from review of The Modern Element : Essays on Contemporary Poetry

"Here (in the United States) poetry is such a minor, sidelined pursuit that its practitioners seldom even consider the possibility that their art has a duty to a larger cause. ... The moral crisis of Eastern Europe under Communism gave poetry an urgency and stature it can never have in the United States, where it is largely a hobby confined to writing workshops."

Kirsch's frustrations with particular American poets stems from his disappointment that they don't seem to want to commit themselves to "a larger cause." Kirsch expects poets to have the moral seriousness and political vision of Sophocles or Solzhenitsyn. Instead, he finds that most of them play in their own little worlds or use poetry as therapy - that they're more or less talented slackers.

By clicking on the link below, you can read the review in its entirety:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/01/27/RVEGU13JS.DTL

The Quiet Heart of This Life

Love is not the messenger spirit
it was heralded to be. Not the connection
between the mortal and immortal.
Tonight I have too many minds.
The ties that have kept me to the air
are now strained too fine even to be
called gossamer. They are disappeared.
Torn under the stress of my intention.
Pieces clinging to me but also to my lovers.

That wasn't what I meant to say at all.
From where I'm sitting rain . . . .

from "Ferlinghetti argues that poetry can save the world"

In other words, Ferlinghetti should need no introduction. That he still might, to the vast majority of Americans who rarely, if ever, read poetry, is part of the lamentable background to his latest book. It has been argued that the current decade is the 1950s all over again, but worse. And for Ferlinghetti, poetry's "use" extends far beyond the personal into the political. "Poetry can save the world by transforming consciousness," he argues in "Poetry as Insurgent Art," a slim hardback pocketbook manifesto of prose epigrams, seemingly addressed to poets and those who might be.

"I am signaling you through the flames," he begins in the new section from which his book takes its title. "The state of the world calls out for poetry to save it." Poetry, in this vision, must be a political statement, arrows slung for freedom of expression, thought and resistance. "Write living newspapers," he counsels. "Your poems must be more than want ads for broken hearts" - in other words, to paraphrase Bertolt Brecht, to write mere "love poetry" in such times is "almost a crime." So "challenge capitalism masquerading as democracy"; "Liberate have-nots and enrage despots"; "Don't cater to the Middle Mind of America nor to consumer society." And so on, in variations of his admonition to "be committed to something outside yourself."

Follow the link below to read the original article in its entirety:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/12/30/RVLRU031F.DTL