Comments on: Poetry or poets?

By: Alan Gilbert

Alan Gilbert — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 00:37:18 +0000

Thanks for your comment, Oscar (and for your poem, Aaron). I would never propose keeping the relationship between politics and poetry “distant,” only loose—even for some of the more political poets you mention. And I put the reference to Obama in parentheses, because I agree with you that there’s a danger in imposing a politics on anyone’s work. Nevertheless, I believe that hope—contra the “sadness” Lucia Perillo mentions—can radiate the political.

By: Oscar Bermeo

Oscar Bermeo — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 02:37:53 +0000

I think that the relationship between poetry and politics is one that should not be kept distant if the politics of the poet has a direct influence on their poems. If we keep poetry and politics separate, then we can not properly appreciate the poems of Amiri Baraka, Gloria Anzaldúa, Allen Ginsberg, Adrienne Rich, Patricia Smith, Juan Felipe Herrera, and Linh Dinh (to name a few).
With that said, if a poet has a body of work that is consistently devoid of political leanings, then I don’t see a need to discuss their voting habits or causes when discussing that body of work.

By: Aaron Fagan

Aaron Fagan — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 19:40:38 +0000

DOING MY PART FOR THE TOOL AND DIE INDUSTRY
On the floor you wouldn’t have found us
Lost in discussion over math’s miracle
Beautifully locked in precision parts. No.
We put a living together on machines—
And feeling as nameless as our parts to a
Whole we’d never see did pass with time.
On the hour we measured to maintain
Micrometric tolerances opposite those
That, off in the corners of our particular
Hells, we kept as high as ourselves and
Hidden in the poisons we picked to get
Through the day. Off by the sander in
Tank-top and short-shorts, the boss’s
Model-hot daughter would saunter by—
Showing off the fine line of her ass for all;
And off the line, we traded fantasies,
Drugs, and ways to fuck with her at a bar
Where we cheated on everything the way
We did at the shop, where we saw Bill
With brain cancer fading in, dying out—
And I began to run his part one day: on
Lathe, punch-press, and broach I inhaled
Exhaust, kept true to a scale, in part,
And it doesn’t spare me to say this.
AARON FAGAN
Living Forge (Spring 2005)