Lance Phillips • June 03, 2025
I have been writing and publishing poetry for the last thirty years, but lately I have been struggling with whether a body of work, any work, amounts to anything substantial. Maybe because of my age (I am quickly approaching the age at which my father died), maybe because the creation and dissemination of art, by its very nature, is ephemeral, maybe because the current political climate seems to be directly questioning the body politic’s fundamental right to “speak truth to power,” or maybe because of some complicated combination of all of these, I find myself questioning – granted these questions are only murmurs – ‘does art matter?’
Of course, when I stop to think it through, the obvious answer is YES, art and free speech matter, both to the artist and to a civil, critically thinking, society. Art fundamentally challenges the status quo, thus forcing its audience to ask questions about their perceptions of the world. The goal of art is not to change minds, it is to encourage questions, and in that respect it is in league with the freedom of speech. Whether that encouragement occurs on the page, the canvas, the stage, or the courtroom, it must be given the space to cook (as the kids say these days).
Recently NPR and PBS have filed suit against the current administration claiming that the defunding effort directed towards them is predicated on the President’s dislike of their content. The kind of curtailment that this defunding effort seems to encourage reduces the populace’s ability to critically consider events of the day. It discourages treatment of the world as it is. It discourages joy. It discourages critical engagement.
Two eminent writers have died recently, both of whom were fierce supporters of questioning the status quo and unwavering in their desire to give voice to the disenfranchised. These writers challenged their readers to engage differently with the world, thereby imagining a new world.
Leonardo Cendamo/Getty Images
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, a Kenyan writer known for his unyielding questioning of authority and its consequences to regular people, died on May 28, 2025. It is impossible to explore all his novels and plays in this short blog post, but one quote from the novel Wizard of the Crow, speaks directly to how we live our lives in the face of circumstances that try to silence our critical thoughts:
“Your own actions are a better mirror of your life than the actions of all your enemies put together.”
How we choose to act and what we spend our time doing are far more important than the fact that society may be driving to stop us.
The American poet Alice Notley died on May 20, 2025. Over the course of more than twenty books, she made it her project to give voice to the often unheard and overlooked. Her poetry is wildly innovative, and critical of the “one-size fits all” kind of thinking that often permeates society. This quote from a conversation is particularly apt at this moment in history in the United States of America:
“… our production of the world, our interpretation of it, what we’ve been told to experience and what we’ve been told we have to do, both worry and distress me. I don’t want to live in someone else’s dream.”
I do not want to live someone else’s dream either, and I suspect neither do any of you. So what can we do about it? How can we make our thinking matter in a country that seems hellbent on ignoring any version of reality that does not tow the “company line?”
The first step is to trust that there is a community of people who agree with you.
The second step is to seek that community out.
The third step is to create.
Create art that reflects how you see the world and share it with that community. Not all change is immediate. Finding joy in living is the essence of art, it is the essence of critical thinking. By connecting with your community of artists and thinkers and reformers, you are “speaking truth to power.”
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