More of this Feature • Part 1, Poetry in the Garden? • Part 2, Rush To Action • “Incident in a Rose Garden,” a poem by George Wallace • “Lunch at the Rose Garden,” a poem by nnenko

Join the Discussion • Poems in political discourse “What do you think? Could the First Lady reasonably expect to keep political statements out of a Rose Garden poetry symposium?”    --Poetry Guide

Related Articles • Poems For Peace, our new anthology • Poets in the News links to other articles on these events

Elsewhere on the Web • Poetsagainstthewar.org (US) • Poets Against the War (UK) • Poets4Peace.com at the United Poets Coalition • Australian Poets for Peace Project • “Not In Our Name, a statement of conscience against war and repression” • “After the Fall,” Artists for Peace, Justice and Civil Liberties • “Convergence,” Canadian poems for peace

AMERICA DREAMING

Separating what didn’t happen in the Rose Garden symposium from the tide of contemporary politics is an impossible knot to untangle, and the more one tries to break it down, the more questions are raised. Not the smallest of these is, “Is poetry indeed the voice of a nation?”

Many would be inclined to disagree. “Poetry is not the voice of a nation in this nation,” says Patricia Smith. “I remember traveling to Berlin, where dozens of poets from all over Europe has just completed a transcontinental train trip. The entire train was theirs. They stopped in tiny town squares, huge community halls and theaters, libraries and schools all over Europe and read their work. They’d been at it for a month. Berlin was their homecoming. There were so many people crowding the rail station that regular service had to be postponed. When each poet emerged from the train, he or she was hoisted upon the shoulders of the crowd. There was weeping and singing, and people straining forward to simply touch the poets. There was a reverence and respect that I have never seen, and don’t expect to see here -- unless, of course, Justin Timberlake or Shakira suddenly decides to bare a poetic soul.

“And it goes both ways. In many countries, poets are willing to die for what they believe in. Enough said.

“Was the White House soiree ever anything but a teeny nod toward National Poetry Month? It’s not like there was this big outstretched hand: Ah, poets, come into the fold. My guess is they started getting jittery after Baraka told them to kiss his ass. Suddenly we weren’t those cute tweedy types any more. And they had no way of knowing that because they don’t read or listen to poetry written by real people.”

And yet, to many, there was an almost physical sensation of being slapped when the symposium was cancelled. Which is odd, when one’s hard-pressed to find anyone who took it seriously in the first place. In order to get to the heart of the matter, let’s consider an unsettling thought: perhaps Mrs. Bush was right.

Mrs. Bush’s stated desire was to bring together poets together to consider three of their forebears: Whitman, Dickinson and Hughes. It was her belief that these three poets were instrumental to the creation of what she called ‘the American voice.’ As pointed out earlier, it’s not clear that she understood exactly what that might mean, but as the date of the gathering came closer it became increasingly clear that -- whether it was the voice of a nation or not -- it was a voice that was saying something she didn’t want to hear.

But Laura Bush not listening doesn’t change what the voice -- whomever it represents -- is saying. So too, with America. As Smith points out, America has little time for its poetry. For most Americans, letting poetry into their lives at all is only thinkable if it’s a mild, distant voice -- pretty words preserved from the past, or nonconfrontational gilding to unremarkable sentiment. Most Americans have no patience or wherewithal for dazzling truths that shake them to the core of their beings. No, America wants uncomplicated truths, heroic battle against “evildoers” and prurient images that do little more than stimulate the lizard id of the brain. If left to its own devices, this is all it would seek out.

But the world is not simple, nor uncomplicated, and perhaps, just perhaps, there are voices whispering in America’s ear that this is so. Whether America chooses to hear these voices... or whether it, like Laura Bush, banishes them to the world outside the garden... is irrelevant. They are whispering just the same.

Are those whispers the voice of America, and if so, is America deaf to the sound of its own voice? Are the words of caution against war a subconscious truth gurgling beneath the caterwaul of FOX TV and The Wall Street Journal. Are the voices of poets America dreaming, a message from the part of the brain long buried to the conscious mind, desperately trying to signal that this course is wrong?

And if it’s so, what will happen when America wakes?

Victor Infante

Next page > “Incident in a Rose Garden,” a poem by George Wallace > page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

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Victor Infante was our Orange County Museletter correspondent until 2001, when he moved back to Worcester, Massachusetts and then became our New England correspondent. His collection of poems, Learning To Speak, was released by FarStarFire Press in 1999. His previous feature articles for About Poetry are:

• “Remembering Marta Mitrovich,” memoir of a poet who lit the poetry fires in Orange County, California and died in the spring of 2002.
  
  
• “Poetry in Times Like These,” a meditation on poetry’s place and the debt of our art in the post-9.11.01 time of war & crisis.
  
  
• “The Center Cannot Hold: Slam, Academia & the Battle for America’s Bourgeoisie,” an essay on the generational cycles of poets & poetic institutions, class & politics in American poetry, slam poetry’s evolution into a new establishment.
  
  
• “The Beat Goes On: Lawrence Ferlinghetti Is Still a Rebel,” an interview with Ferlinghetti on the Poet as Outsider.
  
  
• “Stranded: Poet Mark Strand Preaches Political Indifference at UCI,” a response to the effort to divorce poetry from politics.
  
  
• “But What If These Are Poetic Times?,” a commentary on the furor following LA Weekly’s fall 1999 review of local poetry.

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