Over the past ten years, poetry has become an increasingly popular and powerful form of protest in the US, particularly among young people. In the post-Reagan era, with the fall of the Soviet Union, the passage of the North American Free Trade Act (NAFTA) and Gulf War I, the Left was in disarray. Capitalism seemed triumphant around the world and the conservative ideologues declared “the end of history.� With increasingly limited arenas of resistance and struggle, young people did what we do best: innovate.
Culture became one of the few arenas of struggle where young people felt effective in resisting the tide of economic, racial and gender oppression. Artwork, fashion, music and other forms of progressive creative expression flourished in the 1990s, even as progressive movements were struggling to regroup. Poetry was unique in inspiring a generation of young people. Poetry slams, spoken word and hip-hop’s poetic rhymes became symbols of youth radicalism. Hardly a rally, protest or action can happen today without a poem of rage, rebellion and hope taking center stage to express the passion of the crowd.
This special issue of Dynamic magazine aims to link the newer developments in poetry with the world’s long tradition of people’s poetry—that is, poetry in the interests of the people. A central figure in people’s poetry is Chilean Communist Pablo Neruda, whose image graces the cover of Dynamic. Not only was Neruda the Nobel Laureate for literature; he was a peer of many revolutionary poets throughout the 20th Century and an inspiration to poets of various political stripes since.
This issue of Dynamic aims to bring you a sense of the long, deep history of the poetry that has grown out of mass movements for radical change and socialism. We hope this issue helps strengthen the movement for people’s poetry in the 21st Century.
The Dynamic Committee
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