A lot of people feel that the realm of poetry and the realm of the lyric is personal feeling and should rise above politics, which, in fact, good poetry has never done.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
As for political poetry, as it's usually defined, it seems there's very little good political poetry.
I don't like political poetry, and I don't write it. If this question was pointing towards that, I think it is missing the point of the American tradition, which is always apolitical, even when the poetry comes out of politically active writers.
I've often said that all poetry is political. This is because real poems deal with a human response to reality and politics is part of reality, history in the making. Even if a poet writes about sitting in a glass house drinking tea, it reflects politics.
But I am not political in the current events sense, and I have never wanted anyone to read my poetry that way.
Poetry is about the grief. Politics is about the grievance.
Poetry always, always, always is a key piece of democracy.
Poetry is a political act because it involves telling the truth.
My poems are political in the deeper sense of the word. Political means to live in your time, to be a man of your time.
I think that the job of poetry, its political job, is to refresh the idea of justice, which is going dead in us all the time.
Poetry can tell us about what's going on in our lives - not only our personal but our social and political lives.