In times of tumultuous social change in the nation, poets find stable ground in song—the ancient lyric tradition—and psalm, in the sense of making poems that address Spirit in prayer, but also praise our changing world, attending to the Other at the border of the sacred and humane. Who else could serve this purpose but artists or seers?
Personally, usually, I try to articulate something other than praise, prayer, or lament. During the 2024 Election season, I am thinking very pointedly about the humane, inflected in not only spiritual but also activist terms, in the hopes of raising consciousness to embrace rather than reject the current forces urging equity, diversity, and peace as our country struggles to adapt to the times. To begin to change our structures of power, to populate them with people who reflect all of our citizens, so all contribute their knowledge and industry. It is still exceedingly rare for a powerful white man to cede power to anyone other than a younger white man. However he came to that decision, President Biden was capable of that choice and modeled how one might come to make that decision and why it’s so timely. It is my fervent hope that others will follow his example.
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As a humble teacher of creative writing, I believe in and have tried to convey to generations of students the power of poesis: its potency is its potential to make something happen in the world. Teachers of creative writing have always known that our work is essential to the human spirit, even more so now that so many forces attack and undervalue all that is humane in the world. Poetry’s value is ineffable, invaluable. As Beth Ann Fennelly argued in an eloquent op-ed in the NYT, however, “Students who master written and spoken communication can change the world” (November 15. 2023). What I’d add is that acquiring these crucial skills will enable them to discern the misuse or abuse of language, including the telling of untruths. It would be so timely for all of the electorate to have such skills!
The lack of the humane in our society obsesses me, that so many in power at every level make the choice—for it is a choice—to be cruel and indifferent to the suffering of others, to refuse to acknowledge their dignity and right to exist and flourish. It’s significant that so many in power reject empathy and generosity as “weak,” and embrace cruelty and indifference as strong. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. I believe that art can powerfully convey a view inflected by the humane and ethical. That poetry is a consciousness. Poems written in that vein question the pat, official, or orthodox meanings imposed on the machinations of individuals who never question themselves.
Spiritually activist poets aspire to be what Alberto Rios has called citizen-poets, poets in dialogue with the larger culture, in order to address the urgent issues of our times in language that opens up rather than shuts down, and takes care to be precise and truthful. As Adrienne Rich wrote some time ago, thoughts and feelings silenced too long have an incendiary component that can connect and spread until like grass every blade catches fire. “Poetry, in its own way, is a carrier of the sparks, because it too seeks connections with silenced others.” Its spells are sonic, vibrational, shifting the air as they’re sounded, resisting, countering the roars of hate and spite, like chants that change the tenor of the very air we breathe, filling it with love and care. I like to imagine it matters: that in each new era, such as this election season, its sounds renew the force of love that counters hate.
