\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 Poetry, like other interventions in language, is political.
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 Political poetry is a poetry of public (polis\/publica) intervention, invention, and invocation that calls on (and up) language to call out a public, a people.
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 Political poetry addresses \u00e2\u20ac\u0153both the material character of the political and the political character of the material\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (L. Hejinian, The Language of Inquiry, 2000).
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 To name or imagine an explicitly political poetry is to assign particular meaning to the political possibilities of poetry.
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 Possibilities for political poetry include a deliberately radical (in the sense of \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcroot work\u00e2\u20ac\u2122) form and content.
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 Political poetry educates (elicits, draws forth) toward response, action, and awareness and therefore models a pedagogy as much as a poetics.
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Revolutions are preceded & accompanied by a breakdown in communication\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6. This breakdown in communication is first articulated by a poet & carried on by other poets.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (J. Rothenberg, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Revolutionary Propositions (second series),\u00e2\u20ac\u009d 1966).
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 Political poetry is committed to what precedes and accompanies revolution and therefore breaks down (in) communication.
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u0153What counts as an instance of a category depends on our purpose in using the category\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (Lakoff\/Johnson, Metaphors We Live By, 1980).
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 Political poetry is a category that suggests a multiplicity of gestures, actions, resistances, and events taking place in language.
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 Political poetry in print (codex, paper, ink) is a serviceable sub-set of those gestures, actions, resistances, and events.
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u0153A revolution involves a change in structure; a change in style is not a revolution\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (J.R., \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Revolutionary Propositions (first series),\u00e2\u20ac\u009d 1966).
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 Structural changes include adjustments to the means by which literary materials are written, gathered, arranged, produced, reproduced, distributed, propagated, and consumed.
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 The form of the book is a form of political (and literary, and material) production.
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 The book acquires (and holds) \u00e2\u20ac\u0153interindividual significance\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and is therefore ideological (Volosinov, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Marxism and the Philosophy of Language,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d 1930).
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 A starting point for political poetry\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand a political poetry book series\u00e2\u20ac\u201dis the recognition of the book\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s significance \u00e2\u20ac\u0153in the world of ideology\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (same).
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 A book series is a performance, in books, and is therefore a political (and socially significant) performance.
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 Gaps and contradictions, in these and other statements about political poetry, should be expected, cherished, and challenged.<\/p>\n