Politics in Poetry

When you're a politics major you try to make everything political. In the case of An Army of Lovers, it's very easy. The section titled "What We Talk About When We Talk About Poetry," deals with several characters discussing the political value of Zukofsky's poems. Terri argues that the poetry is political, in a veiled way, and Mel claims that the poems misuse political language, adding "no one knows what he did it for" (75). Essentially, his poems lack political value because of the inability to clearly define it. The book laments the inability of modern poetry to be political, and this reinforces a delineation the authors seemingly create between politics and art. I disagree. 

Playwright August Wilson said "All art is political in the sense that it serves someone's politics." Just because it does not hit you over the head with it like Allen Ginsberg in America, or the Moloch part of Howl, there is politics in all art. The poem in question, "A" by objectivist Louis Zukofsky is frankly too long to deconstruct the politics of for the purpose of this response. I more want to focus on the premise itself of the connection between art and politics. The fact of the matter is that if a poem avoids politics, it is being political in doing so. 

A way to frame this is the Degenerate Art Exhibition in 1937, in which the Nazis displayed Dadaist art as a way of telling the German people what kind of art was unacceptable. The art, whether it intended to or not, becomes political in the context it is placed. The Nazis sought to define what art is good and what art is bad. Any act of censorship politicizes an artwork, from "Howl" to the time when "Captain Underpants"was banned in my elementary school. The political context surrounding art informs the meaning the art undertakes. I disagree with Roman Jakobson's formalist conception because no art is created without its context, so no art should be looked at without its context. Essentially, my entire argument can be summed up by one Toni Morrison quote. She said "All good art is political! There is none that isn't And the ones that try hard not to be political are political by saying, 'We love the status quo.'" Thanks, Toni. 

Just because it's fun, I've included some Dadaist art. 

Bicycle Wheel, Marcel Duchamp

Mechanical Head, Raoul Hausmann