Thursday, March 19, we reflected on 6th Anniversary of the war by reading poetry and Lysistrata, a play about the women of Athens who decided to refuse men sex to stop the war. Now whether or not they succeed we'll have to see when we finish the play next week. It was fun reading the play aloud and discussing the poetry. Students had differing opinions about war and violence and self-defense.
If you were absent and missed class, I can send you a copy of the poetry package. A link to the play is posted in 3/17. Post your reflections on your poem here.
Please respond to another student's post. Many students are behind on the cyber-assignments. In the letter to Felicia Pride, students were to respond to another person's letter in Pride's voice.
I am at Laney college now getting ready to be interviewed on the Black Hour radio show by the host, Reggie James, a former student of mine. I am still planning to attend the satellite conversation with Ernest Gaines at Cal State East Bay, Oakland campus, but I am thinking about trying to also attend the conference on modern African Art at Stanford tomorrow also, and then go to opening night at The SF Playhouse.
Have a good weekend. Remember, Wednesday, March 25, there are no classes: Staff Inservice.
The poetry is posted in the comment section here.
If you were absent and missed class, I can send you a copy of the poetry package. A link to the play is posted in 3/17. Post your reflections on your poem here.
Please respond to another student's post. Many students are behind on the cyber-assignments. In the letter to Felicia Pride, students were to respond to another person's letter in Pride's voice.
I am at Laney college now getting ready to be interviewed on the Black Hour radio show by the host, Reggie James, a former student of mine. I am still planning to attend the satellite conversation with Ernest Gaines at Cal State East Bay, Oakland campus, but I am thinking about trying to also attend the conference on modern African Art at Stanford tomorrow also, and then go to opening night at The SF Playhouse.
Have a good weekend. Remember, Wednesday, March 25, there are no classes: Staff Inservice.
The poetry is posted in the comment section here.
posted by Professor Wanda's Posse at 3:48 PM
7 Comments:
Here is the poetry we read Thurday, March 19, 2009
“These are the times that try men's souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated. Britain, with an army to enforce her tyranny, has declared that she has a right (not only to TAX) but "to BIND us in ALL CASES WHATSOEVER" and if being bound in that manner, is not slavery, then is there not such a thing as slavery upon earth. Even the expression is impious; for so unlimited a power can belong only to God.”
--Thomas Paine, 1776
Published on 23 December 1776
The poems that follow in this packet were all published originally on http://poetsagainstthewar.org/
Facing It
by Yusef Komunyakaa
My black face fades,
hiding inside the black granite.
I said I wouldn't,
dammit: No tears.
I'm stone. I'm flesh.
My clouded reflection eyes me
like a bird of prey, the profile of night
slanted against morning. I turn
this way--the stone lets me go.
I turn that way--I'm inside
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
again, depending on the light
to make a difference.
I go down the 58,022 names,
half-expecting to find
my own in letters like smoke.
I touch the name Andrew Johnson;
I see the booby trap's white flash.
Names shimmer on a woman's blouse
but when she walks away
the names stay on the wall.
Brushstrokes flash, a red bird's
wings cutting across my stare.
The sky. A plane in the sky.
A white vet's image floats
closer to me, then his pale eyes
look through mine. I'm a window.
He's lost his right arm
inside the stone. In the black mirror
a woman's trying to erase names:
No, she's brushing a boy's hair.
Dedication
by Czeslaw Milosz
You whom I could not save
Listen to me.
Try to understand this simple speech as I would be ashamed of another.
I swear, there is in me no wizardry of words.
I speak to you with silence like a cloud or a tree.
What strengthened me, for you was lethal.
You mixed up farewell to an epoch with the beginning of a new one,
Inspiration of hatred with lyrical beauty,
Blind force with accomplished shape.
Here is the valley of shallow Polish rivers. And an immense bridge
Going into white fog. Here is a broken city,
And the wind throws the screams of gulls on your grave
When I am talking with you.
What is poetry which does not save
Nations or people?
A connivance with official lies,
A song of drunkards whose throats will be cut in a moment,
Readings for sophomore girls.
That I wanted good poetry without knowing it,
That I discovered, late, its salutary aim,
In this and only this I find salvation.
They used to pour millet on graves or poppy seeds
To feed the dead who would come disguised as birds.
I put this book here for you, who once lived
So that you should visit us no more.
Rain on a Battlefield
by Yehuda Amichai
It rains on the faces,
On my live friends' faces.
Those who cover their heads with a blanket.
And it rains on my dead friends' faces,
Those who are covered by nothing
(transl. by Assia Guttman)
Grass
by Carl Sandburg
PILE the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work?
I am the grass; I cover all.
And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
What place is this?
Where are we now?
I am the grass.
Let me work.
From America, America
by Saadi Youssef
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?
. . .
America:
let's exchange gifts. Take your smuggled cigarettes
and give us potatoes.
Take James Bond's golden pistol
and give us Marilyn Monroe's giggle.
Take the heroin syringe under the tree
and give us vaccines.
Take your blueprints for model penitentiaries
and give us village homes.
Take the books of your missionaries
and give us paper for poems to defame you.
Take what you do not have
and give us what we have.
Take the stripes of your flag
and give us the stars.
Take the Afghani Mujahideen beard
and give us Walt Whitman's beard filled with
butterflies.
Take Saddam Hussein
and give us Abraham Lincoln
or give us no one.
. . .
We are not hostages, America
and your soldiers are not God's soldiers ...
We are the poor ones, ours is the earth of the drowned gods,
the gods of bulls
the gods of fires
the gods of sorrows that intertwine clay and
blood in a song...
We are the poor, ours is the god of the poor
who emerges out of farmers' ribs
hungry
and bright,
and raises heads up high...
America, we are the dead.
Let your soldiers come.
Whoever kills a man, let him resurrect him.
We are the drowned ones, dear lady.
We are the drowned.
Let the water come.
(translated from the Arabic by Khaled Mattawa)
Speaking: The Hero
I did not want to go.
They inducted me.
I did not want to die.
They called me yellow.
I tried to run away.
They courtmartialed me.
I did not shoot.
They said I had no guts.
I cried in pain.
They carried me to safety.
In safety I died.
They blew taps over me.
They crossed out my name
And buried me under a cross.
They made a speech in my home town.
I was unable to call them liars.
They said I gave my life.
I had struggled to keep it.
They said I set an example
I had tried to run.
They said they were proud of me.
I had been ashamed of them.
They said my mother should be proud.
My mother cried.
I wanted to live.
They called me a coward.
I died a coward.
They called me a hero.
by Felix Pollak
The End and the Beginning
by Wislawa Szmborska
After every war
someone has to clean up.
Things won't
straighten themselves up, after all.
Someone has to push the rubble
to the sides of the road,
so the corpse-laden wagons can pass.
Someone has to get mired
in scum and ashes,
asofa-springs,
splintered glass,
and bloody rags.
Someone must drag in a girder
to prop up a wall.
Someone must glaze a window,
rehang a door.
Photogenic it's not,
and takes years.
All the cameras have left
for another war.
Again we'll need bridges
and new railway stations.
Sleeves will go ragged
from rolling them up.
Someone, broom in hand,
still recalls how it was.
Someone listens
and nods with unsevered head.
Yet others milling about
already find it dull.
From behind the bush
sometimes someone still unearths
rust-eaten arguments
and carries them to the garbage pile.
Those who knew
what was going on here
must give way to
those who know little.
And less than little.
And finally as little as nothing.
In the grass which has overgrown
causes and effects,
someone must be stretched out,
blade of grass in his mouth,
gazing at the clouds.
Wislawa Szmborska was a Polish poet. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1996. She died in 2002, at the age of 101.
Give Back Peace
Give back father, give back mother,
Give back grandpa, give back grandma,
Give back boys, give back girls.
Give me back myself, give me back men
Linked to me.
As long as men live as men,
Give back peace,
Peace that never crumbles.
by Sankichi Toge
Japan (1917-1953)
Speak Out
And a vast paranoia sweeps across the land
And America turns the attack on its Twin Towers
Into the beginning of the Third World War
The war with the Third World
And the terrorists in Washington
Are drafting all the young men
And no one speaks
And they are rousting out
All the ones with turbans
And they are flushing out
All the strange immigrants
And they are shipping all the young men
To the killing fields again
And no one speaks
And when they come to round up
All the great writers and poets and painters
The National Endowment of the Arts of Complacency
Will not speak
While all the young men
Will be killing all the young men
In the killing fields again
So now is the time for you to speak
All you lovers of liberty
All you lovers of the pursuit of happiness
All you lovers and sleepers
Deep in your private dreams
Now is the time for you to speak
O silent majority
Before they come for you
-- Lawrence Ferlinghetti
NO
Yes that was me you saw shaking with bravery, with a government issued rifle on my back. I'm sorry I could not greet you as you deserved, my relative.
No. They were not my tears. I have a resevoir inside. They will be cried by my sons, my daughters if I can't learn how to turn tears to stone.
Yes, that was me standing in the back door of the house in the alley, with a bowl of beans in my hands for the neighbors, a baby on my hip.
No. I did not foresee the flood of blood. How they would forget our friendship, would return to kill me and the baby.
Yes, that was me whirling on the dance floor. We made such a racket with all that joy. I loved the whole world in that silly music.
No. I did not realize the terrible dance in the staccato of bullets.
Yes. I smelled the burning grease of corpses after they were lit by the pages of our poems. And like a fool I expected our words might rise up and jam the artillery in the hands of dictators.
No. We had to keep going. Our songs of grief cleaned the air of enemy spirits.
Yes, I did see the terrible black clouds over the suburb as I cooked dinner. And the messages of the dying spelled there in the ashy sunset. Every one addressed: “mother”.
No, there was nothing about it in the news. Everything was the same. Unemployment was up. Another queen crowned with flowers. Then there were the sports scores.
Yes, the distance was great between your country and mine. Yet our children played in the path between our houses.
We had no quarrel with each other.
© Joy Harjo, Honolulu, HI, 2003
The Dead Do Not Want Us Dead
The dead do not want us dead;
such petty errors are left for the living.
Nor do they want our mourning.
No gift to them--not rage, not weeping.
Return one of them, any one of them, to the earth,
and look: such foolish skipping,
such telling of bad jokes, such feasting!
Even a cucumber, even a single anise seed: feasting
-- Jane Hirshfield
Umoja: Each One of Us Counts
One went the way of water,
one crumpled under stone;
one climbed the air but plunged through fire,
one fought the fear alone.
Remember us, though we are gone.
A star flares on an epaulet,
a ball rolls in harm's way;
the glowing line onscreen goes flat,
an anonymous bullet strays --
Remember us! Do not forget!
One lay slathered in garlands,
one left only a smear;
one cracked a joke, smiled, then shrugged
to show he didn't care.
Do not forget that we were here.
Do those who failed still miss the wind,
that sweet breath from the sky?
Do they still covet rock and moss
or the swift, hard blink of the lizard's eye?
We walk on water, we are written on air.
Let us honor the lost, the snatched, the
relinquished,
those vanquished by glory, muted by shame.
Stand up in the silence they've left and listen:
those absent ones, unknown and unnamed --
remember!
their whispers fill the arena.
-- Rita Dove, 2003
(U.S. poet laureate, 1993-1995)
State of the Union, 2003
I have not been to Jerusalem,
but Shirley talks about the bombs.
I have no god, but have seen the children praying
for it to stop. They pray to different gods.
The news is all old news again, repeated
like a bad habit, cheap tobacco, the social lie.
The children have seen so much death
that death means nothing to them now.
They wait in line for bread.
They wait in line for water.
Their eyes are black moons reflecting emptiness.
We've seen them a thousand times.
Soon, the President will speak.
He will have something to say about bombs
and freedom and our way of life.
I will turn the tv off. I always do.
Because I can't bear to look
at the monuments in his eyes.
-- Sam Hamill
Mourning a dead Sparrow
--by Alexandra Kostoulas
The man who sat next to me on the plane
Speaks with a thick Massachusetts accent and orders
Jack and coke at 9 in the morning and talks about how
He’s really into his TV. and his entertainment system
And he has surround sound speakers and many dogs.
He told me: “I don’t have to worry, see I can travel, see
Because I make 50 bucks an hour.”
When I asked him what he did for a living, he told me that he drove a bulldozer
And moved wetlands.
“The tough part of it is,’ he says to me, sweating over his jack and coke,
“is that what most people don’t realize is that when you move wetlands from one area to another in order to make beaches in Rhode Island, when you move beaches, he says, sometimes you gotta kill a lot of animals.
“And I’m sure,” he says, “that most people would not want to support developing and moving wetlands if they knew how many animals and birds we killed with the bulldozer when we went through.
“But it don’t matter because I’m really into my music and when I listen to my i-pod
it all fades away and I can just plow through everything with my bulldozer and nothing can reach me.”
*
Mathew, Mark, Luke and John are four 19-year-old vets coming home
on leave from the marines.
They stand straight up and pierce the sky
They stand strong, erect as people wheel by in the airport.
Nobody pays them attention but they know, somehow in the crowded Southwest Airlines terminal that everyone knows that they were coming home from war.
And they sit in the terminal with their boots stretched out, heels anchored in the middle of the polished floors.
Their feet are in combat boots and they’re wearing camo fatigues.
They each have spiky military haircuts that are starting to grow out
that they’ve jelled artfully in strategic spikes.
Mark wonders if his girlfriend will be home when he gets there.
Luke hopes his mother has stopped using crack.
Paul wonders when his GI bill will kick in so that he can go to nursing school and
John remembers his words, echoing, searing like explosions in the minds of the women and children that have had to leave their homes and follow his command.
John and the blood, blooming out of his best friend’s arm hopes nobody will find out
about the young boy have sodomized and beaten and left to bleed to death on the side of the road.
That night, John dreams he is a corpse and that the young Iraqi boy is alive, and putting hot pebbles one by one over his eyes, sending him down the Euphrates River.
Little black magpies are pecking at the crumbs in the green grass around him on the raft.
John wishes that he could sing like the little birds that are chirping and yet every time he closes his eyes he can feel his life slipping out of his warm throat.
“I’m really into my music”, says Luke. “Sometimes when I’m listening to my music, I can just drive a tank through a whole village and nothing phases me. I’m in the zone, and it’s great.”
*
A little sparrow once dropped in front of my feet and died when I was walking.
It’s neck snapped but it was still alive for several minutes afterwards.
When I brought it into the office to try to get someone to give me some help
To rescue it, the secretaries tapped their acrylic nails screaming:
get-that-thing-out-of-here in Morse code on the Formica counter.
I answered the tapping with wet eyes and a dry mouth. What language could I use to tell them, that this little beaten creature too, needs to be loved, that this hunk of flesh and beak and bone too, deserves to live?
Rebecca Evans eng 1a 9-10 3/22/09 response to Speak Out war poem
“Speak Out” written by Lawrence Ferlinghetti was written in response to the war in Iraq but can honestly and accurately represent any war. During war soldiers, citizens, and government leaders go into a sense of complacency, taking the struggles at face value. Ferlinghetti asks people to connect with their human soul and to search and foster liberty, happiness, and dreams. One of the only wars in history is which people spoke out against the indignation was Vietnam. It also was the first war that did not impact the United States on home soil in terms of rationing, battles, or citizen casualties.
Hippies as named were the “lovers of liberty, pursuit (pursuers) of happiness…sleepers deep in private dreams” (stanza 6 Speak Out). It is easy to avoid the problems and forget the pain happening across the ocean. However, in Iraq a war is being fought that has killed 31089 American soldiers. The irony is Americans don’t necessary recognize the immediate impact and dangers. We do not face the combat on a day to day or face to face basis. Vietnam reflected the same scene it was, the war off shore, the war not scene.
The strength of one person can bring aid to others. Obama shared his substance in the community of Altgeld. With his one voice he instilled the powers, dreams, and dedication of Angela, Shirley, and Mona. Ferlinghetti suggested people coming together and fighting for peace.
As a nation we cannot ignore the war in the Middle East. The war has taken $656.1 billion for the U.S. that could have been put to better use in U.S. health care, education and alternative energy research. Government has the utmost power in out battles so the strongest actions American can take is to vote for appropriate representatives in office which is exactly what was achieved in
2008.
National Priorities Project. 2009. National Priorities Project. River Valley Tech Collective. 19 Mar 2009(www.nationalpriorities.org/costofwar_home)
Enlish 1A 8-8:50am
Grass by Carl Sandburg: Interesting way to think about war but still sad like any other way to talk about it. Grass is vivid and is a beautiful thing to look at, lie on, eat on—there are thousands of insects that live in the grass. War is such a terrible thing, and bodies disintegrate into the grass as if nothing ever happened. Looking at the remains of an ancient battlefield only scratches the surface of emotion that was expressed during that time.
Hong Tang
English 1A 9-10am
Speaking: The Hero
I admire this poem because it seems to me it's speaking out for the deads. In other words, no one want to go to war. For those who attended war are full of fears. Those people were risking their lives to serve our country with honor but they might not wanted to do so. Maybe there's no toher way around. Yet, for those who really lost theor lives could never speak the truth of how they really feel about the war. Others might give speeches about them or try to speak for the deads, putting words int heir mouth. However, the truth will never be hear.
Chris W
English 1A
20 March 2009
The End of the Beginning � Wislawa Szmborska
This poem is 100 percent true. It tells of the effects of war. After every war there is someone who has to clean up all the bodies, someone has to repair damaged buildings, and someone has to help rebuild a city that was devastated by a war. War is not an easy thing for anyone to go through especially if its happening right in your back yard.
The Author is trying to get a message across to the reader. She is trying to get people to understand that war is wrong. Hopefully by explaining all of this she may have changed some peoples view about war.
The Author Wislawa Szmborska was a polish poet who lived through the war. She witnessed first hand the negative effects a war can take on a community. She knows all to well about war. She has received numerous awards for her writing.
Nely Ruiz
English 1A 9:00am – 10:00am
March 23, 2009
Free write War Poems
Rain on a Battlefield by: Yeduda Amichai
It rains on the faces
On my live friends faces.
Those who cover their heads with a blanket,
And it rains on my dead friends faces,
Those who are covered by nothing.
(Translated by: Assia Guthman)
This poem written by Yeduda Amichai notes the impact of war. War is an action that has severe consequences. In a way it is equal and random; it does not select targets, but rather accumulates unexpecting victims. He reflects on the comparison of rain and war. They both fall upon everyone regardless of race, age, or gender. War is the same way; death comes to the young, poor and hungry.
It rains on the live faces, wounded faces and dead faces. Only the living and wounded can do something about it, they can, “cover their heads with a blanket…” (Ln.13) Only the living can stand up and love it out of the rain, or remove it from their faces. The dead do not have that privilege. Same is true for war the dead cannot stand up to it, only the living can stop it and remove it from the world.
Andre Stephens
English 1A – 9:00 – 9:50
March 22, 2009
Speaking: The Hero, by Felix Pollax
This poem is about a soldier who was deployed to go fight in the war. He felt he was going to get killed and didn’t want to go, but was called a coward. He wanted to get away and went AWOL. He was court-martialed for committing the crime. On the battleground, he hesitates to shoot and gets shot and ends up dying. At the burial he was given many compliments but they were contradictory because that’s not what was said to him when he was alive. When he was alive, his superiors and fellow soldiers thought nothing of him. When he died, they gave him adulations.
In the end, the hero finally gets a chance to be heard by the reader even though he’s dead.
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