An Open Letter to the Democratic Presidential Candidates

by Michael Odom (August 2019)

Triumph of Bacchus, Bob Thompson, 1964

Dear Candidate:

I would like to give you the chance to answer these six questions about the state of our culture. These are questions that have come to dominate online discourse and that, I believe, Hillary Clinton disastrously assumed more than answered. These questions with your responses (if and when received) will be published in an upcoming online edition of New English Review, a journal of culture many Democrats turn to as they turn away from the Democratic Party.

Thank you in advance your replies.

Questions for Candidates

There is no more important issue than culture. With that in mind, I would like to give each candidate a chance to take an explicit stand here, in New English Review, a journal whose readers care deeply about culture. I hope all will respond to one, some, or all these questions.

1. At a Pennsylvania university English Department, students tore down a picture of Shakespeare to put up a picture of Audre Lorde in its place. What does that act mean to you?

3. Pop stars win Nobel and Pulitzer prizes and have Harvard fellowships named for them and a reality TV star is President. Do you see these as related symptoms of a culture in crisis?

Who is this asking? I voted Republican in 1980, the first time I voted, but John Anderson lost that primary to Ronald Reagan. I re-registered and have voted Democrat ever since. Full disclosure: I lived in San Francisco, still live in California, and have voted for Kamala Harris for three offices. I have voted for Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden as well. I am not committed to anyone as of now and the character of our Democratic discourse has changed dramatically.

Why do I ask? I have almost two decades of experience working in bookstores and almost three publishing poetry. When the bookstores went under for lack of public interest, I returned to school to get a Master of Fine Arts degree in Poetry on the theory I might teach my art. What I found in academia (not all, not even the majority, but dominant in the administration and reporting) is hate, exclusion, and totalitarian ideology, not poetry, not the humanities. In listening to Democrats debate, I hear little or no awareness of these essential cultural issues.

Michael Odom

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