Obama and the Poetry of Politics
Much has been made in the press in the last few days of the poetry of Barack Obama's speech, to the point where I'm getting quite irritated. OK, he's an exemplary orator. Granted, his speechwriters have an economy of phrase that heightens common speech to the point where Obama can make rhetorical points without ever seeming to directly attack anyone and can connect with the masses who are, in normal circumstances, turned off by political speeches. But are he or his speechwriters poets? Not a bit of it.
In a Guardian blog, Jay Parini claimed: "If, as Gerard Manley Hopkins once suggested, poetry is "the common language heightened", then President Obama (how I loved typing that phrase for the first time) became a poet in his speech. He made the language itself resonate; and he did so not by fancy writing or superficially elevated diction or self-conscious parallelism in the syntax. Anyone who rereads the speech closely will see that he used only the simplest of words: "new", "nation", "now", "generation", "common", "courage", "world". And he spoke these words in straightforward cadences that have already become familiar, drawing them out to exactly the right length."
A perfect description of an orator, but Parini insists on using the word poet instead. To imply that to be a great poet you must be a great speaker is simply idiotic - whilst there's no doubt a good speaking voice helps a poet reach a wider audience, it is foolish to suggest that this is the only criteria that makes poetry great. Parini's conflation of oratory and poetry also suggests, foolishly, that rhetoric is the only tool in the poet's arsenal. If that were true, then the only poetry that would survive is Slam poetry - which is often wonderful, but it would be an awfully dull world if this were the only colour on the poet's palette.
Poetry is the art of truth-telling and it takes many forms. Oratorical rhetoric seeks simply to persuade. Whilst there can be no doubt that Obama and his speechwriters have learned many lessons from poetry - most notably the way they boiled down big ideas into a pithy, accessible and inspiring inauguration speech - to suggest that the speech itself was poetry is simply ludicrous.
Poetry is a term too easily bandied around these days, often attached to things that are in no way poetic, in the same way that sub-editors at newspapers devalued tragedy by applying it willy-nilly to anything unfortunate that happens in the world.
If only poets were paid as well as some of the one-trick-pony footballers whose actions are described as "poetry in motion". If only they got as much attention as US presidents.
