Buffalo News , NY
April 26 2009
Poems bear witness to the world’s horrors
Lucy Kogler
Little did T. S. Eliot know when he wrote the first five words of `The
Wasteland’ in 1920 ‘ `April is the cruelest month’ ‘ just how
portentous his words were.
April is the month in which poetry is celebrated and genocide
memorialized. The six genocides commemorated are: April 6, Bosnia and
Herzegovina; April 7, Rwanda; April 17, Cambodia; April 18, present
Darfur; April 21, the Holocaust; and April 24, Armenia.
These two occasions would seem to be at odds, but I don’t think so. I
believe that National Poetry Month is the corollary to Genocide
Awareness Month.
National Poetry Month gives us the opportunity to celebrate our
ability as humans to use words to explain and glorify our
world. Genocide Awareness Month gives us the opportunity to
acknowledge
our capacity for evil. The desired outcome of focusing our attentions
on atrocities is that a global intolerance for further occurrences
will be generated.
We are creatures who need to explain and illuminate. We need to give
voice to our rage, fear, hope and joy. We need to share our
experiences. Ultimately a poem is a memory, thought or experience put
into words. A poem organizes what is chaotic and terrifying.
A poem tells the story of the disappeared, of the butchered, of the
gassed, of the starved.
A poem is an image of something seen by the dead ‘ hidden in a wall,
written on a leaf, memorized and rebirthed by survivors.
A poem is a song heard in ditches, in forests, in tents, in barracks,
in transports. Poems bear witness. It is the obligation of not only
the witness, survivor, poet, but of the words themselves, to give life
to the horror. One need only recognize the pulse of humanity and not
the specific author in order for the words to be alive and present. It
is our own voice we hear as we read these poems, and by hearing our
voice transported to the situation, we make alive our conscience and
force awareness.
Carolyn Forche is the editor of an incredible and important anthology
of poetry: `Against Forgetting.’ In it are poems from the wars and
genocides of the 20th century starting with the Armenian
genocide. Reading the political poetry of the 20th and 21st century
should be an essential part of everyone’s education.
I remember being given a poetry anthology, `A Gathering of Poems,’ as
a teenager by one of my friends. I was home from school, sick, and
feeling sorry for myself. I opened it and found the poem by a young
girl who had been in a concentration camp. I still remember the words
and why I wanted to memorize them:
From tomorrow on I will be sad From tomorrow on Not today, today I
will be glad And every day no matter how hard it may be I will say
>From tomorrow on I will be sad And not today. I still use this poem as
fortitude
when confronted with an intolerable situation. Poetry will always be
the most immediate and the most intimate way in for me.
This month at Talking Leaves Books we will be handing out a `Books of
Conscience’ flyer prepared by the independent booksellers association.
On Thursday we will be handing out poems for `Poem in Your Pocket
Day.’ As Buffalo’s oldest independent bookstore, we take our
responsibility to make available the writing that will keep us free
from tyranny very seriously. Let’s be utterly aware this month, and
for longer!
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