At the Borders of Aesthetics and Politics
The role of aesthetics is often mistakenly divorced from the political
and there is a tension within Ireland between poets writing ëpolitical
poetryí and those who are judged to be less politically engaged. In
interview, Tom Paulin has described Medbh McGuckianís poetry as
being ëapoliticalí.^6 However, McGuckianís poetry is not divorced
from politics, rather, her politics are thought in terms that are less
empiricist than those of Paulin in his essays. In labelling McGuckian
apolitical, Paulinís version of what constitutes the political is limiting
and he ignores the way in which poetry can inflect political concerns
in terms of ethical questions. Early poetry by Paulin in A State of
Justice (1977) can be understood in terms of Muldoonís satire of the
political poet in ëLunch With Pancho Villaí (1977). Here, Muldoon
satirizes the crude Marxist stance whereby the politically engaging
poet is like a ëpamphleteerí whose poetry stays close to home and
contains a strong political message.^7 In Muldoonís poem, it is as if
ëpoliticsí as we know them have been exhausted which is why it is
therefore appropriate for poets to rethink the political from the point
of view of ethical questions.
Paulinís position in Writing to the Moment (1996), where he
discusses ëPolitical Verseí, is less reductive. Paulin notices a tension
between thinking of the political in terms of commitment, as opposed
to a ëliberal beliefí in the ëseparation of the public and private lifeí.^8
He acknowledges that
the poet who chooses to write about political reality is no different from the
poet who chooses love, landscape or a painting by CÈzanne as the subject for a
poem. The choice of a political subject entails no necessary or complete
commitment to an ideology [Ö]^96 Sarah Fulford, ‘An Interview With Tom Paulin’, Eliot College, The University
of Kent, Tuesday 26th November 1996.
7 Cf. Paul Muldoon, ‘Lunch with Pancho Villa’, Mules (1977), New Selected
Poems 1968–1994 (London: Faber, 1996), pp.25–7.
8 Tom Paulin, Writing to the Moment (London: Faber, 1996), p.103.
9 Ibid., p.101.