Poetry and the Resistance

The New York Times has a good article today on how the movement of resistance sparked by the election of Donald Trump to the White House (I still can't bring myself to use the P word as his title) has energized and politicized a lot of poets. (The article can be found here.) Some quick takeaways that reminded me that poetry today is more vital in the U.S. than it has seemed for a long time: Maya Angelou's poem, "Still I Rise," has been viewed on YouTube 470,000 times since the election. And I don't know if that even includes the version of Serena Williams reciting the poem that became an Internet hit after last year's Wimbledon championship. And Claudia Rankine's book, Citizen: an American Lyric, has more than 200,000 copies in print.
Last night at Magers & Quinn Bookstore in Minneapolis, prominent local poets Morgan Grace Willow, Lyle Daggett and Wang Ping read from a new anthology, Resist Much, Obey Little..., which was put together shortly after the election and represents something of an instant response collection (to the heck with that 'emotion reflected in tranquility business'.) The writers were generous enough to read work by other contributors in addition to their own poetry from the book. It seemed like the kind of event that deserves a larger audience than it got (a lot of readings seem that way to me). If poetry today is any indication, the resistance is strong.