Ron Silliman: On Political Poets
Ron Silliman has written: "Progressive poets who identify as members of
groups that have been the
subject of history--many white male heterosexuals, for example--are apt
to challenge all that is supposedly 'natural' about the formation of
their own subjectivity. That their writing today is apt to call into
question, if not actually explode, such conventions as narrative, persona
and even reference can hardly be surprising. At the other end of the
spectrum are poets who do not identity as members of groups that have been
the subject of history, for they instead have been its objects. The
narrative of history has led not to their self-actualization, but to
their exclusion and domination. These writers and readers--women, people
of color, sexual minorities, the entire spectrum of the 'marginal'--have
a manifest political need to have their stories told. That their writing
should often appear much more conventional, with the notable difference
as to who is the subject of these conventions, illuminates the
relationship between form and audience."
POETRY
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Document URL: http://www.english.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/silliman-on-pol-poets.html
Last modified: Wednesday, 18-Jul-2007 16:28:30 EDT