77. WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS

 

77.  WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, June 8, 2022

Margaret Kimberley, GLOBAL US Violence.
WBW, Patricia Hynes, Hope But Demand Justice.
Sam Hamill, et al., eds.  Poets Against the War. 

 

“Mass Shootings, Empire, And Racist, Copaganda Dog Whistles”  By Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report. Popular Resistance.org (6-4-22).  A settler colonial state founded on indigenous genocide and African enslavement that is still addicted to the doctrine of racial domination will be violent. How could it be otherwise? This nation has the world’s highest rate of incarceration, 1,000 police killings every year, a defense budget bigger than any other, and the imperialist wars that inevitably follow. No one should be shocked when individuals here carry out violent acts. Yet that is exactly what we get when mass shootings take place, pretend shock and confused outrage. On May 15, 2022 a racist white man killed 10 Black people at a... -more-

 

In June 2022, World BEYOND War will be holding a weekly discussion each of four weeks of Hope but Demand Justice with the author Patricia Hynes as part of a small group WBW book club limited to a group of 18 participants. She will send each participant a signed paperback or an eBook. We'll let you know which parts of the book will be discussed each week along with the Zoom link to access the discussions. Details and Registration Here.  PS: Can you think of any authors you'd like to discuss in the future?   Please tell us!  H. Patricia Hynes is a retired Professor of Environmental Health from Boston University School of Public Health and current Chair of the Board of the Traprock Center for Peace and Justice. She has written and edited seven books, among them "The Recurring Silent Spring." She writes and speaks on issues of war and militarism with an emphasis on women, the environment, and public health; for example, “Stop the Wars. Save the Planet”: If humanity and much of life on Earth is to survive, we desperately need a climate revolution and a peace revolution.  May 26, 2022.  --D

Sam Hamill, et al., eds.  Poets Against the War.  Thunder’s Mouth Press/Nation Books, 2003.  See all formats and editions.

Amazon sales comment.

Led by poet Sam Hamill, February 12, 2003 became a day of Poetry Against the War conducted as a reading at the White House gates in addition to over 160 public readings in many different countries and almost all of the 50 states. Since then, over 9,000 poets have joined this grassroots peace movement by submitting poems and statements to www.poetsagainstthewar.org, registering their opposition to the Bush administration's headlong plunge toward war in Iraq. Poets Against the War features a selection of the best poems that were submitted to the website. Contributors include: Adrienne Rich, W.S. Merwin, Galway Kinnell, Robert Bly, Marilyn Hacker, Grace Schulman, Shirley Kaufman, Wanda Coleman, Yusef Komunyakaa, Hayden Carruth, Jane Hirshfield, Tess Gallagher, Sandra Cisneros, former Poet Laureate Rita Dove, and many others [including UAF ‘s Geoff Brock’s “Poetry and the American Voice” – Dick].

 

I recommend Hamill’s Anthology and Introduction for their brilliant revelation of the cultural and political potential of poetry.   The wife of Pres. George W. Bush, Laura, a professional librarian, had the good idea of convening a White House symposium on poetry, but had the bad idea of naming the Symposium “Poetry and the American Voice.”  Unfortunately for her, she also chose Walt Whitman, Langston Hughes, and Emily Dickinson as the subjects of the Symposium, who are, in Hamill’s words, “three of the most original and anti-establishmentarian poets in our literature.”  Her mistake was compounded by the date chosen for the Symposium-- only a few days preceding the start of her husband’s indescribably brutal, illegal, criminal, unnecessary “shock and awe” invasion of Iraq (some 3000 missiles striking Baghdad the first two days, justified by lies, and Bush was never imprisoned or even indicted).   The poet Sam Hamill sent out a call for poems “speaking ‘for the conscience of our country’” in opposition.  11,000 poets sent 13,000 poems!  As soon as Mrs. Bush heard of the uprising of the voices of American poetry, she “postponed” the Symposium.  In its place, “over 200 ‘poetry readings against the war’” were held throughout the country and hundreds more around the world, and Hamill selected some 200 poems to represent those 11,000 Poets Against the War.

     Hamill dedicated the book “For Laura Bush.”

One way to categorize the collection is by each poem’s degree of direct to indirect statement.  Some of the poems, unless you knew the occasion, you could not guess they talked of war.  Others directly address readers. Here’s the opening stanza of Robert Bly’s “Call and Answer.”  

“Tell me why it is we don’t lift our voices these days
And cry over what is happening.  Have you noticed
The plans are made for Iraq and the ice cap is melting?”

--Dick