I’ve just found, and followed, David Meeker’s impressive blog, 20th Century Protest Poetry: Poems That Make a Difference. Scrolling down the home page, you’ll find relevant poems, including Carolyn Forche’s “The Colonel,” Roethke’s “The Geranium,” and Nazim Hikmet’s “Letters from a Man in Solitary,” preceded by brief introductory essays. I wish I’d found this sooner, but will make up for lost time.
Poems of Protest, Resistance, and Empowerment
Check out this poem sampler the editors of the Poetry Foundation have provided. Some of the usual suspects are there, of course, but look further to find Danez Smith’s “Tonight in Oakland,” Ilya Kaminsky’s “We Lived Happily During the War,” Heather McHugh’s “What He Thought,” and much more.
More poetry! More resistance!
Politics
No snakes here,
but a little voice
says the mice
will return,
and which
do you prefer,
the one that
gnaws open
ramen packages
then craps
on your plate
or the one
who takes
its prey
under the house
and swallows
it whole,
leaving
no bones
behind?
Forecast
Does the peach
blossom
count its
numbered days
in the lure of false
spring?
Smiling, you admit pleasure
in cruelty,
in assigning lots
to the relief of those
never called,
and those whose answers
remain open,
unfixed.
The freeze is coming,
you say.
Let us pray.
O at the Edges 