In honor of the political season, here's a small-subjected but elegant little poem from Hardy, about the wife of a defeated member of parliament. Hardy was so good at this kind of thing.

THE REJECTED MEMBER'S WIFE

We shall see her no more
On the balcony,
Smiling, while hurt, at the roar
As of surging sea
From the stormy sturdy band
Who have doomed her lord's cause,
Though she waves her little hand
As it were applause.

Here will be candidates yet,
And candidates' wives,
Fervid with zeal to set
Their ideals on our lives:
Here will come market-men
On the market-days,
Here will clash now and then
More such party assays.

And the balcony will fill
When such times are renewed,
And the throng in the street will thrill
With to-day's mettled mood;
But she will no more stand
In the sunshine there,
With that wave of her white-gloved hand,
And that chestnut hair.

--Thomas Hardy, 1906

Just beautiful Jody. I didn't know it. How observant Hardy was. There are a couple of Chinese poems in the other thread that have some insights worthy of Hardy.
best,
Janet

Jody--thanks so much for posting this. I don't remember reading this before. Marvellous! Thanks so much for bringing to our attention. Hardy's scope, as well as skill, never ceases to amaze.

I had been thinking of starting a thread on "poetry about politicians" rather than, say, political poetry, another animal altogether. For a process that affects our lives so much, there does seem to be a paucity of poetry on it, at least at first thought. Maybe others will prove me wrong with their copious examples!

Do you mind if I include a bit by Lucretius here? He was very much against participation in politics as an Epicurean--it is an unnecessary vexation that will lead neither to pleasure nor happiness. Such a stance was very un-Roman and thus subversive. (Much of our election vocabulary is Roman--a candidate is of course a wearer of white robes, ambition means to "go around" seeking votes, and so on.) He speaks so bitterly about the disappointments of campaigning on several occasions that I rather suspect he speaks from personal experience. Here is one brief patch (my translation)--from the third book--in a general diatribe against the seeking of power:

Take avarice and the blind drive of ambition: both may draw
Wretched men to step outside the limits of the law—
Often even as partners and accomplices in crime—
As each man, day and night, strives harder than the next to climb
Atop the pyramid of power. It is largely the dread
Of death on which these open wounds of life thrive and are fed,
For Vile Disgrace and Bitter Want seem so far from the state
Of a sweet and peaceful life, they almost loiter at Death’s gate.
Compelled by an unfounded fear, men, to evade such trouble
Amass wealth by the blood of civil war, and they redouble
Their riches in their greed, heaping one murder on another.
Stone-hearted, they take pleasure in the sad death of a brother,
While shuddering, for fear of poison , to break bread with their kin.
Likewise, envy, sprung from the self-same fear, worries them thin:
Why should that man win power? That man there before their eyes?
And be looked up to, strutting in the bright robes of high office—
They gripe—while they writhe in the mire of obscurity and shame?
Some fritter their lives away pursuing statues and a name.

Here is an obvious example that springs to mind, from Milton:

On The New Forcers Of Conscience Under The Long Parliament

Because you have thrown off your Prelate Lord,
And with stiff vows renounced his Liturgy,
To seize the widowed whore Plurality,
From them whose sin ye envied, not abhorred,
Dare ye for this adjure the civil sword
To force our consciences that Christ set free,
And ride us with a Classic Hierarchy,
Taught ye by mere A. S. and Rutherford?
Men whose life, learning, faith, and pure intent,
Would have been held in high esteem with Paul
Must now be named and printed heretics
By shallow Edwards and Scotch What-d`ye-call!
But we do hope to find out all your tricks,
Your plots and packing, worse than those of Trent,
That so the Parliament
May with their wholesome and preventive shears
Clip your phylacteries, though baulk your ears,
And succour our just fears,
When they shall read this clearly in your charge:
New Presbyter is but old Priest writ large.


But perhaps more political poetry than poetry about politics?

Alicia--

An interesting discussion might be on the fact that the default position of poetry is rejection of politics, the political life, and political ambition: Bene vixit, bene qui latuit, as Ovid would have it. Not all of them reject it for as philosophically developed reasons as Lucretius uses, but I'd be willing to bet that poets in the western tradition generally start from the position that politics is bad, wasteful, and unworthy of an adult's ambition.

The huge number of political poems might seem to contradict this. But suppose we set aside the ones that are driven by a particular political point. My guess is that the vast majority of the remainder would be dismissive, wry, or stoical about politicians and the political life whenever they talk about politics in the abstract. "That public men publish falsehoods / Is nothing new," as Robinson Jeffers has it. "Be angry at the sun for setting / If these things anger you."

One interesting point about this, if I'm right, is that the poetical tradition in the West runs counter to both the West's dominant social myth of the Roman civitas and res publica, and the West's dominant philosophical analysis of the Aristotelian political animal who finds virtue in interaction with other people.

The long culture-forming domination of Christianity ensures that both these elements remain locked in Western culture: the moral demand for action and the deep suspicion of the point of politics.

Jody




[This message has been edited by Joseph Bottum (edited November 06, 2004).]

Jody,

I disagree that the rejection of politics is the default position of poetry, but I look at "politics" in the broad, Marxist sense (i.e., power relations). I think that in some traditions politics is inescapable, for instance, in the case of someone like Milosz or Zagajewski.

To quote Deleuze and Guattari from their book Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature:

"The second characteristic of minor literatures [i.e., a literature contructed by a minority out of a major language] is that everything in them is political. In major literatures, in contrast, the individual concern (familial, marital, and so on) joins with other no less individual concerns, the social milieu serving as a mere environment or a background; this is so much the case that none of these Oedipal intrigues are specifically indispensable or absolutely necessary but all become as one in a large space. Minor literature is completely different; its cramped space forces each individual intrigue to connect immediately to politics..."

I do note you qualify later on in the paragraph, "in the western tradition." But even that is debatable, if I consider, say, poets of the Harlem Renaissance or even Milosz as part of the Western tradition.

Cheers
Jodie

Jodie--

You're probably right about the broader reach of political poetry, but the way your analysis runs requires, as you note, a different definition of "politics" than the one I and, I think, Alicia were using.

I'm a little suspicious of any broad definition of "politics" that starts to sound like the entire range of social relations: If everything is political, than the word is meaningless. But, regardless of the scope of a broader definition of the word, Alicia's query on "poetry about politicians rather than, say, political poetry" suggests that there exists a smaller use of the word to mean merely the process of running for office, campaigning, and exposing oneself to public scrutiny.

And it is this meaning of the word that defines, I think, a politics to which Western poetry has typically proved allergic. The poets themselves may have done a lot of politics, in both the broad and narrow senses of the word, but asked the general question about whether someone should enter public life, they usually say, as I quoted from Ovid: Bene vixit, bene qui latuit--To live well is to be well hidden.

Jody

Jody,

Thanks for clarifying. Now that I think about it, I can't come up with many "political" (in the narrow sense of the word) poems. Carolyn Forché has that famous one (also "political" in the broad sense) called "The Colonel," (set in a Latin American country under martial law, so he might be considered a politician), but I don't think that's what you have in mind.

Years ago I did notice that there weren't many poems about "white collar" work--working as a CEO, for instance. Perhaps some of your arguments could apply to that genre, too.

I'd like to think, however, that there are no a priori (did I use that correctly?) prohibitions on subject matter in poetry. In fact, the reality of the "drudgery" of politics and business is in tension with the "higher" pleasures of poetry. Surely there is poetry lurking in that tension?

Cheers
Jodie

Jodie--

My observation wasn't about the banning or paucity of poetry on politics. It was, rather, that whatever such work exists usually takes as its theme the unworthiness of political life.

I don't want to subsume this under the category of "rarely treated topics in poetry." If there is, in fact, little poetry on the political life, that's not the same thing as there being little poetry on the work of a CEO. The Aristotelian account of the virtues--which is to say, the dominant account of human psychology in the western philosophical tradition--begins with the proposition that man is by nature a political animal. And if little poetry exists on the political life--the life lived in the polis, matching oneself in public scrutiny against other people--then we have a huge hole in the range of human life covered by poetry.

As it happens, I'm not sure that we lack much poetry about politics. Certainly the Greeks thought of the Iliad as containing a great deal of politics, and readers of Virgil have seen the political elements, in both the broad and narrow senses of the word "politics." Dante is full of assumptions about the necessity of people of character to enter the political realm.

But--or so, at least, I claimed in my earlier post--the general poetic treatment of this has been that political ambition is unworthy of our time: Fame, as Milton has it, is the "last infirmity of noble mind"--meaning, as I take it, that you have to have a certain nobility to imagine venturing yourself in the public arena, but you ought not to: it is, at last, an infirmity of mind and character.

Jody


[This message has been edited by Joseph Bottum (edited November 07, 2004).]

I'm getting ahead of myself and misreading. Sorry 'bout that.

I'd like to hypothesize that the situation in a corporation is analogous to that in the polis (that is, a corporation is like a miniature polis); and the CEO is analogous to the politician. Thus, if seeking higher office would be looked down upon in poetry, then intuitively so would climbing up the corporate ladder.

Or perhaps I should cut my losses here. http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/frown.gif

Yes, I'm sure gonna miss that green suit of hers. Too bad she didn't visit the hairdresser as well. Cost her husband the election.

Silly how things like that work in the real world outside of Romanticism.

Alicia, I love that Lucretius. the last passage strikes me as being very familiar from the poetry world!


* not fetid - although, then again...


And how about Auden's Epitaph on a Tyrant?

Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.


KEB




[This message has been edited by Katy Evans-Bush (edited November 08, 2004).]

A Dead Statesman

I could not dig: I dared not rob:
Therefore I lied to please the mob.
Now all my lies are proved untrue
And I must face the men I slew.
What tale shall serve me here among
Mine angry and defrauded young?


RUDYARD KIPLING

On Irish Members Of Parliament


Let them, when they once get in,
Sell the nation for a pin;
While they sit a picking straws,
Let them rave at making laws,
While they never hold their tongue,
Let them dabble in their dung,
Let them form a grand committee,
How to plague and starve the city;
Let them stare, and storm, and frown,
When they see a clergy gown;
Let them, e’er they crack a louse,
Call for th’orders of the house;
Let them with their gosling quills
Scribble senseless heads of bills.
We may, while they strain their throats,
Wipe our a...s with their votes. …

JONATHAN SWIFT
from The Legion Club

Epitaph On The Politician Himself


Here richly, with ridiculous display,
The Politician’s corpse was laid away.
While all of his acquaintance sneered and slanged
I wept: for I had longed to see him hanged.


HILAIRE BELLOC

And now for something completely different...It's not my favorite Whitman, but the Belloc above made me think of it as a foil.

O CAPTAIN! my Captain!

1

O CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:
....But O heart! heart! heart!
......O the bleeding drops of red,
........Where on the deck my Captain lies,
..........Fallen cold and dead.

2

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills;
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
....Here Captain! dear father!
......This arm beneath your head;
........It is some dream that on the deck,
..........You’ve fallen cold and dead.

3

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won;
....Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!
......But I, with mournful tread,
........Walk the deck my Captain lies,
..........Fallen cold and dead.


This one's about Lincoln, of course, and I won't bother to look for verse hagiographies of Washington.

Plenty of positive poetry about politicians has been written--I'm sure Aeneas' vision of Rome's political "future" (Virgil's present) in the underworld counts. The reason we can't think of more positive examples is that most of these poems have probably been patently fawning dreck, not worthy of remembrance.

Ozymandias may have written his own PR, but later rulers figured out that it looked more modest if they outsourced the crowing. Isn't the adulation of one's powerful patron one of the original roles of a poet laureate or court poet? Commemorate this accomplishment, immortalize that victory, mark major milestones in a "great" person's life then write the eulogy to end all eulogies.

Julie Stoner




[This message has been edited by Julie Stoner (edited November 08, 2004).]

To wander farther off topic, verse tributes to such figures as Joe Hill and Roddy McCorley might also be termed "political" by Jodie's standards, but not Jody's.

(Just jumping back here with another poem with political themes that doesn't fit this topic--Rita Dove's "Parsley" , which caused a kerfuffle when she read it at a White House party while she was poet laureate during the Clinton administration.)



[This message has been edited by Julie Stoner (edited November 08, 2004).]

Julie
Here's a nauseating effusion for the celebration of the birthday of Queen Mary, wife of William of Orange. Performed on 30th April, 1694 when the queen was 33 years old. (She died in December of the same year.) The author is unknown. Purcell's music is glorious beyond description and this fawning nonsense became cloth of gold in his hands.
I typed this from the score and had to carve it from the many repeats. It's wonderfully creepy but do listen to it if you don't know it.
Come Ye Sons of Art set by Henry Purcell.

_________

Come, come ye sons of Art,
Come, come away.
Tune all your voices
and instruments play,
to celebrate, to celebrate
this triumphant day.

Sound the trumpet,
till around
you make the listn'ing
shores rebound.
On the sprightly hautboy,
all the instruments of joy
that skilful numbers can employ
to celebrate the glories of this day.

Strike the viol,
touch the lute,
wake the harp,
inspire the flute.
Sing your patronesses praise,
sing in cheerful and harmonious lays.

The day that such a blessing gave,
no common festival should be.
What it justly seems to crave,
grant, oh grant, and let it have
the honour of a jubilee.

Bid the Graces
to the sacred shrine repair,
round the altar take their places,
blessing with returns of pray'r
their great defender's care,
while Maria's royal zeal
best instructs you how to pray,
hourly from her own, conversing
with the Eternal Throne.

These are the sacred charms that shield
her daring hero in the field.
Thus she supports his righteous cause, thus
to his aid immortal pow'r she draws.

See Nature rejoicing has shown us the way,
with innnocent revels to welcome the day.
The tuneful grove, and talking rill,
the laughing hill, with charming harmony unite,
the happy season to invite.
What the Graces require, and the Muses inspire,
is at once our delight and our duty to pay.
Thus Nature rejoicing has shown us the way,
with innocent revels to welcome the day.


[This message has been edited by Janet Kenny (edited November 08, 2004).]