protest poetry

Recently I wrote about what I am reading. I didn’t I mention that my favorite poetry is protest poetry. My favorite poet is Lawrence Ferlinghetti. This morning I read a really good poem (part of a poem, actually) of this genre in Poet’s Choice by Edward Hirsch (Orlando, FL: Harcourt, 2006). It is a section of a poem by Saadi Youssef, “America, America,” from Without an Alphabet, Without a Face (translated from the Arabic by Khaled Mattawa, Saint Paul, MN: Graywolf Press, 2002). Hirsch writes (p. 138) that Youssef wrote the poem “in 1995 in direct response to the hardship and suffering faced by the Iraqis under sanctions instigated by the United States.” I share it here:

 

 

  I too love jeans and jazz and Treasure Island

  and John Silver’s parrot and the balconies of New Orleans.

  I love Mark Twain and the Mississippi steamboats and Abraham

       Lincoln’s dogs.

  I love the fields of wheat and corn and the smell of Virginia

       tobacco.

  But I am not American.

  Is that enough for the Phantom pilot to turn me back to the Stone

       Age?

  I need neither oil nor America herself, neither the elephant nor the

       donkey.

  Leave me, pilot, leave my house roofed with palm fronds and this

       wooden bridge.

  I need neither your Golden Gate nor your skyscrapers.

  I need the village, not New York.

  Why did you come to me from your Nevada desert, soldier armed

       to the teeth?

  Why did you come all the way to distant Basra, where fish used to

       swim by our doorsteps?

  Pigs do not forage here.

  I have only these water buffaloes lazily chewing on water lilies.

  Leave me alone, soldier.

  Leave me my floating cane hut and my fishing spear.

  Leave me my migrating birds and the green plumes.

  Take your roaring iron birds and your Tomahawk missles. I am

       not your foe.

  I am the one who wades up to the knees in rice paddies.

  Leave me to my curse.

  I do not need your day of doom.

 

 

Books I’m Currently Reading

I have been busy online this week writing letters to my representive and senators about the bailout and reading many articles about this hot issue. But I am trying to get some other reading in as well. I’ll share my reading “schedule” here as well as what I am currently reading.

I like to say I have poetry for breakfast, because I’ve been doing that for awhile now. Right now I am reading Edward Hirsch’s Poet’s Choice while eating my oatmeal every morning. This is a great book for finding out about many good poets. Hirsch gives a history about a poet then gives at least one sample poem written by that poet. Occasionally instead of writing about one poet, he writes about an age or a topic, giving samples of poets who have written in that period or about that topic. The first chapter in the book, for example, is “Nightingales.” (That one inspired me to try to find out just what a nightingale’s song sounds like. Unfortunately, all I could find out was that there are no nightingales in the U.S.–they are in England.) Another example of a topic is “Women and War.” I read poetry very slowly, usually just one or maybe two poems for breakfast. I like to retain the taste of the poem I’ve read for awhile.

Lately I’ve added another breakfast item that I’ll call meditation. Currently I’m reading Echoing Silence: Thomas Merton on the Vocation of Writing, edited by Robert Inchausti. I have been attending a Thomas Merton Group at my church that uses a series of eight booklets under the title bridges to contemplative living with thomas merton. The title desribes the purpose of the group. I wanted to add to that reading of Thomas Moore. I’m calling the reading of Thomas Moore in the morning ”meditation” because it helps start my day in a higher frame of mind. It is said that a good breakfast is necessary to sustain your body throughout your morning activities; poetry and meditation for breakfast sustains my mind and spirit. I really should add them to my lunches and dinners as well.

At bedtime, I am currently reading Voodoo Dreams by Jewell Parker Rhodes. OK, it is a complete opposite type of reading than I do in the morning, but I’m loving this book. I met the author at a booksigning event at Left Bank Books (my favorite local independent bookstore), and we have developed an e-mail relationship since then. Anyway, as the title suggests, it is about a real-life Voodoo Queen in New Orleans in the mid-1880s. It is a historical fiction drawn from the pages of a journal kept by a white man who was quite obsessed with the beauty of the woman he met one time before she became the Voodoo Queen. I am about two-thirds of the way through the book and the two have just bumped into each other for the second time. Their relationship is the “heartbeat” of the novel in creating its underlying tension. The snippets from the man’s journal that head most of the chapters keeps the tension alive. My secret self loves dark subjects like this as well as mysteries. I can move through these types of books quickly.

In between dawn and dusk I am reading David Sirota’s The Uprising: An Unauthorized Tour of the Populist Revolt Scaring Wall Street and Washington. I met David at LBB too, when he gave a reading of this book a few months ago. He has since become my favorite political writer (his books have made the New York Times Bestseller List) AND progressive activist. He’s on the board of Campaign for America’s Future (aka Our Future). He’s on TV a lot, usually counterpointing some Republican, and he recently joined Michael Moore on Meet the Bloggers on the internet. I can’t remember if they shared time with a counterpointer or if the moderator just asked significant probing questions, but it was good. Anyway, it is taking me a long time to read his book partly because I read articles by him almost daily on the internet and partly because I don’t have a set time to read this book–it’s a catch-as-catch-can situation.

Finally, my last daily “reading” is done while I’m watching TV–usually these art books and magazines are really picture books that don’t really require much reading. I think I do this reading while “watching” TV because I don’t want to waste my time by watching TV. However there are a couple of weekly TV series I don’t want to miss, and I love the old movies on cable TV. Anyway, the art book I’m reading now is Stefan Bollmann’s Women Who Read Are Dangerous. Despite this sexist belief, a lot of artists from the middle ages to the present time have painted or drawn sketches of women in the act of reading. The author gives a historical blurb about each painting, but this is definitely a lovely picture book.

And that’s the end of this topic!