Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

“We hate poetry that has palpable design on us” said Keats. He would probably have included, poetry with a clear political moral agenda. The issue is a thorny one when responding to the work of Adrienne Rich. Here is a sensibility immersed in the public arena, that is, in the violence of the 20th century, for which she makes no apology, with which and with great poetic resources she bears down on us. The new collection continues the tradition though the meanings and sources of violence have shifted. I think ‘hate’ is too strong a word. Perhaps more a feeling or guilt and resentment. So why does one squirm and wriggle a bit in the face of poetic indignation? Partly because the poet assumes and requires our lazy ignorance and complacency in the face of the obscenities behind an apparent order and also his/her self-appointed oracular status with regard to it:

Between two silvered glass urns an expensive
                                       textile is shouldered

it’s after dark now, floodlight
pours into the wired boutique

there are live roses in the urns
there are security codes

in the wall there are children, dead, near death
whose fingers worked this

intricate
desirable thing

- nothing you haven’t seen on your palm
nothing your thumbnail doesn’t know

     But we’re immersed too in revelation through other, powerful media for many years now. Yes we do know. Yes we do care. In fact Primo Levi, brief survivor of one of the century’s more striking episodes, spoke of “literary lechery” when writers used evil for poetic purposes. But the question is: does poetry bring some further truth particular to it? I think, like Levi, the stark facts stick best.

     But another reason we might feel nailed is the narrow emotional scope of agenda poetry: knowing, bitter, accusing, despairing. Whatever the state of the world, we also write and read for joy and celebration, however brief and local, and if someone chooses to ignore that then that’s their choice.

     Public poetry in the bardic or laureate-ship tradition has its own domain. The Laureate responds swiftly and poetically to public events on our behalf, some of which may have a powerfully political aspect (Andrew Motion’s ‘Paddington Train Crash’ was a brilliant example of a swift, moving response where the political meanings - well-known to all - were kept less than palpable.) You don’t mind those because it’s assumed that we all understand the event and its moral meaning; the poet is using his skill not his unique insight to comment. And though I admire the freedom, unique imagination and commitment of her program, which this collection continues, it convinces me that the real domain of poetry lies where the personal is not political and individuals speak to one another in a secret garden.