The Garden of Verse: The Search for the Truth of America and Other Poetic Journeys

           The prose introduction to Dick Allen's poem "I Was Eighteen" in the March issue of Verse-Virtual is a poem by itself: "So in the summer of 1958, I hitchhiked, train rode, bus rode, and walked about our nation. Ever since, I’ve doubted any truth about America that doesn’t stumble on rural dirt roads and stand under inner-city streetlights."  

          The poetry of names rides along on this villanelle's refrain:

Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska—
           when I was eighteen I hitch-hiked across them,
trying to find out the truth about America.

            I love this poem's candor and expansive innocence. The poet simply hitchhikes across the country "In sunlight and storm" -- imagine your son proposing to do that today? -- asking himself and those he meets for the "truth about America."

            The innocence of the boy -- "But I was eighteen, naïve as clam chowder" -- reveals something about the nobility of the quest, and the country in which he pursues it, even if by itself it does not lead to wisdom. In the poem's final stanza that last line becomes:

 they just smiled when I asked them the truth about America.           

            In  the villanelle "So Easily Do Women Weep" by William Greenway, the formal repetitions of the refrain reveal meaning through shades of emphasis. Is the poem truly about how easily women weep, or is it (as the developing stanzas indicate) about what men hide from women? The first stanza foregrounds the alleged ease, and copiousness, of women's tears, and appends the reflection on male tears in a subordinate clause, the second of the two refrains.

So easily do women weep

you wonder why the seas don’t overflow

and though a man may sorrow just as deep

          But the emphasis shifts in later stanzas to: 

the depth of grief we keep

is something she must never know 

so easily do women weep.

            That ease of women's tears turns into men's excuse for keeping their grief unshared. (Face it, guys, we know this is true.)

            Joyce S. Brown's  "Villanelle to a Golfer" turns the form into a dialectic. At the start we learn "To me life seems more Hardy than Voltaire." She stakes out Hardy country by walking through the storm, while the golfer dresses for the links.

            Later, when the golfer exhibits some vulnerability, we learn:

            Now you’ve become more Hardy than Voltaire.

            But at the end poet and golfer are living in the universe after all:

            the dark, the light of Hardy and Voltaire.

            ​ Margaret Hasse's "Divorce Proceedings" modifies the refrain of the antagonistic couples -- "They burn with anger as they slam the door" -- to spell out the necessary corollaries of a couple who, as the poem says, "banish their better angels./ No,
they cannot live the life they had before." Every aspect of their prior life together goes out that slamming door: 

A signed decree and marriage is no more.              
Wedding china, photos, the blue tent—go.

            The final version of the refrain is the necessary conclusion of the "burning anger" we heard about in the first stanza, using most of the same words repurposed:

They can never live the life they had before
everything burned and they closed the door.

             The moral? Don't shut the door on the flexible value of the villanelle. You can read the rest of these poems, and all the others, at http://www.verse-virtual.com/poems-and-articles.html

The Garden of Verse: Dancing the Villanelle

         Here's the beginning of a poem by Michael T. Young in the current, March 2017 issue of Verse-Virtual, the online poetry journal. The title is "Expecting a Trump Presidency" which, right there, gives you some idea of what to expect from its content and, perhaps, its mood:

 It surely won’t be as bad as people say.

The news plays on our fear, exaggerates.

It’s not like they’ll be marching us away.

            The poem is written in the form called the villanelle. My only real knowledge of this form is that it was used by Dylan Thomas in a poem whose refrain is quoted as often as almost any poem produced in the 20th century. (Maybe a few lines from Robert Frost are a little bit ahead.) The refrain in Thomas's poem is: "Do no go gentle into that good night/ Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

            The villanelle format creates some structural impediments to keep those lines apart. The poem must have six stanzas, the first five consisting of only three lines. The two lines of the refrain are separated in the first stanza by a single, non-rhyming line. In the subsequent stanzas, the second stanza concludes with the first line of the refrain ("Do not go gentle into that good night"). The third stanza concludes with the second line of the refrain ("Rage, rage against the dying of the light"). The second line in each of these stanzas must rhyme with the second line in the first stanza.

            This pattern continues until the sixth, final stanza, when two new lines precede the two-line refrain. Only in this final stanza do those famous two lines follow one another, as they customarily are when people quote from the poem. Here's the final stanza of Thomas's famous poem:

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

  

            It's clear the formal structure of the villanelle puts a lot of weight on those two repeated lines. Given where we are politically in this country in the first months of a new administration, I think Michael Young has met (and exceeded) that challenge in composing his refrain: "It surely won’t be as bad as people say...

It’s not like they’ll be marching us away."

            But the second hurdle, given he role that repetition must play in the poem, is to make those stanzas "go somewhere" beyond simply repeating the initial message. Repetition is a powerful effect -- some popular songs are built on almost nothing but a refrain (often repeated many, many times) -- but shades of emphasis, variation, and fuller meaning can be drawn from the same words as the poem progresses.

             In the third stanza of Young's poem the poet darkens the implication of the initial stanza by varying the wording of the refrain. You don't say "It's not like they’ll be marching us away" unless you wish to plant that very thought. It's like saying, "I won't mention my divorce." Now you've mentioned it.   

            In the third stanza that "marching away" becomes more explicit:

He wouldn’t dare to bundle us like hay,
mark those who wear hijab, open the gates,
rounding them up and marching them away.

         

            In the fourth stanza he darkens the implication further by expanding the range of potential victims: "It doesn’t matter if you’re straight or gay./ He can’t determine rights by who one dates...."

            In the final stanza the reader is advised to "Ignore the knocking. It’s just another day."... Now when the two refrain lines are paired directly, the end-rhymes fall like the closing of a trap:  

            It surely won’t be as bad as people say.
                  It’s not like they’ll be marching us away.

 

            Joel Johnson's poem "Dear Camille" also introduces variations in the wording of the refrains to reveal a truth about the speaker of the poem. In the first stanza we have:

Words belong in rows, even plain and clear,
a casual font on an ivory sheet.
I write because I cannot be sincere.

            In the fourth stanza, at its second repetition, that first refrain becomes: "Words belong in rows, even cold and clear." We hear that 'cold' and know that the author of this letter to poor Camille is telling us more than he may intend. And in the following stanza, the second line of the refrain has become: "I write because I hate to be sincere."

           The final stanza makes the situation explicit. It begins "A letter, rewritten, is engineered," a comment that aptly applies to the entire letter-poem. And that second refrains has turned into the coldly revealing: "I write because I loathe to be sincere."

           

            To read these poems in their entirety, and many others -- including lots of villanelles offering many different approaches to tailoring this seemingly tight-fitting suit of poetic clothes -- see http://www.verse-virtual.com/poems-and-articles.html.

The Garden of Images: History Repeats Itself in Anti-immigrant Hysteria

The photo above pictures a moment in the  round-up of immigrants in America 100 years ago. The suspicious 'outsiders' are white-skinned people from southern and eastern Europe -- Italians, Jews, Poles, Russians, Greeks, Serbs, Ukrainians, Lithuanians. The mass round-up of immigrants took place during the period of political hysteria of targeting and removing the devils who live and conspire among us known as the Red Scare of 1919-20. Our government was convinced for that two-year period that 'radical' foreigners were plotting a revolution to turn the US into a Communist state such as Soviet Russia.

The second photo is a contemporary image of an ICE officer taking part in a roundup of "undocumented immigrants" today. The victims are likely Latinos or people from the Middle East. It's great to see that American democracy has made such progress over the last century, so that we don't keep making the mistake of blaming our problems on 'outsiders' who don't really belong here. 

        This photo was taken as immigration agents took a handcuffed father away in a black car last Friday (March 3). He was driving his 13-year-old daughter to school when macho, black-clad agents "unleashed" by the liar in the White House seized him. According to KABC-TV in Los Angeles:

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents pulled Romulo Avelica-Gonzalez’s vehicle over Tuesday about a half mile from a school where the undocumented immigrant from Mexico had just dropped off one of his daughters.
The dad, 48, was driving daughter Fatima Avelica to another school in the northeast Los Angeles neighborhood of Highland Park when ICE stopped them. Left behind in the car with her mother, Fatima wept inconsolably as she captured video of her father’s detention. Rosary beads hung from the rearview mirror. A palm-frond cross rested on the dashboard.

I'm sure we're all feeling safer now that Fatima's father will be detained and deported. A man who works for a living, drives his daughter to school, and decks his car with rosary beads and palms is clearly a threat to America-First. 
         America First, btw, was an organization that cozied up with Hitler and tried to keep America out of World War II. Of course the current ignoramus occupying the White House knows nothing of history. Neither, unfortunately, do those who voted for him.
         Some reality checks. 
         Immigrants contribute to the American economy and help it grow, rather than taking from it. They do the jobs we don't want. If you want to compete with them for office cleaning, house-cleaning, fruit-picking, McDonald's- serfing jobs they spend long hours on every week to sustain themselves, go ahead. Americans vote for charlatans who promise them 'good jobs,' not the ones that are out there. If more of us were willing to work for minimum wage -- and we're not -- maybe we would all get behind raising it. 
         Reality check number two. Studies show immigrant are far less likely to commit crimes than native-born citizens. Makes sense. Why would people who have risked everything to come here risk getting sent back to the hell-holes they worked so hard to escape?
          Number three. Immigrants pay substantial taxes, paying out to the government more than they receive back. Undocumented immigrants in particular pay more taxes than they receive from public programs because they are not eligible for government services, including major programs such as social security, medicare and food stamps. They do not receive tax refunds because they do not file returns. 
         Life is hard without documents.That is why many of the undocumented acquire false Social Security cards -- many employers require a Social Security number to hire them. Ironically, using a false number is the "crime" that gives ICE the excuse to arrest and deport them since now they are 'breaking the law' by trying to work and live like the rest of us. Think about this: yes, they arrived her without documents, but now they are trying to play by all the rules. 
          So, final thought, wouldn't it be easier -- not to mention more humane -- to give them the Social Security card, put them on the books, license them to drive, etc., and harness the abilities and energy they have already demonstrated to help America grow as a prosperous and just society?

The Garden of Shame: Are We Ready Yet for James Baldwin?

Photo: Magnolia Pictures

  
         The film has no narrator. At times actor Samuel L. Jackson speaks words that American writer James Baldwin wrote. Sometimes Baldwin is seen on screen speaking on talk shows, at a Cambridge, England debate, or in brief clips from interviews given decades ago.

            The film "I Am Not Your Negro" by Raoul Peck is not 'about' the life or work of James Baldwin, his life, his autobiography, his literary oeuvre.

             It's not a biopic.

            It's about what he said. What he said about America.

            Baldwin's words are more relevant, and revelatory, than ever. Reviewer Nicolas Rapold offers the best definition I've seen of this film: a "masterfully eloquent living essay on race and America."

            The title "I Am Not Your Negro"is something Baldwin said. Meaning, I take it, that neither he, nor any other person of color, of African ancestry, is to be seen from "your" perspective. Which is to say that white people invented the 'negro': that there is no such thing as a 'negro' without a white person to see a black one as the "other."

            Baldwin -- who was born in Harlem in 1924 and died in 1987 -- sees himself, as the film unquestionably demonstrates, as an "American."

            The movie asks us -- through the accumulation of images rather than bald statement -- where does all this hate from other Americans, the white ones, for people like Baldwin, come from?

            Since seeing this film I've been reminding myself of the dirty secret that has come to light so frequently in recent years: That American police shoot, kill, and otherwise mistreat African Americans as they would not dream of treating anyone else. And that America's public officials, its governing establishment, its courts, its mayors, its police chiefs, back them up -- no matter what they do. (With some exceptions, I suppose. But after the cavalcade of visually documented horrors that flash by in "I Am Not Your Negro" it's hard to remember them.)

            That could be us, could be me, white people think when some pathetic creature in a uniform explains why he had to kill an unarmed black man. A dirty little thing in our conscience offers us the answer: we don't really think these people are human, do we?

            We are afraid, we think. And we think we are right to be afraid.

            As another of the film's recent reviewers (Kenneth Turan in the "LA Times") pointed out, the film's message, insofar as it can be reduced, is encapsulated in its first few minutes.

            No narrative is offered. No titles tell you what you are seeing, or when, or the names of the images on the screen.

            If you are old enough to recognize the faces, you know that we're seeing footage from the "Dick Cavett Show." A liberal's show. The year (a review tells me) is 1968.
            The wave of the "Civil Rights Era," the famous demonstrations, the landmark federal laws, has crested by 1968 and is on the way down, though that may not be obvious at the time. But that's the background, the legal gains of the Civil Rights era, for Cavett's question: “Why aren’t Negroes more optimistic — it’s getting so much better.”

            As a look of almost horror-movie 'weariness' overtakes his features  -- and Baldwin's facial expressions can be as eloquent as his words -- he replies, “It’s not a question of what happens to the Negro. The real question is what is going to happen to this country.”

            What appears to be happening, we learn from a brief excerpt Baldwin's appearance at another public forum is that white Americans are allowing themselves to become “moral monsters” through unexamined bigotry.

            We see expressions of hatred, and hateful acts, more intense than we were allowed to see on TV or in film footage back in the sixties. The prospect of a female African American teenager integrating a high school turns white protestors into a mass of seething devils. They look, and behave, like something out of Bosch's medieval depictions of hell.

            These images are intercut with words from others, from Baldwin, from newscasters, white racists, politicians, exclamations of grief from the loved ones of victims. The film moves very fast, without regard to obvious chronology, narrative line, plot, or expository framework. It offers footage from the Civil Rights era; footage from the Ferguson demonstrations. No one is telling you how, but you know, you feel, how it all fits together. It's the densest hour and a half I can recall experiencing, on film or anywhere else.

            When you try to use words afterwards to explain its effect, you come up with something like this:

            Black Americans are not a faction, a racial group, or a census demographic, and they're certainly not a monolithic 'community.' They are Americans. You can't separate them out; they don't exist anywhere but here.

            And America is not America apart from them. And yet, white Americans can't seem to accept who we are as Americans. And that failure is killing us.  

One Hundred Years Ago: Flowers Planted in the Garden of Hate

            At a time when Presidential orders seek to close doors on refugees and ban travelers from Muslim-majority countries, the infamous Sacco-Vanzetti case of a century ago illustrates the extremes anti-immigrant hysteria can reach in American politics. 

            I'll be speaking on my novel drawn from the Sacco-

Vanzetti case, "Suosso's Lane," and reading from the book, at the Dedham Historical Society, 612 High St., on Thursday, Feb. 23, 7:30 p.m. I'll bring paperback copies for sale and signing.

           "Suosso's Lane," dramatizes immigrant life in the early 20th century and traces the role the 1920 political panic over 'dangerous, radical' foreigners -- known as the Red Scare -- played in condemning two Italian immigrants to death. 

             I believe there are lessons for our own time from the notorious Sacco-Vanzetti case. Especially now, a few weeks into a new administration, when the reins of power are in the hands of a president whose stated goals appear to signal a decline of democratic and egalitarian values, much like the period in which Sacco and Vanzetti were executed because of their beliefs and their ethnicity.      

            American democracy has seen dangerous times before -- anti-democratic and surely anti-egalitarian national moods -- and it has recovered. But judging from the past, the potential for abuse is strongly present at such times.

             On top of a growing nativist resentment of new immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe -- and a particular prejudice against Italians -- two major events transformed the nation's political climate in 1917: The United States entered World War I; and the Russian Revolution created a Communist regime hostile to America's capitalist economic system. Communist parties elsewhere predicted that Russia's radical transformation was the forerunner of a world-wide revolution, making other governments, including our own, nervous.

          America's entry into World War I led to a military draft. Reacting -- and over-reacting -- to anti-war opposition from the country's radical left-wing, Congress passed laws that criminalized political dissent, making criticism of the draft and the decision to fight the war illegal. (Compare this to the Vietnam period!)

           These stress points compounded growing fractures in American society because opposition to these wartime policies was strongest among the radical worker movements led by Socialists and Anarchists, many of whom were foreign nationals. Declaring that 'opposition' meant 'subversion,' the federal government created the first true national police (or spy) service, the FBI, to harass and prosecute war opponents such as the prominent Italian anarchist Luigi Galleani, founder of the Italian language newspaper Cronaca Sovversiva. Its subscribers included Nicolo Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti.

            With more prejudice and ideology than cause, an exaggerated fear of violent revolution led U.S. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer to obtain thousands of warrants to arrest radicals, search their premises, confiscate literature, and destroy presses. Influenced by the nation's jingoistic war mood and the dire prophecies of his own new security apparatus, Palmer and others demonized socialist and anarchist opposition to the war. Palmer stated: "The Red Movement" -- a extremist term du jour -- "is not a righteous or honest protest against alleged defects in our present political and economic organization of society… It is a distinctly criminal and dishonest movement in the desire to obtain possession of other people’s property by violence and robbery.” This was complete nonsense, but scare talk from high officials has its impact. Each 'Red' radical (according to Palmer) was therefore “a potential thief.”(25) If you believed that, and you found yourself on a jury, it was easy to believe that anarchists were likely to rob factory payrolls.

            In fact they were not. Some anarchists at this time chose violence. But when anarchists go to war against a government, they do not rob payrolls, or steal; what they do is plant bombs or otherwise attempt to assassinate leaders of the status quo. (Some acts of political violence are, of course, the work of lone nuts.)

            Denied legitimate means of protest, their press shut down, their subscription list confiscated, their freedom of speech, press and assembly criminalized, some hard-line supporters of Luigi Galleani -- who was tried and deported for opposing the draft -- turned to the only means they believed available to them: bombs. Bombs were mailed to government and big business targets in April of 1919; and hand-delivered to the homes and offices in June. One of the latter explosives destroyed half of Palmer's house, though no one there was hurt.

            These events were the immediate backdrop for the increased repressions of the "Red Scare." Palmer launched two series of raids, in November of 1919 and January of 1920. His agents arrested thousands of 'aliens' without warrants, holding many for deportation often in horrendous conditions and without due process of law. Ultimately, only 446 were actually deported (by administrative hearing), before the courts intervened and a reaction against abuses of executive power took place. But fourteen raids on leftists took place in Massachusetts, and in Boston five hundred aliens were marched through the streets in chains and taken to the Deer Island House of Correction, where they were isolated "in brutally chaotic conditions,” according to later government reports.

            It was against this backdrop that Sacco and Vanzetti -- two names federal agents knew from the subscription list to Galleani's anarchist newspaper "Cronaca Sovversiva" -- were charged with the robbery of a Braintree shoe factory payroll and the killing of two payroll officers despite any direct evidence, and convicted by a native-born Massachusetts jury that believed all foreign anarchists should be 'strung up,' according to the jury foreman.

            A time of "us" and "them."

            The Sacco-Vanzetti case appears to shine a light on the darker side of American society's historical treatment of immigrants of 'unfamiliar' ethnicities. Periodically -- especially in those periods when a 'new' group of foreign nationals arrives in large numbers -- the so-called 'nation of immigrants' has exhibited a desire to close doors and build walls. Forgetful of their own non-native origins, many Americans are quick to close the borders on the next group of newcomers, whose language or manners, or religion, or skin tone, or potential for economic competition, or imagined demand for public services, appears to threaten the well-being of those already comfortably settled in the United States. In the first two decades of the twentieth century, it was the turn of Italians to be the most numerous and visible of these presumed-to-be-problematic newcomers. The executions of Sacco and Vanzetti were a direct consequence -- and an international symbol -- of that fear of "the others."