Contemporary Poetry

politics and poetics 85

speaker may touch the name of a Vietnam veteran, Andrew
Johnson, and ‘see the booby trap’s white fl ash’, the wall also
refl ects the scene of a ‘brushstroke’s fl ash’ then ‘a red bird’s wings’
and also a ‘plane in the sky’ (p. 63 ). Memorialising Vietnam in
Komunyakaa’s poetry means fi nding a space for a political present
in the quotidian; a woman in this ‘black mirror’ may at fi rst look
like ‘she is trying to erase names’ but as the speaker stresses, ‘No,
she’s brushing a boy’s hair’ (p. 63 ). In this way, Komunyakaa’s
intense lyricism chimes with Adorno’s belief that voicing the
subjective enables an important political resistance. In ‘On Lyric
Poetry and Society’ ( 1957 ) the philosopher proposes:

The unself-consciousness of the subject submitting itself

to language as something objective, and the immediacy

and spontaneity of that subject’s expression as one and the

same: thus language mediates lyric poetry and society in

their innermost core. This is why the lyric reveals itself to

be the most deeply grounded in society when it does not

chime in with society, when it communicates nothing, when,

instead, the subject whose expression is successful reaches

an accord with language itself, with the inherent tendency of

language.^64

Far from seeing the lyric as a purely solipsistic enterprise or a voicing
of estrangement, Adorno approaches the lyric voicing as simulta-
neous with social articulation. Cast in this light, Komunyakaa’s
withdrawal into subjectivity cannot be separated from the social
realm, since it is an action, which implies political critique or oppo-
sition in itself.

RECLAIMING HISTORY: RITA DOVE’S ‘PARSLEY’

Having considered how contemporary poetry addresses the politi-
cal through public event and address, use of political reportage
and fi rst-hand experience of war, it is essential to consider how
poetry can perform as witness to past events in history. In African-
American Rita Dove’s ‘Parsley’ ( 1983 ), attempts are made to