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4. Poets Against War
- The University of Alabama Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
4 Poets Against War inquiries and engagements in public poetry have grown in recent years out of opposition to the wars in iraq and Afghanistan.1 While forms of social protest continued in poetry during the decades following the public outcry to war in vietnam, the iraq War has challenged poets to develop strategies of social engagement in ideological situations that differ considerably from the 1960s-era environments of cultural change. Although poets like Duncan and Levertov voiced their positions on war within a context of popular resistance, others who sought to bring attention to the war in iraq have done so, until more recently, without broader ideological support . This chapter looks at how public poetries have emerged in opposition to Bush-era policies in iraq and other regions of the Middle East, and how such writing is being used by some to address social and political issues of global conflict and its domestic consequences. To understand how some poets work to speak about the contemporary situation of war, we should recall how American foreign policy has changed since the fall of communism in 1989, and resulting from that we can begin to understand how the ability of nation-states to influence global policy has considerably weakened.With the era-defining events of September 11, 2001, and the subsequent invasions of Afghanistan and iraq, poets have been challenged to find rhetorically significant methods of public address that differ from earlier approaches taken by Duncan and Levertov.2 While the Bush administration justified an ideology of retaliation and aggression in the Middle East after the World Trade Center attacks, many poets, horrified by the violence of the event, nonetheless initiated alternative inquiries in American public spaces to address readers (and viewers) by expressing calm, concern, reasonable evaluation, and other modal possibilities of social response than those claimed necessary by the government and military . The urgency to respond in unity as a nation to the attacks, however , made it difficult to sustain dialogues that proposed more reflective 110 / Chapter 4 and measured considerations within legitimate print, broadcast, and digital spaces. Even as the justification to go to war against iraq defied evidence to the contrary that Saddam Hussein was in any way connected to osama bin Laden, a majority of Americans were willing to suspend critical judgment in order to support the political objectives of the Bush administration . The situation facing oppositional thinkers and poets, then, was drastically different from the contexts offered by the vietnam War era, where a broad and popular resistance movement provided support to perspectives that opposed US policy. Parallel to the official narrative that was presented to the American people after the 9/11 attacks, some poets brought forward alternative positions in public, forming temporary public alliances in opposition to war. Such alliances are provisory and often limited to specific instances of protest or public engagement. They are composed of loose networks of actors who share ideological values, and these can shape alliances to bring alternative beliefs into public settings. The efforts of such groups to use poetry to alter public space raise important questions. for instance, is it enough to voice opposition to government policy—even if few listen or respond? or should rhetors expect their work to be recognized and rewarded with specific actions in these instances? More importantly, how do subaltern claims that run counter to a larger ideological environment reach a legitimate and powerful audience? one problem faced by politically motivated poets is that their work, while potentially persuasive, is simply far outnumbered by others motivated within the dominant ideological environment: a rhetoric of advantage will have a difficult time playing out in such a field of discourse . one thing necessary, given this predicament, is for protesters to reconsider their objectives and to imagine new audiences in times of war. Poetry, indeed, is a potentially powerful and subversive art for an era where deliberative speech is compromised by market necessity and the conservative political infrastructure that supports it. instead, the epideictic mode can be more fully exploited to increase social awareness by addressing broadly imagined communities within the larger global markets that more and more define how we think about public space.3 i have hastily sketched out this post-9/11 situation because it is important to understand how poets have come to adapt their work in an era of increased national security informed by conservative ideological pressures. of course, many do not adapt to the new conditions: numerous writers who protest...