As they may be found in my written matter
By Dave Read, Lenox, MA, Jan. 7, 2025 – Politics and poetry are poles apart on the spectrum of human understanding. Politics deals with facts on the ground, food on the table, and public regulation of commerce, domestic, and foreign police forces.
Poetry has been making textual snapshots of the above since Homer reported on the Siege of Troy some 2,800 years ago. All such snapshots are addressed to posterity, even though no more than one in 10,000 outlives its maker!
That Homer remains required reading for anybody intent to learn and understand the whole human story, is why anyone would bother with poetry today, especially in the midst of America’s culture war. Culture war is a term of division useful to politicians who seem unaware that poetry holds the key to human understanding!
Because poets know Homer looks over their shoulders, they often seem out of step with narratives professed by politicians, who have only voters looking over their shoulders.
These essays are my attempts to untangle the mystery of how and why people would elect as president someone more like Herman Melville’s Captain Ahab, than Frank Capra’s Mr. Smith.
As if to remind us of the omniscience of irony, the American voter prefers watching to reading by at least 1,000-1, which should lead them to elect candidates more like the honorable Mr. Smith than the hobbled and hate-fueled Captain Ahab. From the ancient viewpoint of poetry, American politics looks like a retelling of Homer’s Odyssey, but with Polyphemus, a.k.a. the one-eyed monster, victorious.