May 2026

But something about the current drift of things is concerning. In 1946, George Orwell articulated some of the reasons in his essay “The Prevention of Literature.” “But what is sinister,” Orwell says, “is that the conscious enemies of liberty are those to whom liberty ought to mean most . . . The direct, conscious attack on intellectual decency comes from the intellectuals themselves.”

It is sinister, especially, when looked at through poetry. Orwell believed that even under a climate of censorship, poets can thrive: “The destruction of intellectual liberty cripples the journalist, the sociological writer, the historian, the novelist, the critic, and the poet, in that order.” The poet is last on the list because tyrants do not have the sense to get what he is saying (or to care).

The dynamics have changed. Today, poets don’t only consider it their job to scream at “tyrants”; they not only make demands like thugs; more than that, they act like the Stasi, going around with tiny torchlights looking for racism and sexism in works of art.

Responding to a poem I shared with him, an American poet told me it was musically sound, but also added (parenthetically), “you’d have a hard time publishing a poem in the US with the word ‘whore’ in it. ‘Sex worker’ is what you have to say now, which of course is absurd and immediately ruins the poem.” (The “whore” is myself.) I have hawked the poem around and no one has taken it. Certain words can so trigger people now that choosing a word for how it rings next to another word has become a political act.

As Geoffrey Hill said of Shakespeare, the true poet knows what is justly and unjustly demanded of him, and finds his way around it. Every such challenge tasks his inventiveness; if he succeeds, his triumph is greater because of it. But if the eccentricity of a phrase, in the context of a poem, if the use of a word like “Negress” without the quotes in Dickman’s poem, is deemed too offensive to be read—what is to become of John Stuart Mill’s much-cherished “eccentricity of action,” which is fundamental to a liberal society? How are we to live if we cannot risk offense in a poem?

It’s a stunning admission from a Black lawmaker who represents a majority-Hispanic Los Angeles district: Defeating Republicans might be more important than protecting districts like hers.

And it’s a real possibility the party would have to deploy the tactic if it hopes to stand a chance against the most aggressive Republican gerrymandering possible. To draw House seats with the best margins for the party — especially in states like Illinois and New York — district lines would likely need to be altered in a way that packs large numbers of Black voters into red-leaning areas in order to make them bluer.

It’s not just a few Democrats switching their minds. Consider the Harris voters who initially say they would protect majority-minority districts: When asked about countering the GOP, they split roughly evenly, with 46 percent saying it’s more important to draw more blue seats and 41 percent saying the majority-minority districts should be kept together.