Poetry saving America Day 9 #NationalPoetryMonth

Once again we have the benefit of Hoagland's own writing from his essay Twenty Poems That Could Save America.

poetry stimulates daring

At this point, perhaps, you may feel you are on the receiving end of a William Bennett–style sermon on Poetry as Moral Improvement. That intuition is only partially right. Not all of the twenty poems I’ve selected have “instruction” as their agenda. Their usefulness is not so constrained or predictable. Poems are existentially unconventional: though some may look like philosophical fitness equipment, designed for self-improvement, others may look like Siamese cats. Consider, as an example of something unpredictable, the following poem by Kerry Johannsen:

Black People & White People Were Said

to disappear if we looked at
each other too long
especially the young ones —
especially growing boys & girls
the length of a gaze was
watched sidewise
as a kingsnake
eyeing a copperheadwhile hands
of mothers and fathers gently
tugged their children close
white people & black people were said to
disappear ifbut nobody ever said it
loudnobody said it
at all& nobody ever
talked about where
the ones who didn’t listen
went

Johannsen’s poem helps us to name a feature of the social landscape that every American will recognize; it drags into plain sight, and into our common vision, the mystery of race and the ominous way it plays out in our collective social life. It describes the haunted condition that results from repressed knowledge. Moreover, Johannsen’s poem does not avoid complexity in order to create agreement. It does not accuse or judge or cry out; it speaks from the position neither of the oppressor nor of the victim. The poem’s vocal tone is largely one of wonder, which makes it an unthreatening starting point for conversation about a touchy subject.

if these mosaic pieces were blended in a pot, what would we see?

Photo by J. Harrington

Hoagland's description of the "usefulness" of poems reinforces, we believe, our assessment that saving America requires us to change our mental picture of what our country is from that of a melting pot to a mosaic. We hope that most of us are more concerned that our assemblage of various cultures creates a beautiful picture from our individual fragments rather than assimilated into a homogenous, undistinguished, undistinguishable blend. Do you remember the Borg in Star Trek? "Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated!" Is that the America we're trying to create?

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