Poetry and Politics: A Powerful Message

Poetry and music have long been a way for writers to make a statement which can be conveyed to a large audience. If you think about many of the tumultuous time periods in our history, they are accompanied by songs and poems carrying powerful messages about everything from war, injustice, death, suffering, peace, hope, and so on. The Civil Rights movement is no exception.


Poet Marilyn Nelson has woven together a powerful crown of sonnets, which is a sequence of fifteen interlinked sonnets, in which the last sonnet is made up of the first lines of the preceding fourteen. In her collection she makes graphic references to Emmett Till's murder, and of this experience she says, "I wrote this poem with my heart in my mouth and tears in my eyes, breathless with anticipation and surprise."


Her poem makes allusions to poetry and historical events before and after the murder. In the seventh poem, Nelson wonders what life would be like if Emmett had lived: <>


Let's write the obituary of a life lived well and wisely, mourned
by a loving wife or partner, friends, and a vast multitude.
Remember the high purpose he pursued.
Remember how he earned a nation's grief.
Remember accomplishments beyond belief,
honors enough to make us ooh, slack-jawed,
as if we looked up at a meteor shower or were
children watching a fireworks display.
Let America remember what he taught.
Or at least let him die in a World Trade tower rescuing others,
that unforgettable day, that memory of monsters,
that bleak thought.


Some suggested books for further reading: Getting Away with Murder: The True Story of the Emmett Till Case by Chris Crowe, and The Lynching of Emmett Till: A Documentary Narrative, by Christopher Metress.