Politics and Poetry

Once more I turn to ideas found in the writing of David Brooks in The Social Animal. Brooks observes that the liberal movement believes in using government to enhance equality and the conservative movement believes in limited government to enhance freedom. "But historically, there had been another movement that believed in limited but energetic government to enhance social mobility." The history he refers to starts with Alexander Hamilton's ideas of government. (Italics added.)

Brooks writes, "Social Mobility reduces class conflict because no one is sentenced to spend their days in the caste into which they were born. Social mobility unleashes creative energies. It mitigates inequality, because no station need be permanent." (332)

As members of this difficult democratic republic, how do we come to our own political attitudes? I think it is by life experience, which is the totality of one's education. Life experience depends, in part, on formal education. A well rounded balance requires-- well, roundedness. That is, exposure to the full range of humanity, and that includes math, science and technology, the social studies and also the arts. For example, I want a doctor who practices the art and science of medicine.

Consider the role of poetry, one of the arts that sustains me. "Let us remember... that in the end we go to poetry for one reason, so that we might more fully inhabit our lives and the world in which we live them, and that if we more fully inhabit these things, we might be less apt to destroy both," writes Christian Wiman, editor of Poetry. (www.PoetryMagazine.org)

There was a time, perhaps, when the great majority of the citizens in our country were, at least a bit, familiar with the poetry of the King James Bible: Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes... What kind of poetry do we share now? The poetry of rappers and other pop vocalists?

What are the underlying values that define your attitudes, and mine? If we desire conscious change, where will you look for direction? How will we choose the balance among the values of equality, freedom, social mobility?

I would submit that our politicians do not guide us, we guide them. Might poetry open us in ways that allow us to be less apt to destroy "our lives and the world in which we live them"?

Here's a poem to consider:

Hard Night by Christian Wiman

What words or harder gift
does the light require of me
carving from the dark
this difficult tree?

What place or farther peace
do I almost see
emerging from the night
and heart of me?

The sky whitens, goes on and on.
Fields wrinkle into rows
of cotton, go on and on.
Night like a fling of crows
disperses and is gone.

What song, what home,
what calm or one clarity
can I not quite come to,
never quite see:
this field, this sky, this tree..