Chapter 2 - Poetry and Propaganda

Summary

Throughout the twentieth century, American poets engaged in a spirited debate about their art’s relation to propaganda. Some rejected outright the notion that poetry should advocate for a political cause. To instrumentalize poetry, in this view, would be to degrade its very nature. William Carlos Williams, in a statement intended for the first issue of Blast: A Magazine of Proletarian Fiction in 1933, contended that “a dilemma has been broached when the artist has been conscripted and forced to subordinate his training and skill to party necessity for a purpose” (On Art and Artists 75). Still, others argued that poets should have freedom to promote a cause. Langston Hughes made this case in the Chicago Defender in 1945: “Art in its essence is a path to truth. Propaganda is a path toward more to eat. That the two may be inextricably mixed is not to be denied. That they may often be one and the same is certainly true” (quoted in Rampersad 121). This disagreement can be read as part of a much longer history of poets debating the role of politics in their art and whether poetry should ever be used as propaganda.