Poetry and the Politics of the Twenty-First Century

This chapter examines the public, prophetic role of many poets, from Hesiod in ancient Greece to Thomas Moore, W.B. Yeats, and Seamus Heaney in modern Ireland. The mission of the American poet Robert Frost to Moscow in 1962 is an early example of détente. Poetry can help to supply the ‘missing ingredient’ in contemporary diplomacy, namely the capacity for cross-cultural deliberation and discernment in a long-term perspective. Poetry can ‘foreknow the spirit of events,’ opening a window on the future. Poetry is a meeting place; the celebration of poetry complements the day-to-day business of party politics and international bargaining. Poetry is a way of seeing; it allows for complexity. To recognize the ‘poetic truth’ of a situation is to discern the seeds of change that lie beneath the surface of politics. There is a ‘poetic truth’ that on all sides, the men, women, and children damaged by conflict are the victims of a situation beyond their control. Therefore, part of our responsibility is to regain control, reframing and transforming a distorted social reality. Poetry can give us the courage to affirm our deepest values and to trust that political change, like poetry itself, is in the end ‘given’.