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).]
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