Where Have All The Poets Gone?

by Juan Vidal

September 05, 2014 - NPR

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Critic Juan Vidal wonders why so few modern poets pack the punch of Allen Ginsberg, Pablo Neruda or Amiri Baraka. Michael Stroud/Getty Images 

For centuries, poets were the mouthpieces railing loudly against injustice. They gave voice to the hardships and evils facing people everywhere. From Langston Hughes to Jack Kerouac and Federico García Lorca — so many — verse once served as a vehicle for expressing social and political dissent. There was fervor, there was anger. And it was embraced: See, there was a time when the poetry of the day carried with it the power of newspapers and radio programs. It was effective, even as it was overtly political. What has happened?

At its root, poetry is the language of protest. Whether centered on love, beauty, or the ills that plague a nation, it's all inherently political, and it all holds up as a force in any conversation. What seems like forever ago, poetry unflinchingly opposed corruption and inequality, civil and national.

Take Pablo Neruda's "I Explain a Few Things," in which he details the atrocities of the Spanish Civil War:

Bandits with planes and Moors,
bandits with finger-rings and duchesses,
bandits with black friars spattering blessings
came through the sky to kill children
and the blood of children ran through the streets
without fuss, like children's blood.

Of course there was Allen Ginsberg's "Howl," a polemic against the traps of conformity and cultural conservatism. Considered dangerous and profane, it went on to spark an obscenity trial in 1957; something that no doubt brought added attention to its overall merit.
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