“The Poet’s Strike” by Paul Zimmer is a direct shot at any person who has ever belittled poetry or stated that it is worthless in any way. The poem is a lyric poem composed in free verse and was published in 1989. The central idea of the poem is that if poet’s all came together and agreed to stop generating their beloved work the world would suffer greatly from a lack of poetry and people would beg and beg the poets to go back to creating their works. Human beings would be lost in a world without the creativity and beauty that poetry provides for is different than any other literary achievement. This degenerates to reveal the theme of the poem very simply being the importance of poetry, and more generally creative work, in the lives of the ordinary person.
The fact that the poem is one defending poetry at its core the tone is indignant and at the same time much like that of a general preparing his troops for battle. The author is a poet and it can be taken that it is him writing this as his perspective to his contemporaries. He makes his point very clear in the opening lines when he proclaims “On the stroke of midnight / Let us cover our typewriters, / Throw down all pens and papers, / Build kindling fires in oil drums.” This dramatic diction and word choice sets the tone of indignity by being over-the-top enough to convey the frustration without seeming humorous. The syntax of the poem accents this because it is two stanzas and 24 lines total but contains only six sentences. In the first stanza Zimmer lists things that will cease to be created and implores his colleagues to “dwell together in a void / Removed from beauty and truth.” accenting the hollowness of a world without poetry.
There is no specific meter in the poem but its structure provides an arc feeling. It starts at the beginning of a dramatic idea and builds as the argument gains steam and then slides down to end on a bitter low note. When read it inspires the need to read faster in the middle and slow down as the tone and wording becomes more vehement at the end. Zimmer’s use of simile comparing people to worms “swallowing and excreting their tedious passages” provides both a vivid image of humans as dirty worms and a statement separating poets from these worms.
In the first stanza Zimmer uses parallel structure in his lines with repetition to drive his point home. He states “Not one more metaphor nor image / No loose nor strict iambics, / No passion, anger, laughter, / Let no one cheat nor scab” highlighting the words “no” and “nor” to craft the intensity of his tone. This paired with his imagery of words falling from dictionaries, Earth wobbling and fracturing, and trees blighting produce a feeling of doom and darkness. Without the enlightening introspection and beauty provided by poetry the order of the world will fall apart and slip into darkness if the narrator is to be listened to.
The point of this poem is easily identified as reminding an audience who may have very well forgotten that poetry is extremely important in life to provide its artful renderings of life’s happiness and heartbreak. Zimmer enacts a wide variety of devices and emotions in writing this poem and succeeds in crafting one which makes the reader question a world without poetry and settle in on the agreement that poets should never strike because the Earth may very well wobble and fracture.
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