Dear Editors:
The critic Eleanor Wilner welcomes
a "change in the reception of poetry
concerned with current history,
"the old pejorative" and
"negatively loaded" term
"political poetry"
now replaced
by the honorific
"poetry
of engagement."
The March 10 Tucson
Weekly featured the "poetry of resistance."
At the risk of alienating my last two friends among Tucson's poetry community, I'd like to consider several of the poems of "resistance" featured in the Weekly.
No matter what you call it,
"political poetry" presents inherent pitfalls:
among them, predictability and
sloganeering (ranging from formulaic
ethnic spiritualism to
self-dramatizing announcements
of solidarity).
Even the most accomplished poets
stumble when waxing political.
For example, Francisco X. Alarcon writes,
from afar
we can hear
your heartbeats
they are
the drums
of the earth.
Clichés like
"heartbeats"
as "drums/of the earth" and later in the poem,
"your faces/are radiant/as the Sun," are common to much of the
earnest poetry that presumes to
bears witness and
provokes social change.
Odilia Galvan Rodriquez, in "Border Inquest Blues," asks
which of my
careful word choices
make a difference
to scorched tongues
that can no longer
. . . .
cry out for help
in a desolate desert
The answer is none
Poetry does not provoke social change. It may cheer up those who desire social justice. It may "bear witness," but those who commit injustices aren't swayed by "careful word choices." Sloganeering is given free rein in these last lines:
in an illegal world
full of legalized criminals
who form tempests
to tease out fear, and who
year after year
think up new ways to hate
at the same time take
even a person's last breath
if it benefits their profits
Although some critics
welcome a renewed popularity of
what they call "poetry of resistance" or "poetry of engagement,"
let's not forget that
"by any other name, most political poetry
smells the same."
—Odilia Galván Rodríguez
