Nowadays it has become commonplace to frown upon political poetry. I was once told by an audience member at a poetry and politics panel discussion, "The problem with political poets is most OF them know nothing about writing in proper form."


In all actuality, this may be true. A more valid point may be the impact any poetry has on society. Former New Jersey Poet Laureate and America's most controversial poet, Amiri Baraka, has said, "Hey man, it's content over form." He adds that some poets write perfect verse, yet have nothing to say. On the other hand, more academic types have said of Baraka's revolutionary jazz verses filled with anti-right wing sentiment that he is a poet not to be taken seriously, that he exists solely on the element of shock value.

Isn't it peculiar how people will make these claims against poets, but less often against rock stars or comedians? Only the poets are held to a level of "high and mighty." But is a poet high and mighty when taking to the moral high ground?

To further examine the argument that tries to diminish political poetry to non-sensical rantings, let us look at other cultures and see what their poets have offered the world.

The Acmeist movement in Russian poetry began circa 1912, during the Silver Age of Russian Arts, a time when Russian Symbolist poetry was at the cultural forefront. The Acmeists were rejecting the mystical language of the Symbolists, and poet Anna Akhmatova was a central figure. To fully understand Acmeist poetry, one must first understand the time period in which the poetry arose.

Acmeist poetry was started by Russian poet Nikolay Gumilev, who first published Akhmatova in 1907, in the review Sirius, edited in Paris. The two were married in 1910. Like their Imagist counterparts in the US, Ezra Pound, H.D. and Amy Lowell, Russian Acmeist poets sought clarity of language through use of an imagery of "visual vividness," something concrete.

Akhmatova and company didn't care for the abstractness of Symbolist poets. This was a time leading up to and during WWI, and the progressive rise to power of Josef Stalin. Consequently, the Acmeists felt this to be a time of directness in language, something clear cut and understandable.

In her famous poem Requiem, Ahkmatova uses religious imagery in her vivid descriptions of mothers and wives waiting in line for up to 48 hours, waiting to visit their husbands and sons being held political prisoners by Stalin's regime. The poet refers to the day her son Lev was taken away, and how "Half wak-/ing, as though at a wake, I followed." She gives us the image of a funeral procession, and "In the dark chamber children were crying" and "At your lips, the chill of an ikon," as in "icon," a religious symbol or prayer. But it is the "chill" of a prayer or icon, a coldness leaving the lips, painting a picture of the hopelessness of the situation. Seemingly, not even God answers these prayers.

The poet then offers to "creep to our wailing wall,/Crawl to the Kremlin towers." The wailing walls are not solely the cries of prisoners and mothers/wives on the other side, waiting in line, but the surviving section of wall in Herod's Temple where Jews gathered for prayer and religious lament. Thus the phrase "wailing wall" also refers to a place where one seeks consolation and comfort, as a soldier going to the chaplain's office.

This directness of language cost Akhmatova, as Stalin put an "unofficial ban" on her poetry. When interest in her work resurfaced in 1946, the Stalin regime proclaimed her "half nun, half harlot," and went so far as call her crazy, persistent in disallowing publication of her works. Some of her work was smuggled out of the country and published in France (yeah, those damn French, heh!) while much more surfaced to the world view in the tumultuous 1960s, inspiring political poets of those times across the globe. To this day, railroad workers in Russia can be heard singing these verses while at work, in remembrance of those who suffered and survived and those who died. Ahkmatova's political poetry, then, is one of witness.

Other than American and Russian poets pointing and raising fingers at the state of the world, other cultures address significant political issues. Let's take a look at the Negritude Poets.

It is common among Colonized people to take on the identity of their oppressors. Natives of the Cape Verdean islands refer to themselves as Portuguese. Puerto Ricans refer to themselves as Hispanic. And Blacks residing in French West Africa and the Caribbean identify themselves with their European conquerors. These ethnic groups were brought to their respective islands, or enslaved in their own country, against their will by white Europeans. Yet the European identity, rather than the African, is the nationality claimed. So, then, the problem in the psychology of Colonialized peoples is more than political and economic, but psychological. The Negritude poets were about breaking what they called the "Colonial personality" and claiming their "blackness."

Leon Damas was one of three founding members of the Negritude movement and the first to publish a book of poetry, Pigments, in 1937, which became known as "the manifesto of the movement." Refusing to remotely resemble anything white-French, Damas's writing was not only stylistically different, but his voice also took on a straightforward tone.

Conditions as a Negro under French Colonialism found one in poverty, a state of inequality and psychologically separated from any African roots. Damas portrays this attitude, and a revolt against it, in Hiccups. The poem's opening lines are an introduction to his revolution. The narrator, Damas himself, has the hiccups, which no amount of water can cure. As a result, "my childhood returns/in a rousing fit of hiccups."

Damas's illustration of hiccups to stir up childhood memories is a deeper image than first noticed. Hiccups are annoying, one is powerless and unaware how one got them. When one gets hiccups, they can't get rid of them easily. The same is true of the identity crisis among Damas's people. Their white identities are hiccups, and just won't go away. Instead, "like the criminal to the crime," the poet is returned to his Colonial roots, where true crimes against humanity are committed.

Damas is learning his history well in clinging to Negritude. Calling himself "negre" is a very bold act. p until the Negritude movement, the status of the French word "negre" lay somewhere between the American words "Negro" and "nigger." By claiming Negritude, Damas empowered members of the French Black Diaspora. But in the poem, the poet's own mother is upset over her son's insistence on his blackness.

Damas practices Liberation Theology, the act of using an oppressing party's deities against them. In the Poem, Damas mentions the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Reference is also made to bread,: "We don't cut bread/we break it/we don't gobble it down/the bread your father sweats for/our daily bread." Damas makes his father a martyr of Colonialism, as his mother insists on eating the bread properly to honor his working hands. It is akin to the last supper, and the betrayal is on the hands of those imitating the culture of their oppressors.

The symbol of his mother as France and Damas's own instincts is portrayed in more depth, again employing French Christian symbolism, when the boy is told, "and don't let me catch you any more/playing in the street or on the grass or in the park/underneath the war memorial/playing/or picking a fight with what's-his-name/what's-his-name who isn't even baptized."

The mother criticizes the boy for playing "underneath the war memorial." One must wonder what the boy, critical of his mother's ideas, is playing under that war memorial. With an attitude of dismay toward the white French, the image smells of revolution. Damas wants to be Black, his mother critical of a boy not baptized. Being baptized in the French Christian faith is imperative, so if one is not baptized one can only assume it is another black boy. Perhaps the poet is rehearsing his revolution with other unclean boys. But his mother isn't concerned with exactly what the child is up to, just that he's not playing with other un-Christian children

The US, Russia and the Caribbean Islands are only three examples of poets taking political stances. So when I hear criticisms of the political, I can't help but notice someone ignorant of world history. I happily enter the argument, as ignorance is tolerable. It is stupidity that is unacceptable.

To paint all political poets with a broad brush of knowing "nothing about writing in proper form" is simply a stupid comment. The poet who made that comment at that poetry & politics panel was given an award later that night for excellence in poetry. He was writing what he called "origami poetry." The poet's main focus was that the poem have ten lines, ten metered feet, ten syllables per line, ten, well, you get the idea. The poem could be about anything, if it followed these writing rules. Meanwhile, bombs were dropping on innocent victims in Iraq.

Political poets the world over traditionally break rules and challenge norms. Their focus is on changing a world that has been filled with war and violence and oppression since the beginning of time. It seems world leaders have never followed proper form of anything. To quote the great General Bismarck, "You can't win a game of chess playing on only sixteen squares."

Poets, I pray, will continue to write beyond sixteen squares, outside the box and beyond origamis. Poets, fill your pages with the images of the times, and don't fold them. Post your poems everywhere they can be seen: on the Internet, on public bulletin boards. Print them on postcards on your computers and mail them to bill collectors (I really do this!). After all, when we want to know the truth of any time period, whom do we trust, the historians or the poets? Will you want to read truth from books that were approved, or the books that were banned? Will you trust perfectly penned sentences, or the howls of run-on sentences, filled with the images of the times?

Think about it. Think hard.