Guest Column By Christopher Orchard
The Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley said that poets were the unacknowledged legislators of the world. If he was alive today, he might have been surprised to find that politicians are pushing back and appointing themselves the unacknowledged poets of their own domain.
Last Tuesday, Gov. Tom Corbett headlined a political poetry slam when he evoked William Wordsworth and his contemporaries in his budget address.
There is nothing wrong with using poetry to add gravitas to a speech or displaying poetic cadence in the speech itself.
But politicians should not use verse irresponsibly or insert poetry without context. Poetry sound bites can backfire. January news reports from California showed various lawmakers there misquoted the famous line from S. T. Coleridge’s poem “The Ancient Mariner” that says “Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink” in talking about water shortages facing their state.
Quoting that line is ironic because in the poem the lack of fresh drinking water is a punishment afflicted on the mariner for killing an Albatross. So rather than touch on water shortages, as the legislators intended, it actually touches on mankind killing endangered animals.
And two years ago, the former governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, peppered his meandering reflections on his political misfortunes with quotes from various poets such as Tennyson and Kipling.
Blagojevich vowed to remain in office in the face of criminal and impeachment proceedings, quoting Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If” which includes the lines: “If you can keep your head when all about you / Are losing theirs and blaming it on you ...¤ “ He left out the last line of the stanza: “And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise.”
So in quoting from — but misreading — a snippet from a William Wordsworth poem, our own governor has good company.
We might expect politicians to feel poetic in inaugural addresses rather than budget speeches. The conceptions of poetry feel more appropriate when you are laying out a vision for a state’s future than when you are referencing statistics and crunching numbers. Corbett obviously thought it appropriate.
In his speech, he uses two lines from Wordsworth’s poem “The World is Too Much With Us.” Those lines — “Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers” — were cited as poetic support for his talk about austerity and fiscal responsibility that Pennsylvanians need to embrace in the coming year. So far, so good.
However, what is ironic is that it was inserted in a speech lauded as pro-business, whereas the poem’s message is passionately environmental and anti-capitalist. Surrounded by the factories and other industries, Wordsworth was appalled, like many of his contemporaries, by the negative impact of capitalism on society.
In particular, Wordsworth was concerned about how man had become removed from his connection with Nature, to the extent, as he says later in the poem, “ Little we see in Nature that is ours.”
In a poem that regrets the way that man has become spiritually and emotionally disconnected from his natural environment, it is as much about how we are deaf to its magnificence and indifferent to its presence around us: “It moves us not.” Without this empathy, we exploit it.
Put Wordsworth in a time machine and transport him to Pennsylvania in 2011 and the sentiments of the poem would be pertinent as a critical voice concerning the negative impact of Marcellus Shale. What is ironic is that Wordsworth would be a more appropriate writer for a Democrat to quote, not a Republican presenting his first budget address.
Citation is not a neutral game in a public forum. Your choice of writer can signal all sorts of subtle associations, but you have to be sure the image fits your purpose. And that rule applies here.
Corbett also spoke about the intentions of several Romantic poets to build a utopian community on the banks of the Susquehanna River. This is true. Robert Southey and S.T. Coleridge discussed the possibilities on many of their walks together and approached random people to solicit their opinion on their plans for America.
And Corbett also is right that the concept never materialized. The poets hesitated because they were worried they would be exploited by shady businessmen and sold a bill of goods that did not match the description of the Pennsylvanian landscape.
They chose Wales instead. But Southey’s intent in 1794 was to establish a society equally ruled by all “where possessions were held in common.”
If they were visitors to the state capital in 2011, none of these poets would have seen eye to eye with the new governor. I might be wrong, but I do not think the pro-business governor has a socialist commonwealth in mind for his people.
I always tell my students to pay attention to the titles of poems because they frequently anticipate the theme that follows.
If the governor really intended the poem as a message about Pennsylvania’s financial condition, then to accept that ‘The World is too much with us” can only mean that we ignore all financial concerns, let alone focus on a budget.
Poets can be politicians and politicians can be poets, but poetry itself can only be effective if you know how to use it.
Christopher Orchard is an associate professor of English at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.
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