Poetry magazine during World War One
The pro-Palestine boycott by some poets against The Poetry Foundation—apparently Poetry magazine does not wish to “pick a side” in the current conflict—includes the following command, “Do not write for Harriet.“
I find this amusing because Scarriet was literally born out of not being able to “write for Harriet.”
The blog of the Poetry Foundation, Harriet, once featured comments. When the moderators became bullying and banned my friends and I from those comments, Scarriet, back in 2009, in a moment’s inspiration, was born.
Thank you, Alan Cordle!
This 15 year old Poetry tempest wasn’t really political—bullying often has nothing to do with politics—it was more an attempt to police aesthetic/pobiz comment threads in a draconian way— “please stay on topic!”
Censorship is practiced by poet and politician alike.
Poets censor all the time by choosing to leave things out for aesthetic reasons.
Is this censorship? Yeah, it is.
Poets don’t need to be political. A poet doesn’t censor out of politics. They’re poets.
Politicians need to be political—because they are politicians.
Politics is where truth battles murder (or threats of murder). Truth often loses. When truth does win, it usually does in an obscure manner.
The obscurity of poetry is intuitively understood as a cloak where truth has a chance to speak (in code, or a whisper).
A poem published in a poetry magazine and the editorial position of that poetry magazine may be the same, or very different. If they are very different, poetry and not politics is probably winning.
Scarriet Editors
Nov 21 2023