To summarize what I can no longer refer you to, ewrgall posted a political poem a few days ago. This thread is now gone for reasons I won't go into here. What's relevant to me is Nigel Holt's defense of the poem.
As nyctom pointed out, and Roger Slater later showed in detail, the poem had poetic flaws usually regarded as pretty major -- used trite language and ill-considered metaphors. It packed something of a punch in that it appealed to standard images of horror: "blow the old man and the children to hell" for example. I claimed that it was manipulative in "pressing our buttons" in this way (the old man and the children are automatic objects of pity).
Nigel defended the poem as hard-hitting and successful agit prop -- in other words as a form of propaganda.
Now, from the point of view of propaganda and advertising, triteness and manipulation are not a problem -- if we assume that the propagandist or advertiser simply wants us to reach a certain conclusion and act accordingly. The advertiser doesn't care whether he uses non-rational means to persuade us to buy Pepsi; the propagandist doesn't care that he has kept the voter from knowing anything substantive about the candidate and has just fed the voters a likeable image.
Insofar as his aim is ONLY to persuade us, it makes a great deal of sense for him to press these ready-made buttons -- to be sentimental. Triteness and sentimentality are not automatically a bad thing in advertising -- so long as they work.
The scientist, the scholar, the philosopher want (or should want) to persuade in a non-manipulative way. I suggest that real poetry, though it may wish to persuade, does not attempt to persuade manipulatively. (The evidence for this is that even a well-made advertising jingle doesn't seem to be a poem.)
(What is manipulative persuasion? I suggest, as a starting point, that I persuade you non-manipulatively, if you would be just as persuaded by my case, if you could read my mind -- if you understood how I went about persuading you.)
So how does this sound?:
Poetry is essentially non-manipulative.
More questions:
1. Is there room for political poetry (i.e., non-manipulative verse with a political point) -- or is political poetry necessarily manipulative.
2 Can someone provide a good piece of agit prop verse -- other than ewrgall's poem, which might cause problems here.
3. Have I been unfair in my description of "agit prop" if so, what is it?
4. Does anyone have a better explanation of what non-manipulative persuasion is?
5. Is this requirement that poetry persuade without manipulation a moral requirement on art?
|