Preface - Electronic Poetry Center

imagination, and often introduces the ideas and images that mainstream artists
develop for more popular tastes. We all benefit from the NEA.
Art also can provide us with morality of a sort different than the Right defines
it. Not simply indulging in tired pieties, serious art, when critical of our
institutions and our daily practices, can serve as the bell-ringer to wake up our
national conscience. Funding the arts helps foster voices of dissent, a necessity
in a healthy democracy.
But Helms, Gingrich and company aren’t interested in good art or healthy
democracy. Nor is my congressman in Sheboygan, James Sensenbrenner. He
has voted to eliminate the NEA for the past four years. He cites the same old
cost arguments as the others. But money is a cloak over the real issue: the
critics of the NEA want to promote their own set of cultural values while
discouraging debate and critique. If money was the only issue, we would
naturally expect Republicans to subject far more expensive weapons programs
to the same cost-conscious scrutiny as they do the arts.
For my part, I’d rather that someone abroad knew about my country because of
American novels than because of American war technology.