Everyday Canvas

Poets and Social Change

Prompt: The Polish poet Adam Zagajewski said that in his country, “poetry killed communism.” Do you think poets can be the forerunners of social change, and if so, how are they managing to bring such revolutions about?
Here's an Adam Zagajewski poem:
http://www.poetryinternationalweb.net/pi/site/poem/item/11970/auto/0/NEW-HOTEL

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Poets certainly can and do initiate social and political changes by appealing to the emotions of the people and by pointing out what is missing from their lives or the way they are governed or by pointing to a disturbing status quo. Here are a few lines by Gregory Corso
“The umbrella’d congressmen; the rapping tires
of big black cars, the shoulders of lobbyists
caught under canopies and in doorways…”


In its essence, poetry can be the perfect setting for social change no matter what the specific subject may be, and whether the feeling is nostalgia or hope, poetry projects confidence in the power and wisdom of a society. This stance isn’t only in our present day but in history, too, for example Percy Bysshe Shelley’s 39 and 40th stanzas of Song to the Men of England

“What is Freedom?—ye can tell
That which slavery is, too well—
For its very name has grown
To an echo of your own.

’Tis to work and have such pay
As just keeps life from day to day
In your limbs, as in a cell
For the tyrants’ use to dwell…”

And in his Chicago Poems, Carl Sandburg talks about the power of the people to not forget wrongs while learning how to correct them and be better in the future.

“Great men, pageants of war and labor, soldiers and workers,
mothers lifting their children--these all I
touched, and felt the solemn thrill of them.
And then one day I got a true look at the Poor, millions
of the Poor, patient and toiling; more patient than
crags, tides, and stars; innumerable, patient as the
darkness of night--and all broken, humble ruins of nations.”

Poets can also make the people aware of certain ideas that may be alien to them such as awareness of the animal species decreasing or the weather creating havoc in everyone’s lives.
Here is an excerpt from Robin Becker’s
Elegy for the Northern Flying Squirrel

“Once the cambered airfoil
of furry tail
struck an Olympic landing on a trunk.

We did not witness
or admire the aerobatic, nocturnal feats,
visible only to other

canopy dwellers and the field biologist….

The fast decline of the Northern
Flying Squirrel:
symptom of larger malaise”

Then, they can point to injustices and human right violations as in the poem of Sarita Callender, which talks about human trafficking in her poem Fus Ro Dah.

“The pain, the fear, the unknowing.
The starvation, separation and threats.
The rapes, the bleeding, hope lost.
They took my children away from me.”

And in Maya Angelou’s On the Pulse of Morning

You, created only a little lower than
The angels, have crouched too long in
The bruising darkness
Have lain too long
Facedown in ignorance,
Your mouths spilling words
Armed for slaughter.

The Rock cries out to us today,
You may stand upon me,
But do not hide your face.

Better yet, evoking hope for the betterment of social and international structures can drip from a poet’s pen.

From I Am Waiting By Lawrence Ferlinghetti
“and I am waiting
for the lost music to sound again
in the Lost Continent
in a new rebirth of wonder”

From To Hope by John Keats
“Let me not see the patriot's high bequest,
Great Liberty! how great in plain attire!
With the base purple of a court oppress'd,
Bowing her head, and ready to expire:
But let me see thee stoop from heaven on wings
That fill the skies with silver glitterings!”