Poetry and Revolution

Abstract

Of human activities, writing poetry is one of the least revolutionary. The states of being a rentier, a merchant, a capitalist, contribute their bits to revolution: they actively crumble. But the writing of a poem in itself solves the poem’s problem. Separate poems are separate and complete and ideal worlds. If a poem is not complete in itself and if its content spills over into our world of confused emotions, then it is a bad poem, and however much it may impress people at present, soon it will be forgotten and will cease to be a poem at all. This is what people mean when they say that it is impossible to write good propagandist poetry. A work of art cannot reach out into everyday life and tell us whom to vote for and what kind of factories to build, because injunctions how to act in a world that has nothing to do with the poem destroy the poem’s unity.