Poetry and Politics

Today, after reading some war poetry, an Israeli student and I engaged in some heated discussion about post 9-11 politics.

That's the kind of shit you can't make up.

The poems are part of my syllabus in English Composition II, Writing on Literature. I teach the course at McDaniel, and this semester I choose to focus on the literature of war. We start with "The Iliad" and finish with "The Things They Carried". It's a wild ride.

To find poetry, I took a random swat at stuff lying around on the Internet. The last few that we read are very contemporary, and the last two are a bit political. The first is "Palestine" by Lorna Dee Cervantes and the second is "The Daisy Cutter" by Louise Rill. Cervantes started writing "Palestine" the day after the attacks, and the poem links the images of 9-11 to the plight of the Palestinians. This did not go down well with my Israeli student Avi. He's a nice kid, but being raised in a country constantly under attack has led him to believe that all the Palestinians, perhaps even all the Muslims in the Middle East, are bloodthirsty monsters. I don't want to paint him as naive (although he is 18, and by his own admission doesn't care much for reading). Avi understands the complexity of the situation is Israel, but when there are people out to destroy your country, certain shades of gray become difficult to discern. By the time discussion of the poem was wrapping up, Avi had suggested that the poet should, "Cry me a river". He got close to accusing the poem of being Al Qaeda propaganda, and finally suggested that Americans are weak because they allowed the terrorists to affect them.

Then we got to "The Daisy Cutter". Now, I don't really like the poem, but I felt I should include at least one straight-up anti-war poem. (I did have them read Crane's "War is Kind", but that poem is more about the contradictory nature of the way we understand and rationalize war. It frowns on our insincerity in times of war, but I don't think it condemns war outright.) I am a bit uncomfortable with the preachy sarcasm and the prescriptive theme in "The Daisy Cutter", but I thought opening by drawing a parallel between the Taliban and a Christian martyr was interesting. The poem ends up suggesting that going to war after 9-11 was a shallow effort at revenge. Maybe not the most profound stuff, but it gets freshmen talking. Anyway, Avi couldn't stand it. He suggested that I would burn such verse if I had lost a family member in the attacks. We went round and round for a bit. I suggested his point of view was myopic. He told me Americans don't understand the enemy. I asked if he were accused of murder, would he want the grieving mother to serve as the judge in his case. Eventually we had to bring things to a close, but I thought I'd share.

Now here's some Willie.