04-10-2016, 06:37 AM
I'm very interested in this discussion, and hesitating to post as I am not sure I can offer a decent critique. I'm no scholar (not that I think that's needed for critique, mind) and a poet more by virtue of stubborn need than any skill.
I think, to make this kind of thing work, you have to write from the wound. Get right inside where the injustice hurts the worst, and speak that in poetry. Drop all the technical terms, because that's far too much for the poem to carry in addition to reaching the gut response.
I do believe there is a place for didactic poems but I also believe they are excruciatingly hard to do well. They have to be so damn good that the reader forgives you for teaching them something they didn't like to hear of. (This is not meant as a slur on anyone's response here but only as a general comment from my own failures with this type of writing.)
Personally, I'd like to see this reworked.
I think, to make this kind of thing work, you have to write from the wound. Get right inside where the injustice hurts the worst, and speak that in poetry. Drop all the technical terms, because that's far too much for the poem to carry in addition to reaching the gut response.
I do believe there is a place for didactic poems but I also believe they are excruciatingly hard to do well. They have to be so damn good that the reader forgives you for teaching them something they didn't like to hear of. (This is not meant as a slur on anyone's response here but only as a general comment from my own failures with this type of writing.)
Personally, I'd like to see this reworked.