| The first line of the article "During the twentieth century, the FBI closely monitored poets, read their work, and speculated about their political and artistic intentions." is very different from the second line "American surveillance agencies even hired people with backgrounds in poetry to be spies and code breakers because of their skills in close reading, language analysis and critical thinking." The first line it seems to me is part of the MacCarthy era suspicion of the creative class. Poetry is always ambivalen and you never know exactly what they're talking about. That is suspicious. As a secret service you want clarity and everybody that speaks in riddles is suspect. The second line is about exploiting the skills of poets to become spies and code breakers for the American cause. Did they use those poetic spies to spy on other poets, or did they use them to spy on regular spy stuff that had nothing to do with poetry? Or where those poetic spies used to spy on other creative artists? Where those poetic spies heroes or part of morally corrupt McCarthyism? I wonder? |