I’d like to introduce you to two poets, two of my invisible friends that should get more attention. Both poets of the earth who raged and struggled against the inanity of war during their years here on earth.
The first is Sam Hamill. A poet of peace, he tirelessly helped others and tried to find solace in a world filled with war and violence. He worked with prison inmates and founded the movement Poets Against War.
In this current time of evil destruction, where mankind revisits its most base impulses and when justice is snidely ignored, I reach for my Sam Hamill, his essays. In particular one - Here and Now. It’s in his collection - A Poet’s Work, The Other Side Of Poetry. It’s a thoughtful a book as there is and one I keep returning to with devotion and love.
The above poem is Sam reading and emblematic of the type of thoughtful, historically filled, earthy words that he wrote and the ideas he believed. This interview will reveal more about what Sam Hamill stood up for.
The second poet is one very close to Sam Hamill, one the N.Y. Times called, “An American Rude Tongue” - Thomas McGrath. In times like these I reach for his “Letters to an Imaginary Friend”. Sam edited his final book of poetry, Death Song and here below is an excerpt.
McGrath was an upfront, tell it as it is, mid-western man of letters and fierce notions of justice. This poem, written when he was dying and in great pain, speaks to the idiocy of the Vietnam War but also, any war.
A MOMENTARY LOSS OF BELIEF IN THE WISDOM OF THE COMMON PEOPLE AND A CURSE ON THE BASTARDS WHO OWN AND OPERATE THEM - Thomas McGrath, Death Song.
“War is the continuation of policy by other means.” So said Von Clausewitz.
But war is also
The continuation of false consciousness
And falsified policy and politics
And greed masked as bourgeois generosity
By the falsified desires of American imperialism
By presidents wedded to cowboys and missiles
By chauvinist beer salesmen peddling the stars and stripes by
the six-pack
By the trained psychopathic liars of the State Department
By simple-minded sods in all fifty states
By the born-simple clergy and suckers of religion
By the bearded dons and Ph.D. dumdums of Academia
By painters selling third-hand Da Da at fancy prices
By poets who have forgot their songs in their gilded cages
By farmers sold out and put on the road and still finding their enemy
in Nicaragua or El Salvador
By workers given their walking papers for life and their heads still so
unscrewed they think the enemy is Russia or Communism
By housewives pissing their pants and dreaming of Red Terror
Or hijackers invading Podunk
By other means.
Politics is the continuation of war by other means.
And now, you celebrated American jackasses:
You still want war?
Go let a hole in the head shed light on your darkling brain-
Remember Vietnam?
Go and be damned!
But don’t count on me for nothing you righteous
stupid sons of bitches !
We need more poets speaking truth to the vacuous power that rules our planet. Search for them, they are out there, sustaining the world through their quest for justice and embrace of the fellowship of all humanity.
Rexroth - could be added to this piece … he’s of the same order but of a different kind. Read his opus - Thou Shalt Not Kill.
Embracing Each Other