An A+ paper.

I received an A+ on this paper I wrote. To flatter myself, I am going to post it on the blog. Our assignment was to read a chapter on the poet Adrienne Rich and write on a particular article she wrote dealing with her refusal to accept the National Medal for the Arts in 1997. We needed to state a response to the article and this paper was mine.

Response to Adrienne Rich’s “Why I Refused the National Medal for the Arts”

The article “Why I Refused the National Medal for the Arts” by Adrienne Rich is her explanation for taking the action of the title. The core theme of the article is how Rich feels about the importance of art to humanity, and how the government is stifling the arts and via this action, it stifles the humanity of the people that government should be serving. In the letter that starts off the article, Rich points out reasons for the refusal. She points out how art is incompatible with cynical politics and how her acceptance would compromise her feelings about art and the political state when whe was going to be awarded the medal. She states that concern for her county was inextricable from her concerns for art. The article goes on to illustrate her concerns. All the while she never disavows her loyalty to her country, but shows how the system in place was harmful to the states constituents.

Ms. Rich was well within rights to stand up against what she felt abhorrent in the system. Her declination of the medal, in my eyes, removed a very large platform that she could have manipulated to illustrate the ills she was addressing in a louder, more visible fashion. The onslaught of arts programs that she points out in the article has been well known for the past thirty plus years. Since before the conservative swell of the 1980s, government funded art programs have been on death watch. Narrow minded politicians such as James Watt, of the Department of the Interior in the first Reagan administration banning the Beach Boys from performing at the National Mall due to their drug use is an example of government stifling the arts through a lack of understanding and desire to control elements of society. Another illustration and one that was more threatening than Watt and that surely was a reference in the article is the late senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina and his attempts to cut funding to the National Endowment for the Arts because of his dislike for art generated by gay and lesbian artists, in particular, his distaste for the works of Robert Mapplethorpe. These two issues were front page headlines in their times. In opposition to this, Ms. Rich’s refusal was as she states in her article a “sidebar”.

In the prefacing letter of the article, Ms. Rich states “But I do know that art – in my own case the art of poetry – means nothing if it simply decorates the dinner table of power that holds it hostage.” I could not disagree with her more. Art in that state only means that it is insulting to the creative force that the art is held in that fashion. Once art is released to all, it is up to the individual what to make of the art and to either hold it dear, hold it as a possession or to discard it as distasteful to that individual’s palette. Her refusal did act as removing her art as decoration from the table. In removing that decoration, the art that she implies is or is not compatible with politics, she has squandered the opportunity of changing a mind in a positive direction towards her belief system. A hollow accolade can act as a flashlight to enlighten upon items shrouded in darkness. If she took a headline and made an outright statement and bit the hand that fed her, she just might have opened her own works that she deems socially important (and I do not dispute that they are important) to a larger audience than they currently are exposed to. Ms. Rich should have seized the opportunity to use the spotlight that the systems she opposed were offering her and used it to illuminate their weak points. It is much better to fight an enemy from within his fortifications than it is from the outside.

The article illustrates the societal ills that Rich identifies as harming humanity and the arts. Some of the high points are the political leadership’s failure to connect with people and the two major parties catering to corporate powers. She points out how art may be hindered in the current political climate of the United States, but despite efforts of oppressing it, new art will be born none the less. She attributes this through a quotation of Clayton Eshleman as “the need for a more profound and ensouled world.” Ms. Rich argues for noble things in our society that can nourish artistic talent. She argues for literacy amongst the people and public education that has arts as a core element. She argues for individuality and decency amongst the populace. These are all great virtues, but she does not say how we are to fight off the base instincts within many people such as greed, the lust for power and the desire for superiority over others. She also does not state how to combat the inherent racism in many people, an eternal opponent of those virtues. As an artist and educator she may suggest that education amongst the populace would combat this, but that ignores the fact that literacy rates in our less free America are higher now than when the nation supposedly was a more free and democratic society a century ago and at the foundation of this republic over two centuries ago. These issues may never have a solution, but mankind must stay vigilant against them as long as they survive.

Ms. Rich overall is right. America needs the arts. The government and it’s injustices to its constituents is contrary to the spirit of the arts. Ms. Rich took a bold step in refusing a great honor as a statement of her dissatisfaction with the government’s policy towards its constituents and the arts. As an American, she has the right to exercise her will in that fashion. As a member of the human race she has that right. Ms. Rich, in my opinion mismanaged an opportunity that may never come her way again. Ms. Rich threw away her bully pulpit and the chance to win converts to her way of thinking. In going and making a statement illustrating the injustices she was attempting to address, she just might have changed a mind in the congress that could have become a groundswell. The media attention she would have received had the potential to inspire some future legislators to feel strongly about addressing those issues, notice corporate influence and think of how to avoid it’s corrupting influence. She may have gotten a small visibility in the “sidebar” of her refusal, but the headline of her acceptance despite all the things she could have addressed in a speech, and with new focus on her past and future writings would have made a stronger, longer lasting impression.