How Is a Poem Like a Political Campaign?
Whether You’re Knocking on Doors or Knocking out Verse, You’re Dealing in Hope, Uncertainty, and the Art of Persuasion
To knock on a door and talk politics with a neighbor. To crack open a book and hear a new voice. To canvass a side street, zig-zagging between houses. To turn from one line to the next until you reach the poem’s improbable end.
How are poetry and campaigning alike? It’s a question I’ve asked myself in the lulls that accompany both: while listening to the dial tone that defines a phone bank and while mulling an image or rhyme. Whatever answers I’ve imagined—about hope or the power of words—stem from …
