Comments —

Response to Mr. Ely
by Gail Entrekin, poet

Oh my! Where to begin? For one thing, what a biased piece, Mr. Ely, pretending to present both kinds of poets objectively while sneakily belittling "passive poets," insidiously marginalizing their work with trivializing word choices as you work toward your grand-finale assertion of the superiority of "polemical poets". I reject your categories out of hand and particularly the name "passive poets."

But laying that aside, my chief objection really is to the assertion that "most of the enduring names in English poetry" were polemical poets. They all had "transformed their lived experience in the service of their agenda." What was Auden's agenda in "Funeral Blues" or Dylan Thomas' in "Fern Hill"? Ted Roethke's in "The Waking" or Yeats' in "The Wild Swans at Coole"? What political perspective was Keats' promoting in "Ode to a Nightingale" or Leigh Hunt in "Jenny Kissed Me" or Hopkins in "Spring and Fall"? What axe was Wordsworth grinding in "The Daffodils" or Frost in "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"?

Yes, grad students everywhere have detected the broad themes in the works of all the writers of the Canon, but these themes largely emerge after the fact. In many cases I think the poets would be surprised to learn how thoroughly their poems are imbued with a particular emotional thread. I agree with Wordsworth that most inspired poetry is written (if not finalized) under the inspiration of "the overflow of powerful emotion recollected in tranquility" and not with an intention to promote a guiding single idea. There are polemical poets, of course, who have left a broad swath of great poems on a clear theme, but even they, I would argue, did not set out consciously to promote the idea but found the poems emerging out of their own lifelong assimilated psyche. Many poets are unaware of motifs reoccurring in their work and in many cases would be surprised to learn what themes the grad students have detected in their work.

"We write to taste life twice," said Anais Nin... and maybe another time in the mouth of a reader or listener. I don't consider that a "passive" but rather a highly ambitious mission. Don't you think?

March/April Essay

"Poet's Comments into the World" is a monthly column to discuss subjects poetic and other subjects that are close to the hearts of poets. At the minimum it is meant to be of general interest, adding information that might be helpful to our busy lives. At its best, it might inspire dialog between poets and those interested in poetry, a forum of ideas that might enlighten about fundamental questions.

As editor of the column, I have tried to make it both.

So, there are two opportunities for each of you to be involved. If you have a subject that you wish to write, contact me at jamespeakdowns@yahoo.com and let me know if you would like to share an essay for a month. We'll discuss it and then I will add you to the calendar for the year. Essays are 1000 words or less.

Second, you may e-mail to me a response to the present month's essay, and it might be put up as a response with it during the month. In the spirit of this sharing of different viewpoints, this month's essay is by Steve Ely, British poet, published in www.morningstaronline.co.uk.

Feel free to send a response.

Thank you.

James Downs, Associate Editor

Making a Stanza
by Steve Ely

The current debate about political poetry in the Morning Star, centred as it seems to be on content - a poem about poverty, for example, is deemed political whereas a poem about an author's cat or lover is not - misses the point.

In my view, the concept of sensibility provides a more fruitful way in to identifying and understanding what might be called political poetry.

There are two types of poetic sensibility. The first is the passive sensibility. Poets of the passive sensibility tacitly accept the circumstances of the world in which they find themselves and write in an essentially unsystematic and occasional way about aspects of their engagement with that world.

Poets of the passive sensibility have a promiscuous roving eye. They spectate on their own experience with a view to making observations which they might transform into poems.

On Monday a sunset above the oil refinery might inspire a sonnet in which beauty set against despoilation provides a metaphor for the modern world.

On Tuesday, the 10th anniversary of the death of the poet's father might provoke a multisection free verse elegy majoring on the tragedy of their mutual estrangement, and so on.

That poets of this type sometimes write pieces condemning war or injustice does not mean they are political poets. They remain essentially passive and reactive, and do not write from any particular position.

Phenomena impact, and they - as unattached egos - write.

Poets of the passive sensibility don't offer any solutions to the issues they identify and they are not powered by ambition or vision.

In fact most poets of this stripe would reject any suggestion that they should offer solutions as being beyond the parameters of the job description. Similarly they might regard the adjectives ambitious and visionary as synonyms for bombastic and pretentious.

For these poets ambition for their work is limited to producing the poem and impressing readers with their skill, sensitivity and virtuosity. These include Seamus Heaney, Simon Armitage, early Sylvia Plath and most poets writing in English.

The second type of sensibility is polemical. Polemical poets write from a position, they are rooted in and powered by world view or vision, and they impose their agenda on their experience.

For these poets themes are a priori and do not stem from opportunistic experience.

For a polemical socialist poet, for example, Monday's oil refinery experience might lead to a poem about alienation in capitalist society. Tuesday's elegy might focus on father's heroic trade union activism on the docks, balanced with the impoverishment of his emotional life and that of his family caused by his brutalised slum upbringing.

Or perhaps it wouldn't.

Polemical poets, being less reactive than passives, are not concerned with "getting a poem" out of the immediate experience. They assimilate experiences, which may emerge organically in their work years later.

In contrast, passive poets are greedy for the moment, lurking in a country churchyard, making notes, soaking up the inspiration then heading to their study to write the poem.

This highlights a key difference between the two types of poet.

For the passive poet, the over-riding aim is to get a poem out of it, whatever it might be. For the polemical poet the aim is to advance the agenda.

The passive has something to write, the polemical poet has something to say.

Polemical poets include Milton, Blake, Hopkins, Eliot, Hill, most of Hughes, perhaps Duffy and most of the enduring names in English poetry.

Most of the poets whose work has endured have been visionaries who have transformed their lived experience in the service of their agenda. Poets do not survive merely because they write good poems, but because they have coherent things to say about important issues and thus are able to create a sustained impression, a defined identity, a brand, even.

Blake the visionary artisan mystic, Plath the self-lacerating narcissist.

Passive poets tend not to survive, although many of their poems have as delightful anthology pieces.

If we want great English poetry that engages with ideas and the world with ferocity and commitment - and is thus political in the most profound sense - we need more poets of the polemical sensibility, rooted in position and vision.

The fact that the passive occasionally break off from meditations on their cats and love lives and channel their inexpert, unaffiliated outrage into one-off poems against war and poverty or in praise of the dignity of Stephen Lawrence's mother is neither here nor there.

It's opportunistic tokenism, neither genuinely political, nor anything I'd want to dignify with the word poem.

Steve Ely is a British poet. His book of poetry Oswald's Book of Hours will be published by Smokestack next year and his novel Ratmen will be available on Blackheath in April 2012.