(War is) contrary to the humanitarian position that is at the center of the poetic impulse.” Poet Li-Young Lee seconds his sentiment: “The way I understand poetry, all poems are anti-war poems.”
This New Age-y nonsense is dangerous. Soon we will only have writing about what should be (peace) rather than insights into what is and has been (war). Soon everyone will speak of poetry as David Kirby does: “The value of poetry is it can say what is true in a really quick, concise way.”
The art of quick truth and easy answers. If this is the future, then I feel confident to prophesize poetry’s looming demise.
The irony in all this is that President Bush is somewhat of a poet in his own right. Check out this love poem he wrote for his wife while she was traveling through Europe not so long ago:
“Roses are red / violets are blue / oh my lump in the bed / I miss you. / The distance, my dear / has been such a barrier / next time you want an adventure / just land on a carrier.”
Not everyone was impressed with the President’s poem and his ability to rhyme. Canada’s poet laureate George Bowering, for one, offered a bit of constructive criticism: “He’s not anywhere near a poet. It is just absolutely horrible.”
I’ve already quoted one of Bowering’s poems, the one about how killing children is wrong. What wordsmith worth his or her salt would describe child-killers as “eerie people?” Invest in a thesaurus you Canadian bastard, you monster, you fraud!
I wish these poets had attended Laura Bush’s poetry symposium, so that they could reacquaint themselves with the true voice of a poet.
“Did we think victory great? / So it is — but now it seems to me, when it cannot be help’d, that defeat is great / And that death and dismay are great.”
Whitman displays more wisdom in those few lines than can be found in all 14,000 anti-war poems. That’s because the PAW poets are propagandists, not artists. And though I appreciate their message, I deplore their exploitation of poetry to serve a narrow political agenda. They think they are empowering art, but in reality they belittle it: Poets Against the War is raging an all-out war against poetry.
And all I have to say is: “Bring ’em on!”