The Separation of Stanza and State

"[I]ndifference amounting to relief" was poet and author David Lehman's initial sentiment on hearing there would be no Inauguration Day bard. "At least we'll be spared the usual inaugural doggerel," he added.

Lehman's "second, more considered response is that the incoming administration can be charged with squandering an opportunity to signal, if only symbolically, some sort of commitment to culture and the arts." He cites as a counterexample Robert Frost's "The Gift Outright" for John Kennedy's inauguration: "a conjunction of poetry and power at the height of the Cold War: the aged Frost reciting a poem affirming America's manifest destiny while the dashing young president exhorted idealists and patriots to ask what they could do for their country." Nuclear brinksmanship and intensified intervention in Southeast Asia – manifest destiny indeed!

Lehman polled "estimable pals" on the poet-less inauguration and concluded that "everyone seems to be operating on the assumption that the Bush administration is either hostile to poetry or simply clueless about it." Here are the more spirited responses:

"I imagine he and most of his cabinet have only the vaguest idea that there's such a thing as American poetry, and it has no interest for them. To be a poet or lover of poetry is to be a traitor to the only thing they care for, money, power, and the NRA." (Charles Simic)

"We are the first of the many who will be made invisible by George W." (Claudia Rankine)

"What's the point of reading a poem to a bunch of Republicans, anyway? I mean, it's not like they're going to get it. And [Bush] probably thinks most poets are gay – it's too risky to alienate Jerry Falwell." (James Cummins)

The haughtiness here corresponds to a Bolshevik temperament. Poet Tom Disch (who dislikes Bush) comments, "[A]ny poet who would have agreed to lend his lyre to the occasion would have been trashed by all his peers. So why ask someone to volunteer to become a pariah?" Nyet, tovarishe, thou shalt not consort with the right-wing devils! (It comes as no surprise when Executive Director of the Academy of American Poets Bill Wadsworth tells us that "most poets are Democrats.")

Add to this Cummins and Simic's insipid condescension mixed with Rankine's portentous prognostication. One can imagine further commentary: "Those God-fixated philistines probably think Macbeth is a new fast food chain!" Such is the sophistication of our poetic patricians. (Don't bring up the devout's conversance with the Book of Psalms – facts get in the way of the literati's disdain.)

This reinforces one's aversion to state-sponsored art. As the great poet A.R. Ammons observes, "Artists should be left alone to paint or not to paint, write or not to write."

Those so fervent for government-subsidized creativity should take a cue from their secularist friends. To borrow a slogan from the latter, we need a wall of separation erected between stanza and state.

Of course poetry is a vital inheritance. Wordsworth's "Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears," Crane's "gleaming cantos of unvanquished space," lines 949-956 of Nabokov's Pale Fire – such artistry reflects the magnificence of the human mind and deepens our introspective capacity.

But the State should have nothing to do with our edification. That coercive entity vitiates and bureaucratizes artistic excellence, converting Shelley's unacknowledged legislators into arid spokesmen. Indeed, we have reached the point where Lehman describes Maya Angelou's inaugural recitation of "On the Pulse of Morning" as "a major cultural event with profound implications." (It's an accurate description, but not in the sense he intends.)

We should engage and encourage the verse that has captured our common condition. From Homer to Seamus Heaney, from Robert Burns to Joseph Brodsky, a tradition of sublime reflection summons our immersion. Government can only intrude upon this endeavor.

January 25, 2001

Myles Kantor lives in Boynton Beach, Florida.