Computer Writing and Research Lab | University of Texas at Austin

The Role of Poetry in Politics--and Rhetoric

Submitted by laurasmith on February 4, 2008 - 11:32am

There's a good NYT editorial about the JFK-Obama comparison that would be interesting to discuss with students because it specifically tries to address (among other things) the role of poetry in politics. In other words, it touches on the ways candidates must divine and speak to people's unspoken, not-yet-spoken, affective, spiritual wants and wishes.

The article states:

"Mr. Goodwin [JFK's speechwriter] summed it up this way: 'He had to touch the secret fears and ambivalent longings of the American heart, divine and speak to the desires of a swiftly changing nation — his message grounded on his own intuition of some vague and spreading desire for national renewal.'

In other words, Kennedy needed two things. He needed poetry, and he needed a country with some desire, however vague, for change."

I think it would be fun to talk about this poetic dimension of rhetoric--partly since I'm sure it's associated with some of the more negative connotations of "rhetoric," yet I think it's where so much of the work happens.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/03/opinion/03rich.html?em&ex=1202274000&en=fe06eca2708ccdc1&ei=5087%0A

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Ah, Frank Rich

Submitted by jonathanlamb on February 5, 2008 - 12:15pm.

I love Frank Rich, because even if you disagree with the things he writes, you can't deny that he enacts the kind of "rhetorical" perception we as Rhetoric teachers are supposed to impress on our students. Many don't know that before he was an Op-Ed page writer, he did theater reviews for the Times. It's funny to look through the archives and read his reviews of, for example, Dreamgirls or Angels in America, and note how his way of analyzing theater works its way into his way of analyzing politics. He keys on the performance of politics, connects one set of facts with another previously unconnected set.

Rich is himself sensitive to what you, Laura, call the "poetic dimension of rhetoric." Interesting how you take Rich's use of "poetry" to mean a rhetorical phenomenon--as something that persuades. Perhaps it's the negative connotations of "poetry" (as being a useless, purely aesthetic, otherworldly thing) that get rejected here implicitly?

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