A Blog Post by Jada Gordon
When I was approached by Indolent Books to help curate and edit poems for What Rough Beast, I was given clear guidelines for how to select them. The poems were to be “politically adjacent.” That is, while the poems may, and often do, reveal a clear political stance or perspective, we do not want political rants or diatribes or artless attacks on Donald Trump, his orange hair, his small hands, or similar pettiness. In short, we do not want doggerel. Rather, we want poems that portray what it is like to live in the current political climate. In the process of choosing poems to be published, I was stuck between two rocks and a hard place: I had to ensure we were caught up with the daily posting and that the poetry was “politically adjacent.” As I was looking through the poems in Submittable, I asked myself one essential question: “How can I identify if a piece is politically adjacent?”
After posing that question, I thought of the current state of affairs we’re in as a country. We’re all stuck in a similar way. Politically, personally, and artistically, we have internal and external conflicts constantly pulling us in different ways. Politically, we live in a country that seems to be at odds. One half of the country believes in the President and the administration; the other half has absolutely no faith in the President and the administration—but then we have people caught in the middle. It’s a constant game of tug of war between two sides and we’re caught observing as artists—and in a twist of events, even choosing sides. As editors of a poetry series with a progressive orientation, how can curators deal with a submission that is “politically adjacent” and also happens to be politically conservative? That is a question that could apply to any publication, conservative or liberal/progressive. The lines of subjectivity, opinion, fact, truth and fiction are becoming more and more blurred. How do we as artists skate along the lines of poetry and politics? How do we express our perspectives without undermining our poetics? How do we merge art with politics?
This topic has been discussed many times, but I felt the need not only as a writer but as a reader to ask this question again. Artists have had a long history of being political through different artistic mediums. There are visual pieces such as Norman Rockwell’s The Problem We All Live With in 1964, which depicted Ruby Bridges, the first black child to be sent to an integrated school, being escorted to school by the National Guard. Another painting, Dmitri Vrubels’ The Kiss (1990), shows Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and East German President Erich Honecker enthusiastically kissing each other. Lastly, poet Sharon Olds’s open letter to Laura Bush in 2005 explained why she wouldn’t attend the White House dinner in protest of the Bush administration’s handling of the Iraq War.
This long history of artistic resistance makes it no surprise that politics and poetry, like fear and faith, are inherently intertwined these days. With the Trump administration in full swing, there have been many artistic responses to Trump and the administration. However, as an editor seeking “politically adjacent” work for publication, I have to look for poetry that portrays life as we live it in the current political climate, but that does not descend into rant or diatribe. As writers observing this administration, people want to make their voices heard in opposition to those who silence them and a government that encourages that silencing. On the other hand, we seek work that utilizes all the resources of poetry. The feelings, thoughts, and emotions can and indeed should be present, but not at the expense of craft. It may be a fine line at times, but it’s all about a balance of creativity and message that successfully merges art and politics.
Politics is all about balance and messaging: the balance of the personal and professional life, the balance of catering to divided parties, the balance of different types of people that look to the politician to help them. Poetry is also about balance and messaging: the balance of poetic craft to tell a personal story. The balance of expressing thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and opinions in a way the draws the reader in rather than pushing the reader out. Politics and poetry have had their fair share of controversy that has made both mediums historically unique. Political moments like the Watergate scandal of 1974 and Allen Ginsberg’s Howl (which faced and won an obscenity trial in 1957 upon publication) are landmark examples of that controversy.
Poetry is subjective. What, in the end, qualifies as poem as “politically adjacent”? What makes the merging of poetry and politics so enticing is that the reader experiences the poem as a conversation to which they have been invited rather than a lecture to which they have been subjected? There is no one way for the poet to balance their own creative objectives with the needs of the reader, just as there is no one way for the statesman to balance their own political agenda with the needs of the citizens whom they are elected serve. In both cases, it is a matter of craft.