Prompt: Get the News from Poems

Late in his career, William Carlos Williams wrote a long poem titled “Asphodel, That Greeny Flower.” Toward the end of the poem, he wrote: "It is difficult / to get the news from poems / yet men die miserably every day / for lack / of what is found there."

Is news what is found in poems? Or is what we get from poems not news but what we need to live?

In B.J. Ward's poem, a man decides to get his news not from the newspaper but from Shakespeare's Othello.

Daily Grind
by BJ Ward

A man awakes every morning
and instead of reading the newspaper
reads Act V of Othello.
He sips his coffee and is content
that this is the news he needs
as his wife looks on helplessly.
The first week she thought it a phase,
his reading this and glaring at her throughout,
the first month an obsession,
the first year a quirkiness in his character,
and now it’s just normal behavior,
this mood setting in over the sliced bananas,
so she tries to make herself beautiful
to appease his drastic taste.
And every morning, as he shaves
the stubble from his face, he questions everything—
his employees, his best friend’s loyalty,
the women in his wife’s canasta club,
and most especially the wife herself
as she puts on lipstick in the mirror next to him
just before he leaves. This is how he begins
each day of his life—as he tightens the tie
around his neck, he remembers the ending,
goes over it word by word in his head,
the complex drama of his every morning
always unfolded on the kitchen table,
a secret Iago come to light with every sunrise
breaking through his window, the syllables
of betrayal and suicide always echoing
as he waits for his car pool, just under his lips
even as he pecks his wife goodbye.

from Jackleg Opera: Collected Poems, 1990 to 2013 (North Atlantic Books)

In the play, Othello confronts Desdemona about committing adultery and then strangles her in their bed. But Emilia realizes what her husband Iago has done and she exposes him. He kills her. Othello now realizes, too late, that Desdemona is innocent. He stabs Iago but doesn't kill him, saying he would rather have Iago live the rest of his life in pain. Then Iago and Othello are arrested for the murders of Roderigo, Emilia, and Desdemona. Othello commits suicide.

Othello is not a comedy.

If the "daily grind" is the difficult, routine and monotonous tasks of daily work - the newspaper, coffee, breakfast, shaving, the tie - then reading Othello breaks that routine. But "the complex drama of his every morning" was always there, "always unfolded on the kitchen table." And now, "a secret Iago come to light with every sunrise."

What news did the husband find in this play-in-verse?  Is it the syllables of "betrayal and suicide always echoing" and he waits for his ride to work? Is that what is "just under his lips / even as he pecks his wife goodbye?"

This is not a comedy either.

But returning to that poem by William Carlos Williams, "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower," here the poet finds the news in the form of a love poem written to his wife. But this long love poem also has its dark moments.

My heart rouses
                        thinking to bring you news
                                                of something
that concerns you
                        and concerns many men.  Look at
                                                what passes for the new.
You will not find it there but in
                        despised poems.
                                                It is difficult
to get the news from poems
                        yet men die miserably every day
                                                for lack
of what is found there.
                        Hear me out
                                                for I too am concerned
and every man
                        who wants to die at peace in his bed
                                                besides.


Allen Ginsberg, a great admirer of William Carlos Williams, titled one of his books Planet News. That book contains a poem about getting the news of Williams' death. The poem is called “Death News” and it is about his first reactions upon hearing of the death of his elder.

Ezra Pound said, “Poetry is news that stays news.”

So much news by poets.

This month we are writing poems about the news. It is a deceptively challenging prompt. It might mean writing about the news as it is found in poetry, or the poetry found in the news.  As Williams might have said, this is the information that doesn’t become dated or irrelevant with the passage of time.

Submission deadline: November 30, 2019

             

Prompt: Poetry of Witness

It has become very difficult for me to watch the news the past year - and yet I have watched more news than ever before. I suspect the same may be true for many of you.

The news creeps into my poems, though I think I have intentionally tried to keep it out. There is so much anger, deceit and ugliness in the news that I don't want it in my poems.

But poets have a tradition of being witnesses and reporters of their times.  When I came upon the poem "Let America be America Again" by Langston Hughes the title echoed at a slant to me like the Donald Trump "Make America Great Again" campaign hat-mantra.

His poem begins"

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

In Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness, edited by poet Carolyn Forché, over 140 poets who "endured conditions of historical and social extremity during the twentieth century—through exile, state censorship, political persecution, house arrest, torture, imprisonment, military occupation, warfare, and assassination write and give poetic witness to the times in which they lived.

Against Forgetting is organized according to historical tragedy, starting with the Armenian Genocide and proceeding through the twentieth century to the pro-democratic demonstrations in China. Each section is preceded by a short statement that gives historical background for the events in order to place the poems in a proper context. Within the sections, the poets are organized chronologically according to their year of birth and editor Forché presents a brief biographical note elucidating the poet’s personal experiences with the historical situation.

A companion volume to Against Forgetting, Poetry of Witness, collects 300 poems composed while their authors awaited execution, endured imprisonment, fought on the battlefield, or labored on the brink of breakdown or death.

We all bear witness to historical events, hopefully not as extreme as those situation, and some poets choose to write about them. These anthologies argue that such poets are a perennial feature of human history.

These poems reveal the ways in which tragic events leave marks upon the imagination.

Even poems that do not explicitly take historical events as their main subject matter may contain the events beneath the surface of the language.

In “Some Days” by Philip Terman from his collection Our Portion, there is that feeling some of us might have now of not wanting to bear witness.

Some days you have to turn off the news
and listen to the bird or truck
or the neighbor screaming out her life.
You have to close all the books and open
all the windows so that whatever swirls
inside can leave and whatever flutters
against the glass can enter. Some days
you have to unplug the phone and step
out to the porch and rock all afternoon
and allow the sun to tell you what to do.
The whole day has to lie ahead of you
like railroad tracks that drift off into gravel.
Some days you have to walk down the wooden
staircase through the evening fog to the river,
where the peach roses are closing,
sit on the grassy bank and wait for the two geese.

Carolyn Forché's own prose poem, "The Colonel," is a powerful and disturbing "documentary poem" that started as a prose piece that reached her editor who felt it was a poem.   Read the poem and hear Forché introduce and read it.

This month our writing prompt is to write a poem of witness, a documentary poem based on something in the current news from anywhere in the world. What event is affecting you? How has it entered you and your life? What can you say about it that may be helpful to others today and in the future? You own situation need not be that you "endured conditions of historical and social extremity" and the event may not be one that has attracted national or worldwide attention. In fact, it may be that those events are the ones that need you as witness.

Deadline for submissions to this prompt: May 6, 2017.