Public-Address

[dukealien]

Public-Address
...

Political poetry is even harder to write than love poetry. One reason, imho,  is that
it's so hard not to wax polemic. The other is that people think anything they disagree
with is badly written.  Good execution.

{Spoiler}  "Free verse seems to be the form for political poetry..."
I'd amend that to: ""Free verse seems to be the form for poetry..."

{P.S.} "... where issues like this are subject to politics instead of law"
Laws are politics. Good laws are politics you agree with, bad laws are politics you don't.

P.S. And maybe use: "I heard announcements, North Korean loud, " (note added comma)


P.P.S. I've found exercises like this to be very useful. BUT... the participants need to
feel that they've entered into them voluntarily. Since most student activities in high
school are performed under duress (good training for their future work environments),
these things usually turn into a "just say no to drugs" rally. Which, by the way, your
poem stated rather eloquently.

Thanks for the read.  Won't argue the issue of free verse, but I'm still learning (I hope).  One thing learned is to let line-end stand for a pause less than comma length; considered your suggestion (when writing and again now) but don't like how the consonant-to-consonant N-L reads.  I recognize that A-L is ungrammatical but it seems to flow better.  Perhaps the comma before "North" should be removed.

On politics and law:  politics reflects (or comprises) how and what people think; law sets forth how they must behave under threat of force.  Since law must be able to guide future actions and politics changes constantly, politics changes laws but errs when it tries to legislate what people think.  "You must sit next to Mongo" may be a proper law (if you're both draftees, for example) but "You must like/respect Mongo" is not;  "thought-crime" is an oxymoron.