Tyrants loathe poetry. With good reason.
Poems are disobedient. Any poem that proceeds as it ought is proceeding as it oughtn’t. Surprise is requisite in any art but because poems are small, their surprise must be sudden and pervasive. Who enjoys reading what they already know? Tyrants resent surprise for it erodes their control. Slaves nod “yassuh” and shut up.
Poems are sneaky, protesting where they seem to praise, mocking where they applaud. Consider Blake’s simple-sweet “The Lamb”:
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedLittle Lamb who made theeDost thou know who made theeGave thee life & bid thee feedBy the stream & o’er the mead;Gave thee clothing of delight,Softest clothing woolly bright;Gave thee such a tender voice,Making all the vales rejoice!
Little Lamb who made theeDost thou know who made theeLittle Lamb I’ll tell thee,Little Lamb I’ll tell thee:He is called by thy name,For he calls himself a Lamb.He is meek & he is mild,He became a little child.I a child & thou a lamb,We are called by his name.Little Lamb God bless thee.Little Lamb God bless thee.
A pious nursery ditty with its singsong innocence? Or a coded furious summons to revolt? Affirmative or disruptive? Rocking to sleep or a rock through the window? Infuriating! Outrageous! But can you prove it?!
Poems are malcontents. Happiness does not write poems; it snores in an armchair by the fire. Poets compose because they’re discomposed. Their “world is out of joint”; perhaps with words they can discover solace or restore sense. Dissatisfaction leads to defiance leads to insurgency. In a tyranny if you don’t nod and smile like a bobblehead doll, you’re toast. Observe the Nameless One’s televised “cabinet meetings,” if you doubt it.
Poems tell the truth. The better the poem, the hotter its truth. Any lying poem we discard with disgust. Tyrants hate truth, for truth dissents, pointing to the emperor’s bare ass. Overtly or implicitly, poems seek the overthrow of tyrants, because tyrants lie – that is their M.O. – and for a poet, truth is sacred, sometimes more than life itself.
Poems are hard to stop. Music you can silence, paintings you can hide, theater you can censor, but poems are private, tiny, secret, as invisible as bed lice. Before you know it they’ve infested your throne and savaged your sleep. Fumigate! Exterminate!
Poems laugh, tyrants never. Any poem worth its salt acknowledges the absurdity of certainty. However laudable our search for meaning, humans are laughable, for there is no meaning, none you can rely on. Meaning is as fleeting as a sunset or a sob. Tyrants are necessarily absolutists. What they say is the way things are. To laugh, even to smile, unsettles their solemnity like a whoopee cushion.
Can a poem evict a tyrant? Not on its own, it’s too slight. But it can light a spark which can kindle into a flame, then a conflagration, which summons and heartens. Truth leads to more truth, originality to more originality, courage encourages. Freedom of expression is addictive: having acquired the habit, one can’t live without it; I’d sooner die than hush.
Politics are debatable, but not existence, and the fight we’re engaged in is existential, for what makes life precious, and this is the province of the poem. All poems are love poems, for they love life, even when it hurts. Tyrants loathe love, for love sees with its own eyes, heeds its own heaving heart, refuses to salute, kowtow, concur, knowing love’s the only good reason to live.
Now is the time for a poem.