The Chronicle: Colloquy Live Transcript

Poets and Politics: A Conversation With Jay Parini

Thursday, March 13, at noon, U.S. Eastern time

Should poets speak out about a possible war with Iraq? What is the appropriate role for poets in weighing in on political issues?

In an essay in the new issue of The Chronicle, Jay Parini argues that poets, trained to listen to and watch their worlds, have a right to speak out about political issues generally, and the possible war with Iraq in particular. Supporters of a war have criticized poets who had planned to use a White House event, since called off, to speak against military action. But Mr. Parini writes that poetry is an appropriate form for political debate. Poetry, he writes, "discovers and contemplates injustice." He adds that poetry "asks readers to imagine what has happened, and -- perhaps, more important -- to imagine what might follow." Mr. Parini concludes by stating that poets who do not speak out "will be scorned by historians, who will quite sensibly ask: 'Why did you go along with this?'"

» A Time for Poets to Raise Their Voices (3/14/2003)

Jay Parini is a poet, novelist, biographer, and professor of English at Middlebury College. He is the editor of The Columbia Anthology of American Poetry (Columbia University Press). Among his books are Robert Frost: A Life (Henry Holt & Company), House of Days: Poems (Henry Holt), Some Necessary Angels: Essays on Literature and Politics (Columbia), and Benjamin's Crossing: A Novel (Henry Holt). Mr. Parini will respond to questions and comments about his essay on Thursday, March 13, at noon, U.S. Eastern time. Advance questions are encouraged and may be posted now.

A transcript of the chat follows.

Karen Winkler (Moderator):
Hello, and welcome to our live discussion with Jay Parini. I'm Karen Winkler, an editor with The Chronicle Review. Jay, thank you for participating today to talk about politics and poetry.

Jay Parini:
I'm glad there are people interested in this subject, and I'm going to try to be as open and honest and careful about my responses as I can be. I understand that I don't have the last word on this, and I'm not even sure I have, or should have, the first word. Nevertheless, here I am.

Question from Karen Winkler:
Let me start with a question about the context of this discussion. You say you got thinking about the relation between politics and poetry after the White House canceled a poetry conference for fear the discussion would become too political. Can you tell us a little about the various positions people staked out in this controversy? Poets who didn't want to participate in the conference? Those who did? The White House?

Jay Parini:
I don't know exactly who was invited, who refused to attend, and who accepted. But I do have a little bit of an idea about this because I've run into a number of the poets involved. Two poets from Vermont, for example, were involved: me and Galway Kinnell. Kinnell rejected the idea of attending, suggesting that he thought any physical presence by himself would signal support for the Bush war policies. I thought I would go, making my presence against the war felt by speaking to Mrs. Bush or anyone who cared to listen about my views. Sam Hamill, a poet and an editor at Copper Canyon Press, refused to attend and circulated the email that led some ten thousand people to send him anti-war poems. His emails were what derailed the meeting itself. Laura Bush and her people, so to speak, got wind of the trouble that was coming their way from poets and canceled the event ... or "postponed" it.

Question from Karen Winkler:
Has the relation between poetry and politics been controversial in the past?

Jay Parini:
Yes, there has been a long-standing controversy, encapsulated by W.H. Auden in his elegy for Yeats, where he writes that "poetry makes nothing happen." That line is, I think, meant to seem ambiguous. There are books and books on this subject. The idea that poets have the right to speak out has long been irritating to people on the wrong side of the issue, or the right side, depending on the issue and your viewpoint! Plato wanted to kick poets out of the ideal Republic, of course, because they were prone to making trouble by making up stories. Note that Lysistrata has been widely performed this past month around the world as an anti-war protest.

Question from John Palattella, writer:
I disagree a bit with the way that the question has been framed. I think the crucial issue is not whether poets should speak out; after all, poets are citizens who have as much right as anyone to voice their opinion about political issues. The issue, rather, is what is gained when citizens who are also poets speak out as poets, and relatedly, whether poetry is an adequate or inadequate forum for raising specific political issues. Put differently, the question is not simply, "Can poets make politics into a suitable subject for poems?," but "Might poetry that isn�t explicitly political still be part of a political situation?"

Jay Parini:
I suppose there are many instances of poems not very political that nevertheless have some weight in the discourse we call "politics." I do happen to think that poems are a decent forum for speaking out on issues of political interest .... perhaps better than TV, for example, where the ability to present a nuanced view is slight, in large part because the language of journalism is so cliched and often plain old stupid. I think something is gained when poets speak out, because we still think of the poet in terms of Vates, or prophet or priest -- and old tradition. One might not subscribe to this tradition, but nevertheless there is something of weight in the words of a poet that might not be there in the words of someone coming from another realm of endeavor. Not that poets have any special insight into politics. It's just that they are often, it has struck me, people acutely sensitive to language and injustice, and so they try to frame things in ways that reflect these sensitivities.

Question from John Palatella, writer:
Might poets best address political issues by writing something other than poetry?

Jay Parini:
Yes. For example, I have written this essay we're talking about. I like it when poets write opinion pieces, even whole books on political subjects. More of a tradition in Latin American and Europe than here in the United States, where the problem is that poets have become too specialized, writing only poetry or critical essays on poetry, rarely venturing too far afield. It's the specialization problem, once again ... a residue of the industrial revolution, perhaps?

Question from Stephen Good, Texas Tech:
Poets are the prophets of the secular world. They have an obligation to speak out -- not to weigh in on one side or another, but to shock everyone out of the mental ruts people fall into as war looms closer. The only real question is should they speak out by making a political statement or by writing (or reciting) a poem?

Jay Parini:
Why not by doing both?

Question from Michael Stepniak, Harvard:
There is fairly broad agreement on the basic relationship between a poem�s quality and the sophistication and originality of its metaphors. But the promotion and focus of this discussion (and similar discussions) suggests that there is considerably less agreement on the relationship between a poem�s quality and the extent to which its message can be described as positively concerned with social amelioration or justice. What is your take on that relationship? Do you believe that poetry is inherently more capable of sustaining the intensification of justice rather than prejudice? Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

Jay Parini:
I do actually think that poetry -- in its wild openness of heart -- promotes justice, feelings of justice. I think it's hard to get away with poems that promote anything resembling the opposite. Poems of hate are rare, and the hatred would stick out like a sore thumb. I can hardly think of a situation where a poem wasn't, in my view, enhanced by being "in favor" of the easing of poverty, the blunting of racial prejudice. This doesn't, of course, mean that having a positive social message makes a poem any good. That will always depend, as you say, on the quality and sophistication of the language, its metaphoric weight and originality, and so forth....

Question from Sid [Librarian for a law firm].:
To imply that there is something special about the insight of a poet because of their skill with language is offensive and silly. Being careful with words does not, in itself, mean a greater knowledge of the world or aspects of that world.

Jay Parini:
I would argue that "being careful with words" is a political act. Bush has not been careful, and he has single-handedly created the crisis with North Korea -- by referring to an "axis of evil." His language is repeatedly and offensively ill-considered, and it increases our vulnerability as a nation. Poets may or may not have special insights of one kind or another, but if they are decent poets they use language with a care that reflects a sober attentiveness to the world.

Question from Daniel R. Collins, Compassionately Stoneground Books (Independent Press):
Given the simultaneous attacks on foreign countries, the civil liberties of Americans, arts and humanities funding nationwide, and the rights of free speech and expression among those opposing the current administration's foreign and domestic policies, the true question becomes: How can bards who do not address "politics" (after all, what isn't political?) consider themselves a poet at all?

Jay Parini:
I'm in sympathy with his feelings, I just think we have to define what is political very, very broadly. Even if someone is writing about a topic that doesn't at first glance seem "political," it might be that. This will be true especially if the poet's subject is self-consciously pastoral, which is a tradition of avoidance. So, therefore, the poet might be writing about the war with the crisis in free speech or writing about American power in a kind of negative space.

Question from Karen Livingston, Pensacola Junior College:
Does it not also follow that a poet may feel so strongly for this nation and its founders and principles that one would write a poem indicating that this war is inevitable and necessary?

Jay Parini:
I think that's perfectly possible -- if a poet believes that. Just because poets write with a political edge, doesn't mean their politics necessarily follow along any particular party line.

Karen Winkler (Moderator):
Here's a brief follow-up.

Question from Pat, NE liberal arts college:
There seems to be an unspoken presumption that if poets speak on this matter, they will speak "against" the war. If poets who support the action speak out, will they be accorded the same venues and respect? Is there room for healthy disagreement even among poets? How can we make this so?

Jay Parini:
Well, there are writers who have spoken up strongly in favor of this war, including one of the most prominent novelists in the world today -- Salman Rushdie. Nevertheless, it does just seem obvious that most creative artists of one kind or another are against this particular war, which they regard as either foolhardy -- and therefore dangerous -- or unjust. I wish that all poets and writers who are against the war would be civil enough to listen to the other side and prepare a space for them.

Question from Evie Shockley, Wake Forest U:
In your essay, you noted that some people make a distinction between "eternal issues" and "temporal ones." This dichotomy seems to be related to the much-discussed divides between "political" poetry and "personal" poetry, or "public" versus "private" verse. Looking at the issue of poems about (the threat of) war, we can see how blurry the lines between these categories are: Are loss, pain, fear, suffering, courage, sacrifice, and death "eternal" subjects or "temporal" ones? Are one's beliefs about the nature of human interaction and interdependence "personal" or "political"? Is one's grief about the potential destruction and loss of lives "private" or "public"? My question for you, Mr. Parini, is really whether our creation or acceptance of those kinds of divisions and categories of poetry is a problem and, if so, how can we work to stop perpetuating these dichotomies?

Jay Parini:
That's a big question with many different angles. I still think there may be some use in keeping a distinction between poems that address "eternal" issues -- things like love, one's sense of the creation, whatever -- and poetry that in some way directly engages a political topic. Your question rightly suggests (I said as much in my essay) that the vast majority of poems will have nothing overtly political about them. I also suggest that good poems on political subjects will probably have a personal angle. Poetry is always, in a real sense, personal -- in that it issues from a distinct voice and viewpoint. Nevertheless, I think it's useful still to mark off some poems as having explicit or implicit political content. And so, I'm reluctant to collapse all categories in the way suggested by your question.

Question from Sam K. Parish, physician; Bowling Green, KY:
After the war whose poetry will you read, the protester's or the What would Whitman do? I believe he would dress the wounds and love the man who fought -- from the North or South, East or West.

What is the most enduring anti-war poem you have ever read?

Jay Parini:
LIke Whitman, I would want to dress the wounds of American and Iraqi soldiers and help to bury the body of the hundred thousand or so innocent Iraqi children and their parents and their grandparents who will have died in this war for reasons that seem very murky. I think there is plenty of room for poetry in the aftermath of this humanitarian disaster brought on by our government, as well as Saddam Hussein. My favorite anti-war poem is "I Sing of Olaf," by E.E. Cummings.

Karen Winkler (Moderator):
We're about half way through our time. Keep the questions coming.

Question from Paul Chaney:
Why should anyone really care what they think, given that there are more capable liberals already making a case? Poets, artists and actors already have to be accepted by their peers politically to achieve success in their respective fields. Very few are conservative and even fewer seemingly know anything about history.

Jay Parini:
I find your remark about poets knowing very little about history difficult to comprehend. It strikes me that most of the pundits on CNN and such shows are strikingly ignorant even of U.S. history -- for example, the history of U.S. engagement abroad. They seem to me like simple-minded cheerleaders for this administration. Most of the poets I have talked to -- and, I admit, like everyone else in the world, am subject to my own small circle of acquaintance -- seem to me to have read widely in world history, to have thought about political issues carefully, and to have cultivated a way of talking about these matters that does not insult intelligence. This question also raises the tremendously interesting issue of qualifications: who gets to speak and who gets to make decisions? I wonder why half a dozen oil company executives from Texas think they have the right to make decisions about life and death in a faraway land, going against norms of international law.

Question from Karen Winkler:
You wrote an earlier essay for The Chronicle Review in which you mentioned fears on campus of speaking out about the war in Afghanistan. As a poet, do you find it harder to address political issues at the opening of the 21st century than you once did? Is today different?

Jay Parini:
Actually, I find it rather easier now than before to address these issues. This may be purely personal. I'm older now, more sure of myself, and more than ever convinced that if we don't change course, this nation is going to isolate itself in the world and become even more vulnerable than it is now. I also believe that, given the advanced weaponry of today, we have opportunities to kill and maim that we didn't have even during the first Gulf War. I fear for nuclear proliferation, and believe our actions in Iraq will only guarantee the production of such weapons by small nations determined to protect themselves from 'regime change' by the United States. I don't think the option to remain silent really exists.

Question from Elfie Israel, Pembroke Pines Charter High School:
When you recently spoke at our school, many students felt that, although poets should certainly speak on political issues, your anti-Israeli stance engendered more hostility than understanding. Do you think the students correctly interpreted your remarks?

Jay Parini:
No, I don't. I am far from being anti-Israeli. I have many friends in Israel, and I have the utmost respect for their tradition and wish to preserve their right to exist happily and freely. What I was saying was that Israelis do not have the right to behave toward the Palestinians in ways that are cruel and unjust. We seem to forget that the U.S. has put billions of dollars behind the Israeli state without troubling much over the Palestinians claims to statehood -- despite what lip-service we may pay to Palestinian statehood. It is rather exhausting how quickly any criticism of Israeli tactics leads to a charge that one is somehow against Israel. I support Israel fully and certainly never meant to suggest othewise. But I am also profoundly interested in seeing peace between Israelis and Palestinians, being aware that only this will lead to peace in the world and a reduction in the threats of terrorism.

Question from Rachel Beck, The Daily Iowan:
As a graduate assistant teaching poetry in the fall of 2001, I felt the need to add a political poetry unit to talk about the way that poets respond to war. I discovered looking through the library that it's a lot easier for me to find good antiwar poems (Nazim Hikhmet, Wilfred Owen, Robert Lowell, Claudia Keelan, etc.) than to find good prowar poems. I presume that my admitted pacifist tendencies have some influence over my reading, but can you think of some poems that I've neglected other than the Iliad to even out the mix? Or is there something about the way poetic language works that makes it very difficult to write a good poem supporting institutionally sponsored violence?

Jay Parini:
Well, I think you answered your own question. War is always evil and always leads to further violence. There are few exceptions. You might argue that World War II was a successful war in that it did not lead to further violence. If we step back, we can see that the mindless violence of World War I created space where Nazism totalitarianism could rise -- space in which those things could rise. I don't think that anyone would argue that the years since World War II have been without violence. In fact, the opposite seems true. We are now caught up in a dreadful cycle of violence, and this will be perpetuated by our attack on Iraq. The main consequences of the war against Iraq will probably be an amazing increase in the number of Islamic youth who hate us and vow to get their revenge. It will also send a powerful signal to small countries around the world that they had better get nuclear weapons going, and fast, or they will be subjected to violent regime change. No good has ever come out of a war. Poets know this, and their poems generally reflect this truth.

Question from Imafedia Okhamafe, University of Nebraska:
That poets, like other human beings, can speak out (on any issue, including the [un]justifiability of war with Iraq) seems unquestionable constitutionally. But don't you think that such speaking out, if the poet is worth the name poet, should occur within the poet's poetry, not outside it? Don't you think that, if the poet is only able to speak outside poetry, the poet should do so not in the name of poet or poetry? Isn't invoking the non-poetic in the name of poetry morally suspect?

Jay Parini:
Poets can choose, like anyone else, to speak up within the boundries and conventions of their profession or outside of those boudries and conventions. Being a poet gives you no more right to speak out than any other profession. What it does, however, give you is the ability to speak out clearly and in ways that might potentially move an audience. Poetry falls into the classical category of rhetoric; it is simply one of many forms of rhetoric. George Bush employs a well known form of rhetoric -- political oratory. Poets might choose to speak within a poem or they might choose to use some of their hard-won skills and native talents to address political questions in prose. There should be no reason -- no logical reason -- for poets to confine their expression to poems.

Question from Karen Winkler:
To what extent are issues about the relation of poetry and politics discussed in creative-writing classes?

Jay Parini:
In my classes, it's a hot topic. Students want to know my views. I like to hear what they have to say about political issues, too. These issues are reflected in their work, and so there is a lot to talk about around the seminar table. The key, from my viewpoint, is to remain completely respectful of all opinions.

Question from George Simson, Emeritus, U of Hawaii:
What about specifics? What about politicians who are also poets, such as Dante Alighieri, W. B. Yeats, Vaclav Havel, Mao Tse-Tung, Ho Chi Minh, Hirohito, Eugene McCarthy, Goethe, and who else?

Jay Parini:
It's true that many national leaders, such as Mao Tse-Tung, have tried their hand at poetry, usually without much success. Perhaps the best poet who was a real politican was Leopold Senghor. I would not consider Yeats a politican -- his position in the Irish Free State was largely honorific. Goethe is an interesting example -- and one of the few truely great writers who also had responsibilities on a national scale.

Question from Jason Leary, citizen:
Are you surprised that there's not more pro-war poetry? Some poetry of the past seems to praise the glories of war, but I can't recall much poetry in support of war since Owen's World War I verse was published. Do these things go in trends, or is poetry and the anti-war sentiment likely to be linked for a long time to come?

Jay Parini:
In my viewpoint, Wilfred Owen's poetry is some of the strongest anti-war poetry I have ever read. I have rarely encountered poetry in praise of war. Even the greatest war poem of all time -- The Illiad -- strikes me as a powerful expression of the anguish that is caused by war. Perhaps, Rudyard Kipling could write decently about army life in poetry -- I do enjoy Kipling's work a great deal. But poets have always and will always respond more to the tragedy of war than its potential to inspire or uplift.

Question from Karen Winkler:
There was a recent article in the Boston Phoenix, commenting that the public seems to be anxious for reading material about the current situation in Iraq and the world, on both the right and the left. Have you given any public readings of poetry that addresses political issues, or been to such readings by other poets? If so, what's your sense of how people have reacted?

Jay Parini:
I've never before seen so much interest in this topic, or political topics. Look how readers have flocked to pamphlets such as Chomsky's little 9/11 book or Gore Vidal's Dreaming War.

Question from Jenell Scherbel, Austin Community College, Austin, TX:
I am wondering why this question is even being asked? Have our civil and constitutional liberties currently eroded to such an extent that we ask such questions?

Jay Parini:
This is a really excellent question. The situation at present is this: Anyone who does not become a cheerleader for the Bush administration is in grave danger of being deemed "unpatriotic." I am horrified by the erosion in civil liberties, including the threats against free speech, denial of habeas corpus, and other diminishments of rights.

Question from August Roussel, Madison WI:
Isn't the real question how to communicate with Laura Bush -- have her realize that poetry cannot be isolated in a "symposium," but rather be realized as addressing real events in the material world. Think of Gregory Orr's Poem from the chapbook at the Poets Against The War website as a surprise opener for Laura Bush recited, say, by Hamill, if he and a few other poets had just shown up and taken Laura by surprise. It might have been enough to make her listen without being too offended -- and then they could have found some realistic notions about war from Whitman, Dickenson, and Hughes to make her think and talk to her husband.

Jay Parini:
I'm in agreement.

Question from Sam K. Parish, physician; KY:
I quote the following from Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay "Politics": "...the State must follow, and not lead the character and progress of the citizen ... the form of government which prevails is the expression of what cultivation exists in the population which permits it." I would appreciate your comments on Emerson's views of politics and poets.

Jay Parini:
Well, if you look at Emerson's essay, "The Poet," he essentially regards the poet as a spokesperson for society in the tradition of the Latin priest or prophet, vates. So Emerson adopted a vatic stance himself. In the essay that Mr. Parish quotes, Emerson seems to be suggesting that societies get the leadership they deserve. I haven't read this essay in 10 or 15 years, but my impression is that Emerson was being somewhat ironic in the line quoted, and that he was urging people to become individuals and to think for themselves in the hopes that leaders would respond to this. The situation in this country strikes me as truly remarkable: a president elected by a minority of the population is pursuing a war that nobody really wants against the wishes of most friendly countries around the world. Mr. Bush has placed us as a nation in a very dangerous, as well as embarassing, situation. It's the dangerous piece of that formulation that worries me. How are we going to expect cooperation in the war on terrorism? How are we going to expect the kinds of cooperation needed in a global age to pursue our economic interests? The tone of this administration has gotten us into deep water, and I don't know how we're going to swim to shore.

Question from Jason Leary, citizen:
Does poetry have a legacy of changing views, or validating the views of those that already believe in what's written? I like to think that poetry does make an eventual difference, and perhaps even direct impact at times, but I wonder if this is something that is visible over a span of a year or even a lifetime. Do you have any thoughts about this legacy?

Jay Parini:
I can only speak for myself, since that is the only heart I have any genuine access to. I found myseflf as a young man profoundly changed by reading the war poems of Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, and Ivor Gurney. I think that anti-war poetry is probably a poor war of describing poetry that reveals the anguish and futility of war -- it's just too general. Going back to the larger question, I do believe poetry has changed me and, therefore, I think it can change others.

Question from Karen Winkler:
We've gotten quite a response to this question. Why do you think that is?

Jay Parini:
I think people are truly horrified by narrowing boundries in political discourse, and I think there is a lot of genuine dislike of America's imperial stance in the world. I think there is also a lot of confusion -- people listen to commentators on Fox News and CNN and they hear the kind of macho justifications for war that seem to have come unquestioned into common parlance. It doesn't suprise me that all over the country thoughtful peole are asking questions. I think this is just a small piece of a larger situation.

Karen Winkler (Moderator):
Thank you, Jay. And thank you everyone for participating. Jay, would you like to say anything in closing?

Jay Parini:
I'm grateful for the amount of interest in this topic. Once again, I don't consider myself any expert on this matter, although I have obviously spent a lot of time thinking about the connections between poetry and politics in a time of war. I happen to have a deep anxiety about the directions our country has taken, and I consider it only my patriotic duty to express my view of this matter as clearly and forcefully as I can. If my responses are offensive to anyone, what can I say? In a democracy, one expects to have opposing viewpoints. The problem seems to me not that we have disagreements in this country, but that we don't have enough venues for expressing these disagreements. This stage in The Chronicle has provided one small occasion for this discussion, and I hope it has been useful to readers. It has been useful to me.