Poetry and Commitment, by Adrienne Rich, USA

From the Newsletter of Poets Against War in the USA; by Adrienne Rich:

Poetry & Commitment

In “The Defence of Poetry” 1821, Shelley claimed that “poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world”.

This has been taken to suggest that simply by virtue of composing verse, poets exert some exemplary moral power – in a vague unthreatening way.

In fact, in his earlier political essay, “A Philosophic View of Reform,” Shelley had written that “Poets and philosophers are the unacknowledged” etc.

The philosophers he was talking about were revolutionary-minded: Thomas Paine, William Godwin, Voltaire, Mary Wollstonecraft.

And Shelley was, no mistake, out to change the legislation of his time.

For him there was no contradiction between poetry, political philosophy, and active confrontation with illegitimate authority.

For him, art bore an integral relationship to the “struggle between Revolution and Oppression”.

His “West Wind” was the “trumpet of a prophecy”, driving “dead thoughts … like withered leaves, to quicken a new birth”.

I’m both a poet and one of the “everybodies” of my country.

I live with manipulated fear, ignorance, cultural confusion and social antagonism huddling together on the faultline of an empire.

I hope never to idealise poetry – it has suffered enough from that. Poetry is not a healing lotion, an emotional massage, a kind of linguistic aromatherapy.

Mary Shelley: here.