Communist Poets?

[heiss93]

Does anyone know of any Communist or radical left poets?

A few I'm aware of are Marx, Engels and Mao themselves. Stalin was supposedly one of the most famous Georgian poets before he became a revolutionary and even won a national contest as a youth. Those are communists who happen to be poets.

As for poets who are communists, I'm not aware of as many. The ones who come to mind are Brecht and Pablo Neruda. Amira Bakara for more modern times.

While not Communist, the 19th century romantic poets often expressed the ideology of the radical French Revolution, and Goethe and Schiller offer some insight into the soul of German Idealism.

[x359594]

Christopher Caudwell, Aime Cesaire, Roque Dalton, Paul Eluard, Walter Lowenfels, Yiannis Ritsos, Caesar Vallejo.

[scarletghoul]

communists who are poets : Jose Maria Sison, Ho Chi Minh, Bukharin, also theres tons of radical black american poetry as its a huge part of their culture

poets who are communists : Lorca, Pasolini, Nazim Hikmet, Attila the Stockbroker, Cherabandaraju (great naxalite poet from the old days)

theres many many more too..

oh hey here look at this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Communist_poets

[scarletghoul]

While not Communist, the 19th century romantic poets often expressed the ideology of the radical French Revolution, and Goethe and Schiller offer some insight into the soul of German Idealism.Shelly :cool:

[Thirsty Crow]

I would suggest looking up the "activist wing" of the expressionist movement* in Germany, centered around the periodical Die Aktion. One name that immediately springs up is Johannes Becher.
And as far as expressionist poets are concerned, Croatia had its own activists who had written interesting stuff. If there is any interest I may try to translate some of their works (e.g. the "necrologue" for Liebknecht).
Someone mentioned Eluard...as a matter of fact, the whole of the surrealist movement was ostensibly revolutionary in character. Again, surrealists in Serbia have also followed this route.

* it is not clear whether one can speak of a consolidate movement, given the fact that the poetics and concrete poetic techniques of the poets varied greatly (and not only between two expressionist "camps" - the abstract-mysticist and activist)

[heiss93]

communists who are poets : Jose Maria Sison, Ho Chi Minh, Bukharin, also theres tons of radical black american poetry as its a huge part of their culture

poets who are communists : Lorca, Pasolini, Nazim Hikmet, Attila the Stockbroker, Cherabandaraju (great naxalite poet from the old days)

theres many many more too..

oh hey here look at this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Communist_poets

Thanks for the info, especially Ho and Bukharin. I vaguely remember Ho's line about writing with tears in prison, but I never came across his actual poems. As for Bukharin, I had no idea he wrote about poetry at all. I knew Cauldwell as a poetic theorist, but not as a poet himself.

I think poetry is a great artistic illustration of the Hegelian notion of freedom as recognition of necessity. It is precisely through the limitation of form (verse, rhyme, meter etc) that the lyrical content can express true freedom. This Germanic freedom is opposed to the Anglo-Saxon liberal position which sees freedom as mere caprice to do as thou wilt.

I'm definitely gonna check out Bukharin's literary theory at MIA, and I'll try to get a hold of Cauldwell.

[zimmerwald1915]

Nobody's mentioned Gorter yet?

[bricolage]

Was Lorca actually a communist though?

[scarletghoul]

I assumed he was. Maybe he wasn't strictly a communist but he was certainly on the right side and would be at least classed as 'radical'.
Thanks for the info, especially Ho and Bukharin. I vaguely remember Ho's line about writing with tears in prison, but I never came across his actual poems. As for Bukharin, I had no idea he wrote about poetry at all. I knew Cauldwell as a poetic theorist, but not as a poet himself.

I think poetry is a great artistic illustration of the Hegelian notion of freedom as recognition of necessity. It is precisely through the limitation of form (verse, rhyme, meter etc) that the lyrical content can express true freedom. This Germanic freedom is opposed to the Anglo-Saxon liberal position which sees freedom as mere caprice to do as thou wilt.

I'm definitely gonna check out Bukharin's literary theory at MIA, and I'll try to get a hold of Cauldwell.
Yeah I really like Bukharin's theory. He wrote 4 books while awaiting his execution, and one of them was a book of poetry (the others were on philosophy, culture, and an autobiographical novel). A great mind, for sure.

[freepalestine]

MAHMOUD DARWISH (1941-2008)
famous poet,writer
and Palestinian Communist

some translated poetry here:
http://web.archive.org/web/20090803210409/http://geocities.com/SoHo/Cafe/1324/darwish.htm

http://www.dhfaf.com/poetry.php?name=Poetry&op=lsq&diwid=17

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2a/MahmoudDarwish.jpg/240px-MahmoudDarwish.jpg

---------------------------------------------
mahmoud darwish
poetry with famous leftist lebanese arab musician/singer/composer marcel khalife

here:
Ud-bVvbcbYg





----------------------------

[Rakhmetov]

Pablo Neruda & Langston Hughes

United Fruit Co.

by poet Pablo Neruda (Nobel Laureate) from Canto General

When the trumpet blared everything
on earth was prepared
and Jehova distributed the world
to Coca Cola Inc., Anaconda,
Ford Motors and other entities:
United Fruit Inc.
reserved for itself the juiciest,
the central seaboard of my land,
America's sweet waist.


It rebabtized its lands
the "Banana Republics,"
and upon the slumbering corpses,
upon the restless heroes
who conquered renown,
freedom, flags,
it established the comic opera:
it alienated self-destiny,
regaled Caesar's crowns,
unsheathed envy, attracted
the tyrannical reign of the flies:
Trujillo flies, Tacho flies,
Carías flies, Martínez flies,
Ubico flies, flies soaked
in humble blood and jam,
drunken flies that drone
over the common graves,
circus flies, clever flies
versed in tyranny.
Among the bloodthirsty flies
the Fruit Co. disembarks,
ravaging coffee and fruits
for its ships that spirit away
our submerged lands' treasures
like serving trays.

Meanwhile, in the seaports'
sugary abysses,
Indians collapsed, buried
in the morning mist:
a body rolls down, a nameless
thing, a fallen number,
a bunch of lifeless fruit
dumped in the rubbish heap.

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/47/043.html (http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/47/043.html)

http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/Einstein.htm (http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/Einstein.htm)

http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=92662&page=1 (http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=92662&page=1)

http://slate.msn.com/id/2107718 (http://slate.msn.com/id/2107718)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adw5YdZtCHQ

http://www.time.com/time/time100/heroes/profile/guevara01.html (http://www.time.com/time/time100/heroes/profile/guevara01.html)

http://www.killinghope.org/ (http://www.killinghope.org/)


http://www.adorfman.duke.edu/vaults/donald_duck/templteFrameset-5.htm (http://www.adorfman.duke.edu/vaults/donald_duck/templteFrameset-5.htm)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods




http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/sandino/augusto-sandino-1.jpg
Sandino

by Pablo Neruda from his collection of verse Canto General
XXXVII
It was when the crosses
were buried
in our land--- they were spent,
invalid, professional.
The dollar came with agressive teeth
to bite territory,
in America's pastoral throat.
It seized Panama with powerful jaws,
sank its fangs into the fresh earth,
wallowed in mud, whisky, blood,
and swore in a President with a frock coat:
"Give us this day our
daily bribe."
Later, steel came,
and the canal segregated residences,
the masters here, the servants there.
They rushed to Nicaragua.
They disembarked, dressed in white,
firing dollars and bullets.
But there a captain rose forth,
saying: "No, here you're not putting
your concessions, your bottle."
They promised him a portrait
of the President, with gloves,
ribbons, and patent leather
shoes, recently acquired.
Sandino took off his boots,
plunged into the quivering swamps,
wore the wet ribbon
of freedom in the jungle,
and bullet by bullet, he answered
the "civilizers."
North American fury
was indescribable: documented
ambassadors convinced
the world that their love was
Nicaragua, sooner or later
order must reach
its sleepy intestines.
Sandino hanged the intruders.
The Wall Street heroes
were devoured by the swamp,
a thunderbolt struck them down,
more than one machete followed them,
a noose awakened them
like a serpent in the night,
and hanging from a tree they were
carried off slowly
by blue beetles
and devouring vines.
Sandino was in the silence,
in the Plaza of the People,
everywhere Sandino,
killing North Americans,
executing invaders.
And when the air corps came,
the offensive of the armed
forces, the incision of
pulverizing powers,
Sandino, with his guerrillas,
was a jungle specter,
a coiled tree
or a sleeping tortoise
or a gliding river.
But tree, tortoise, current
were avenging death,
jungle sysyems,
the spider's mortal symptoms.
(In 1948
a guerrilla
from Greece, Sparta column,
was the urn of light attacked
by the dollar's mercenaries.
From the mountains he fired
on the octupi from Chicago
and, like Sandino, the stalwart man
from Nicaragua, he was named
"the mountain bandit.")
But when fire, blood,
and dollar didn't destroy
Sandino's proud tower,
the Wall Street guerrillas
made peace, invited
the guerrilla to celebrate,
and a newly hired traitor
shot him with his rifle.
His name is Somoza. To this day
he's ruling in Nicaragua:
the thirty dollars grew
and multiplied in his belly.
This is the story of Sandino,
captain from Nicaragua,
heartbreaking incarnation
of our sand betrayed,
divided and assailed,
martyred and sacked.

XIX

To Fidel Castro
(by Pablo Neruda, Nobel Laureate, Song of Protest)

Fidel, Fidel, the people are grateful
for words in action and deeds that sing,
that is why I bring from far
a cup of my country’s wine:
it is the blood of a subterranean people
that from the shadows reaches your throat,
they are miners who have lived for centuries
extracting fire from the frozen land.
They go beneath the sea for coal
but on returning they are like ghosts:
they grew accustomed to eternal night,
the working-day light was robbed from them,
nevertheless here is the cup
of so much suffering and distances:
the happiness of imprisoned men
possessed by darkness and illusions
who from the inside of mines perceive
the arrival of spring and its fragrances
because they know that Man is struggling
to reach the amplest clarity.
And Cuba is seen by the Southern miners,
the lonely sons of la pampa,
the shepherds of cold in Patagonia,
the fathers of tin and silver,
the ones who marry cordilleras
extract the copper from Chuquicamata,
men hidden in buses
in populations of pure nostalgia,
women of the fields and workshops,
children who cried away their childhoods:
this is the cup, take it, Fidel.
It is full of so much hope
that upon drinking you will know your victory
is like the aged wine of my country
made not by one man but by many men
and not by one grape but by many plants:
it is not one drop but many rivers:
not one captain but many battles.
And they support you because you represent
the collective honor of our long struggle,
and if Cuba were to fall we would all fall,
and we would come to lift her,
and if she blooms with flowers
she will flourish with our own nectar.
And if they dare touch Cuba’s
forehead, by your hands liberated,
they will find people’s fists,
we will take out our buried weapons:
blood and pride will come to rescue,
to defend our beloved Cuba.

By Langston Hughes

Columbia,
My dear girl,
You really haven't been a virgin for so long.
It's ludicrous to keep up the pretext.
You're terribly involved in world assignations
And everybody knows it.
You've slept with all the big powers
In military uniforms,
And you've taken the sweet life
Of all the little brown fellows
In loincloths and cotton trousers.
When they've resisted,
You've yelled, "Rape,"
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Being one of the world's big vampires,
Why don't you come on out and say so
Like Japan, and England, and France,
And all the other nymphomaniacs of power
Who've long since dropped their
Smoke screens of innocence
To sit frankly on a bed of bombs?

* Columbia (IPA: /kəˈlʌmbiə/ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA_for_English)) is the first popular (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popularity) and poetic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poetry) name for the United States of America (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States); it is also the origin of the name for the District of Columbia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Washington%2C_D.C.), the federal district (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_district) which is coextensive with the federal capital (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital), Washington. Columbia is a feminine form (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_gender) derived from Christopher Columbus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Columbus), one of the first Europeans to explore the Americas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_colonization_of_the_Americas) after the Vikings (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norse_colonization_of_the_Americas). The moniker dates from before the American Revolution (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Revolution) in 1776 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1776) but fell out of use in the early 20th century.

[Sixiang]

Richard Wright, Allen Ginsberg (kind of), E.E. Cummings was for a while but then became disenfranchised with it after visiting the USSR and was sort of apolitical after that.

[Proukunin]

walt whitman maybe?

he had very egalitarian views.

[Hoipolloi Cassidy]

Louis Aragon. The poetry he wrote for the Resistance is still widely known and sung in France.

[Red Commissar]

I haven't read much of his work, but Mayakovsky would be a Communist poet.

[Rakhmetov]

Find wealth let no impostor heap!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8CUWLJceDU&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cxyr7fai4eU

Song-To the Men of England by P. B. Shelley

Men of England, wherefore plough
For the lords who lay ye low?
Wherefore weave with toil and care
The rich robes your tyrants wear?

Wherefore feed and clothe and save,
From the cradle to the grave,
Those ungrateful drones who would
Drain your sweat -nay, drink your blood?

Wherefore, Bees of England, forge
Many a weapon, chain, and scourge,
That these stingless drones may spoil
The forced produce of your toil?

Have ye leisure, comfort, calm,
Shelter, food, love's gentle balm?
Or what is it ye buy so dear
With your pain and with your fear?

The seed ye sow another reaps;
The wealth ye find another keeps;
The robes ye weave another wears;
The arms ye forge another bears.

Sow seed, -but let no tyrant reap;
Find wealth, -let no imposter heap;
Weave robes, -let not the idle wear;
Forge arms, in your defence to bear.

Shrink to your cellars, holes, and cells;
In halls ye deck another dwells.
Why shake the chains ye wrought? Ye see
The steel ye tempered glance on ye.

With plough and spade and hoe and loom,
Trace your grave, and build your tomb,
And weave your winding-sheet, till fair
England be your sepulchre!

[Tim Finnegan]

Hamish Henderson has some good stuff, if you can read Scots. His Come All Ye Freedom is a favourite of mine:

Roch the wind in the clear day's dawin
Blaws the cloods heilster-gowdie owre the bay
But there's mair nor a roch wind blawin
Thro the Great Glen o the warld the day
It's a thocht that wad gar oor rottans
Aa thae rogues that gang gallus fresh an gay
Tak the road an seek ither loanins
Wi thair ill-ploys tae sport an play

Nae mair will our bonnie callants
Merch tae war when oor braggarts crousely craw
Nor wee weans frae pitheid an clachan
Mourn the ships sailin doun the Broomielaw
Broken faimlies in lands we've hairriet
Will curse 'Scotlan the Brave' nae mair, nae mair
Black an white ane-til-ither mairriet
Mak the vile barracks o thair maisters bare

Sae come aa ye at hame wi freedom
Never heed whit the houdies croak for Doom
In yer hoos aa the bairns o Adam
Will find breid, barley-bree an paintit rooms
When Maclean meets wi's friens in Springburn
Aa thae roses an geans will turn tae blume
An the black lad frae yont Nyanga
Dings the fell gallows o the burghers doun.

It's set to music, too, with a great version by Luke Kelly:

IEOxGfFfJDo

[brigadista]

linton kwesi johnson

[Fivepence]

I can only endorse the nomination of Hamish Henderson.

Additional Scots writers; Matt McGinn, Hugh MacDiarmid, Thurso Berwick, Sorley Maclean and Edwin Morgan also come to mind.

I refer to the anthology Radical Renfrew elsewhere.....................

Other English collections that are worth seeking out are;

A. Bold, The Penguin Book of Socialist Verse, 1970 (He is a bit loose in his definition of Communist, but it is no worse for that. He also has some mao pieces as referred to above).

J. Beauchamp, Poems of Revolt, 1924 is very much 'of its time'. Wilfrid Owen , for example, was never a communist, he didnt have the chance to be! And both Hilaire Belloc and GK Chesterton were deep seated reactionaries. She does include WN Ewer, but overlooks two major socialist poets of the era, Isaac Rosenbourg and Albert Young.

It is also quite scarce but there was a reprint in 1987.

P. Mary Ashraf, Political Song from Britain and Ireland, 1975, is very hard to find, but probably the best of the lot, though it's scope is restricted by the title.

In 1930's England the poets grouped round New Signatures and New Country, (Ed. Michael Roberts, 1932, 1933) are often referred to as 'Communist'. Michael Roberts was probably the best of them, although Auden and Spencer had 'bigger' reputations. (MacDiarmid had some rather pithy remarks on this group).

There are a number of more recent English anthologies, all a bit patchy (and not that easy to find apart from Tony Benn's Writings on the Wall).

Of the North Americans two major names are Joe Hill and Tom McGrath (The IWW songbook has some great stuff and went through any number of editions)

Again, I can only second the mention of Herman Gorter, and add Henriette Roland Holst.

But probably the best of the North Europeans is Paul van Ostaijen.

I hope this is not too much in one go.

[OhYesIdid]

Lorca was killed for being anti-fascist, but he never expressed socialist views. God damn Rakhmetov for getting himself banned and not letting me thank him for his great poems :)

I'm more of a Yeats and Elliot man, myself. Pessoa was never much of a socialist. I'd be interested to see what actually militant poetry people can dig up.
And I cannot understand scottish, sorry.

[black magick hustla]

mayakovsky was the best of the communist poets and the only that could write political poems that didn't make me cringe

[Sixiang]

Lorca was killed for being anti-fascist, but he never expressed socialist views. God damn Rakhmetov for getting himself banned and not letting me thank him for his great poems :)

I'm more of a Yeats and Elliot man, myself. Pessoa was never much of a socialist. I'd be interested to see what actually militant poetry people can dig up.
And I cannot understand scottish, sorry.
Lorca's political views seem to have been ambivalent to me. He had friends and allies on both the nationalist and republican sides. It's been suggested that he was either apolitical or for the popular front. I've also seen him described as liberal. I'm pretty certain he wasn't a fascist, but it doesn't seem that he was passionately outspoken about being a socialist or communist, though.

[RED DAVE]

Let's not forget one of the fathers of us all, William Morris. Here's his poem on, among other things, the Paris Commune.

The Pilgrims of Hope (http://www.marxists.org/archive/morris/works/1885/pilgrim/poems/index.htm)

RED DAVE

[Apoi_Viitor]

George Bacovia

[x359594]

...I'm pretty certain he wasn't a fascist, but it doesn't seem that he was passionately outspoken about being a socialist or communist, though.

You're "pretty certain" that Lorca wasn't a fascist? There isn't the slightest shred of evidence that he was. As for what his professed politics may or may not have been, it's the artist's deeds that count, and by that criterion his plays and poetry constitute a vanguard movement in modern letters that still inspires.

[Sixiang]

You're "pretty certain" that Lorca wasn't a fascist? There isn't the slightest shred of evidence that he was. As for what his professed politics may or may not have been, it's the artist's deeds that count, and by that criterion his plays and poetry constitute a vanguard movement in modern letters that still inspires.


Many anti-communists were sympathetic to Lorca or assisted him. In the days before his arrest he found shelter in the house of the artist and leading Falange member Luis Ortiz Rosales. Indeed, evidence suggests that Rosales was very nearly shot as well for helping García Lorca by the Civil Governor Valdes.The Basque Communist poet Gabriel Celaya wrote in his memoirs that he once found García Lorca in the company of Falangist José Maria Aizpurua. Celaya further wrote that Lorca dined every Friday with Falangist founder and leader José Antonio Primo de Rivera.[34] On 11 March 1937 an article appeared in the Falangist press denouncing the murder and lionizing García Lorca; the article opened: "The finest poet of Imperial Spain has been assassinated."

I was merely saying that because although he had ties to some fascists, I wanted to clarify that I don't think Lorca was himself a fascist.

[Battlecat]

Bob Avakian

soundcloud.com/allplayedout/all-played-out-by-bob-avakian

I guess you could say his poetry is..

..all played out

YEAHHHHHH

[Zanthorus]

Hermann Gorter (Whom Zimmerwald already mentioned) and Henriette Roland-Holst were both poets originally who then went on to become communists but for me their best work will always be as seminal figures of the Dutch Left.