The politics of poetry

This is well worth reading

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/articles/69080/the-politics-of-poetry

Extract

It’s also how democratic politics is sometimes thought to work, at least when we’re thinking of “politics” in its more abstract incarnations. Here, for instance, is how Franklin D. Roosevelt viewed the job to which he devoted much of his life:

The Presidency is not merely an administrative office. That’s the least of it. It is more than an engineering job, efficient or inefficient. It is pre-eminently a place of moral leadership. All our great presidents were leaders of thought at times when certain historic ideas in the life of the nation had to be clarified.

To say that you’re personally necessary in order for “certain historic ideas in the life of the nation . . . to be clarified” is only a few hyperventilating breaths short of calling yourself “a mirror of the gigantic shadow which futurity casts upon the present.” The link again is the concept of totalizing vision. And this concept—dramatic, romantic, wildly generalizing—is one that politics and poetry don’t share to the same degree with activities like neuroscience (which focuses on particulars) or television writing (which tends to emphasize craft). Indeed, the only other areas of American life that have similar inclinations are probably religion and philosophy. Religion is no longer attractive for many poets for reasons that are historical and beyond the scope of this essay. Philosophizing remains a popular endeavor in the poetry world, but only so long as it’s a poetic sort of philosophizing (Nietszche, Heidegger) and not complicated, logic-y stuff that involves formulations like ◊∃xφ→∃x◊φ. Since Anglo-American philosophy has been dominated by the latter sort of thinking for decades, it’s no surprise most poets don’t go in for it.