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Conservative Poets?
Posted by Karl Scharnberg on Dec 31st, 2012
2012
Dec 31
I thought I would throw the following out for discussion. Are there
such things as conservative poets? Certainly, it seems there are poems that resonate with conservatives. It seems like everywhere I turn lately I am tripping over Yeats’ The Second Coming in conservative writings. Yeats’ radical revolutionary stirrings, however, generally do not jibe with conservatism.
Are there poets whose worldview is essentially conservative? Or is this an occupation reserved for the progressive soul ever probing the edges of human experience? May not a yearning for the good that is remembered in a now-lost past produce good poetry?
December 31st, 2012 at 2:50 pm
The late, great Professor Ralph McInerny of Notre Dame, Joseph Bottum, Allen Tate, John Crowe Ransom, Donald Davidson, T.S. Elliot, there are many.
December 31st, 2012 at 2:54 pm
*Eliot, the “l” key stuck.
January 1st, 2013 at 6:44 pm
Thanks Mike. It is a real blind spot in my reading and I have resolved to spend some time with the poets in this new year. I’m not sure why I didn’t think of Eliot; I knew conservatives laid claim to him as one of our own. I was not aware that McInerny wrote poetry – I was familiar with his Father Dowling mysteries and have read some of his nonfiction work.
January 2nd, 2013 at 9:08 am
A few more: John Betjeman, Wendell Berry, John Donne, W.H. Auden, Robert Frost, Yvor Winters, James Vincent (J.V.) Cunningham, Wordsworth, and Tennyson.
January 7th, 2013 at 5:13 pm
Don’t forget about Ted Nugent.
January 8th, 2013 at 12:00 pm
Kill it. And grill it. Hey! It rhymes.