Strong statement on poetry & politics by Eliot Weinberger in talk at Poetry Project in NY, forwarded by Kent Johnson to Poetryetc. list on February 3 (see February poetryetc archive under posting titled "Poetry is News"). Not sure his either/or argument about the last 30 years (which goes something like: either you have direct political speech & political engagement or you have pseudo-engagement & obscure wind-baggage over academicized issues of race/class/gender(basically a right-wing argument itself); and we've had the latter, while the Right has been dismantling rights & justice) - not sure either/or is that simple, but it's certainly a challenging polemic to those on the left. (Is it also sour grapes over the criticism of his anthology of 20th-cent poetry as too exclusively white & male?) But his comments about 3 typical approaches that poets have taken to political engagement are interesting & maybe useful.

As I see it, poetry can have a very substantial political character, while remaining poetic language (see for example the pervasive & deep political context of Montale's poetry of the 30s & 40s - often damned by ideological Italian critics as politically neutral or irrelevant); yet at the same time poetic language is just about as far from "political speech" as you can get, and the 2 should not be confused. . . but with poetry there are always the stunning exceptions. . .yes. "poetry is news".