Sarah Browning

Poets had gotten used to not being considered part of the "Arts" by The Post, e.g., the Sept. 13 Fall Arts Preview: Art -- Film -- Music -- Theater -- Dance. After all, we had the Literary Calendar on a Book World page and the marvelous Poet's Choice column: an actual poem in each Sunday's paper that acted as a small window into another way of seeing, amid the journalistic and opinion pieces. Now the stand-alone Book World is gone, and in its place are a few reviews in the Outlook section and a sadly foreshortened Literary Calendar. Poet's Choice is only on the Web, with a bare reference on Page B8.

Read the letter, which they ran in full, here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/17/AR2009091703143.html

Then consider writing your own letter to letters@washpost.com or post comments on this letter. Thanks!

UP JUMP THE BOOGIE
by John Murillo
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 9/15/09
Cypher Books
info@cypherbooks.org / www.cypherbooks.org
310 Bowery
New York, NY 10012

Cypher Books will release Up Jump the Boogie by John Murillo, with a foreword by Martín Espada, on February 23, 2010 ($12.95, Paperback, 112 pages). Publication date: April 6, 2010.

Up Jump the Boogie is a series of lyrical dispatches from worlds hidden or denied. Murillo has survived every difficult scene in this book, transmuted each torn scrap of life into song with his skilled and compassionate alchemy. Meanings are woven from poem to poem as Murillo creates memories in his reader and then deftly evokes them, teaching her to feel what he has felt.

And his ambitions are no less than epic. He tells on one page of tragedy spanning continents and eras, and on the next plumbs the depths of personal loss, locking it all inextricably together in the 12-canto "Flowers for Etheridge," an ode to his poetic ur-father whose chant he carries on: "We free singers be." Murillo is a man who's been saved by poetry, and this is his book of rescue.

ADVANCE PRAISE
"Up jumps the boogie. That's almost all one needs to say. Murillo is headbreakingly brilliant. I didn't have a favorite poet for this year: Now I do. But with this kind of verve and intelligence and ferocity Murillo just might be a favorite for many years to come." – Junot Díaz

"The feel of now lives in John Murillo's Up Jump the Boogie, but it's tempered by bows to the tradition of soulful music and oral poetry. The lived dimensions embodied in this collection say that here's an earned street knowledge and a measured intellectual inquiry that dare to live side by side, in one unique voice. The pages of Up Jump the Boogie breathe and sing; the tributes and cultural nods are heartfelt, and in these honest poems no one gets off the hook." – Yusef Komunyakaa

John Murillo is the current Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. A graduate of New York University's MFA program in creative writing, he has also received fellowships from the New York Times, Cave Canem, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachussetts. He is a two-time Larry Neal Writers' Award winner and the inaugural Elma P. Stuckey Visiting Emerging Poet-in-Residence at Columbia College Chicago. His poetry has appeared in such publications as Callaloo, Court Green, Ploughshares, Ninth Letter, and the anthology Writing Self and Community: African-American Poetry After the Civil Rights Movement. Up Jump the Boogie is his first collection.

TITLE: UP JUMP THE BOOGIE
AUTHOR: John Murillo
PUBLICATION DATE: April 6, 2010
PRICE: $12.95, Paperback
PAGES: 112
ISBN: 978-0-9819131-4-8
DISTRIBUTOR: Small Press Distribution • 800-869-7553 • www.spdbooks.org

I've been home from Italy a total of six Sundays. With the loss of The Washington Post's Book World while I was gone, we are now to content ourselves with the back pages of the Outlook section on Sunday mornings, including a ridiculously foreshortened Literary Calendar. It was rare that the old Book World would review poetry in its pages, but at least our events would be listed in the Calendar.

Apparently that is no longer the case. Each of the six Sundays I have been home I have scanned the Calendar in vain for a single listing of a poetry reading. It is as if DC's entire vibrant poetry scene had disappeared. I was particularly sensitive to the question this morning, as next week's Sunday Kind of Love, September 20, will be a special one: readings from the new anthology Mourning Katrina: A Poetic Response to Tragedy, edited by Joanne Gabbin, the director of the Furious Flower Center for African American Poetry. I sent the listing to the Post weeks ago. But no, again, week 6, no poetry event listed.

I checked the Poetry News at Beltway Poetry Quarterly for comparison and found eight poetry events for the coming week, eight listed for last week.

If you dig around on the Post's website, you'll find a longer version of the Calendar, here. I counted six events listed there that include poetry. But how much traffic does the online calendar get, do we suppose? The link listed in the print version wasn't even correct. (Washingtonpost.com/Bookworld, listed in the paper, doesn't exist. The correct link is: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artsandliving/books/, then you scroll down and click "Washington Literary Calendar" in tiny type half-way down the page.

Nor do poetry readings seem to rank with their cousin art forms as "going out" destinations, as I've never seen one listed in the Going Out Guide, the Style section listing that seems to have replaced the late, lamented Style On the Go. I've filled out their form with Sunday Kind of Love listings and haven't even made it to the online calendar, let alone the print version. I even wrote a letter of inquiry, but didn't hear back.

What's up? I know it's a favorite pastime of organizers and event planners to complain of inadequate coverage in the Washington Post (I can imagine the howls of protest from yesterday's teabaggers over the Post calling their numbers in the tens of thousands, when the organizers had been predicting a turn-out of 400,000...)

But on behalf of the whole poetry community, I protest our complete effacement from the Post. I think it's time for an old-fashioned letter-writing campaign. Will you join me? Letters to the editor guidelines are here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/edit/letters/letterform.htm

Or you can post a comment to the Literary Calendar: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artsandliving/books/. But you'll have to create an account and log in first. I'll write a letter myself and post it here soon. Also coming up: Why Poet's Choice should return to the print version of our city's paper of record.

With support from the Humanities Council of Washington, we've posted 15 clips of Split This Rock's inaugural poetry festival on YouTube. Watch readings by Naomi Ayala, Kenny Carroll, Mark Doty, Carolyn Forche, and Galway Kinnell, as well as a short piece on the culminating event of the festival, the march to Lafayette Park where 132 poets and activists each contributed one line to a Cento poem, a gorgeous patchwork of voices calling for social justice and peace.

Watch Split This Rock on YouTube here: http://www.youtube.com/user/splitthisrock#

From the marvelous Francisco Aragón, Director of Letras Latinas and Split This Rock Poetry Festival 2010 featured poet:

PLEASE CIRCULATE, FORWARD, POST, DISSEMINATE:

THE POETICS OF LABOR READING SERIES
@The Smithsonian, Washington, D.C.


To mark Hispanic Heritage Month, the Smithsonian’s National Museum Of American History presents two Latino poets who will performing selections from their works. These special readings are on the occasion of the Museum’s special exhibit

“Bittersweet Harvest: The Bracero Program 1942 – 1964”

which will be on display this fall until early 2010

The poets are DIANA GARCÍA, who is from California’s San Joaquin Valley and author of the collection, When Living Was a Labor Camp (University of Arizona Press), and QUIQUE AVILÉS, a native of El Salvador who graduated from D.C.'s Duke Ellington School of the Arts and has been writing and performing in the U.S. for over 20 years

There will be four opportunities to hear these poets read from their work:

Saturday, September 26: 11 AM and 2 PM

Sunday, September 27: 12 noon and 3 PM

The readings will take place in the exhibition space, 2nd floor, West

For my information about “Bittersweet Harvest: The Bracero Program,” please visit:

https://owa.nd.edu/owa/redir.aspx?C=e82ac1503c454628bc9df76e7c4d7cf0&URL=http%3a%2f%2famericanhistory.si.edu%2fexhibitions%2fexhibition.cfm%3fkey%3d38%26exkey%3d1357


The museum is on the National Mall, 14th Street and Constitution Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C.

“The Poetics of Labor” reading series is a collaboration with Letras Latinas, the literary program of Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame.

I woke up this morning intending to weigh in on the Poetry Foundation blog, Harriet, about Eileen Myles' response to Sean Patrick Hill's review in Rain Taxi (not available online) of State of the Union, the anthology of political poems published by Wave Books. I haven't seen the anthology yet, or read Hill's review, and I certainly don't have time to read the hundreds of comments generated by Myles' opinion piece. Still, I have a lot to say about political poetry and Myles makes good points in her critique of Hill, who apparently voices the tired position that in order to have the standing to write a political poem one has to have directly experienced war or some other form of violence and persecution.

But every time I try to go to the site today my browser seizes up - I can't scroll, I can't do anything. And the Wave Books page on the anthology seems to be down so I'm having trouble finding out who's included in the collection. Telling? Hmmm - technological helplessness... as metaphor for women's relative powerlessness in cyberspace? Should I write a political poem?

Of course I'm being glib, but let's examine at Hill's basic premise (assuming Myles got it right): that only certain people -- veterans of conventionally understood war zones -- have the standing, the right, to write poems about the broader world. Only in America have I heard this position asserted. In Italy I had to explain at length why we needed Poets Against the War or Split This Rock. Italians couldn't imagine poets who write socially engaged works feeling isolated from the poetry mainstream.

We are all citizens of this fast-dying planet; we are responsible for its death. As Americans we consume the cheap products of poorly paid and otherwise exploited workers in our own country and around the world. We were governed for 8 years by a murderous, lying political regime. Even today, the Obama administration continues to wage wars in our name, to turn a blind eye to Israeli occupation and oppression of Palestinians, to impose US military bases all over the world, to support economic policies here at home that keep the poor and working classes powerless. Our systems of education, criminal justice, and health care are grossly inequitable.

Myles makes the critical point that if we are female or queer or a person of color, everyday life is a war zone in the United States: rape, hate crimes, violence in our neighborhoods and homes.

But even if we are "comfortably middle class," as Hill apparently accuses the poets in State of Union of being, it seems to me that we’re not given a pass. Indeed, we have an extra responsibility to speak out, to expose the inequities, to make clear the ways in which we benefit every day from, as in my case, white skin, education, heterosexual marriage.

I also deeply resent the notion that we should take some part of our lives (our relationship to the wider world) and rope it off, not write about it. Please don’t tell me what I can’t write about. I assert: Any topic is worthy of poetry. John Updike wrote a poem to a particular turd he “struck off” one afternoon. Childish? Perhaps. But no one told Updike what topics he should consider worthy of poetry.
I have read hundreds – perhaps thousands – of “political” poems while editing Poets Against the War anthologies, curating the Sunday Kind of Love reading series at Busboys and Poets in DC, and organizing now two Split This Rock Poetry Festivals. The fact of the matter is that there are as many ways to write a political poem as there are poets. More, in fact, since many poets write lots of different kinds of such poems. Poets are writing challenging, funny, grieving, confounding, angry, hopeful poems about our benighted and beautiful world. American poets are doing this and doing it in all kinds of interesting ways, far more poets than we can hope to feature in a decade of biannual festivals. I salute you all.

Rather than tread the tired territory of whether one should write political poems, and who deserves to do the writing, again and again, let’s read this work, spread the good word, celebrate these poems and poets. We could begin – and I will – with the poets who will read at Split This Rock next year, March 10-13, 2010. Check out this list: Chris Abani, Lillian Allen, Sinan Antoon, Francisco Aragón, Jan Beatty, Martha Collins, Cornelius Eady, Martín Espada, Allison Hedge Coke, Andrea Gibson, Natalie Illum, Fady Joudah, Toni Asante Lightfoot, Richard McCann, Jeffrey McDaniel, Lenelle Moïse, Nancy Morejón, Mark Nowak, Wang Ping, Patricia Smith, A.B. Spellman, Arthur Sze, Quincy Troupe, and Bruce Weigl.

All of these poets are in the world, are poet-citizens, in a variety of ways. Lillian Allen is an originator of dub poetry and a leader on diversity and culture in Canada. Fady Joudah was a field doctor with Doctors Without Borders. Cornelius Eady is a founder of Cave Canem, the organization for African American poets. Jan Beatty has worked as a welfare caseworker and an abortion counselor. Mark Nowak facilitates “poetry dialogues” with Ford autoworkers in the US and South Africa.

And their poetry reflects this diversity of experience and background: Jan Beatty’s plainspoken explorations of gender and working class life; Mark Nowak’s documentary poetics, weaving news accounts and corporate instructional guides into the poems; poem-songs of Lenelle Moïse; the often short sharp lyrics of Cornelius Eady; A.B. Spellman’s jazz-inflected sounds.

Political poetry – even the term is tainted, in America; at Split This Rock we often call it socially engaged poetry or social justice poetry –contains multitudes. To further adapt Walt Whitman, the godfather of these poets, social justice poetry is not a bit tamed, it too is untranslatable, it sounds its barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

Two very different poets in the mix of men of color I happen to be reading this summer. But each political in his particular way.

Melvin Dixon died of AIDS-related illness in 1992, the height of the epidemic. He gave the keynote address at the OutWrite Conference that year, and this is how he finished up:

As for me... I may not be well enough or alive next year to attend the lesbian and gay writers conference, but I'll be somewhere listening for my name.

I may not be around to celebrate with you the publication of gay literary history. But I'll be somewhere listening for my name.
...
You, then, are charged by the possibility of your good health, by the broadness of your vision, to remember me.

Included in the posthumous collection of poems, Love's Instruments (Tia Chucha Press, 1995).

By chance I've been reading poems by men of color this summer: Chris Abani and A.B. Spellman, featured poets at 2010's Split This Rock Poetry Festival; Reginald Shepherd and Melvin Dixon, both no longer with us, found at a used book store in Itaca, NY; Terrance Hayes, who read at Sunday Kind of Love last weekend; Luis Alberto Ambroggio, who kindly gave me his new book, Difficult Beauty, at last month's Sunday Love; and Rafael Campo, whose The Other Man Was Me I happened to grab off the shelf to read the day after we got home from Italy.


Of course themes of identity run through all their books. Also masculinity and sexuality, the body. Abani is Nigerian, displaced by the Biafran War, exiled by his country. War, exile, the search for home are ever present in his work.


I offer poems by Abani and Shepherd below and will try to post work by the others later this week.

Featuring A.B. Spellman and Regie Cabico with the DC Youth Slam Team!

Thursday, August 27, 6-8 pm
Langston Room, Busboys and Poets
14th & V Streets, NW
Washington, DC

Split This Rock invites you to a party Thursday, August 27, 2009, 6-8 pm, in the Langston Room, Busboys and Poets at 14th and V Streets, NW. Busboys will be donating fabulous refreshments and creating a couple of funky Split This Rock cocktails.

Why party? Split This Rock has recently received nonprofit status, a crucial step on the road to becoming a permanent home for socially engaged poets from DC and nationwide. Plus, believe it or not, it's just 6 months until the second Split This Rock Poetry Festival. So we figure it's time to celebrate.

Reading and performing will be 2010 featured poet and DC leading light A.B. Spellman, along with Regie Cabico and the DC Youth Slam Team. See below for more details. Entry will be $10-$25, sliding scale, and you'll have a chance to bid on amazing prizes at auction. Come prepared for readings, for fun, for volunteer opportunities, and for celebrating! For more information: info@splitthisrock.org or 202-787-5210.

Can't make the party? You can still volunteer - just contact us at the above email or phone. We'd love to have you involved! And you can definitely still make a donation. Just click here or copy and paste this URL into your browser: http://splitthisrock.org/donate.html. Many thanks!

In peace and poetry,
Split This Rock

**


Poets Celebrating with Split This Rock August 27 - Join Us!

A. B. Spellman is an author, poet, critic, and lecturer. His poetry collection, Things I Must Have Known, was recently was published by Coffee House Press. He has published numerous books and articles on the arts, including Art Tatum: A Critical Biography (a chapbook), The Beautiful Days (poetry), and Four Lives in the Bebop Business, now available as Four Jazz Lives (University of Michigan Press). In recognition of Spellman's commitment and service to jazz, the National Endowment for the Arts in 2005 named one of its prestigious Jazz Masters awards the A.B. Spellman NEA Jazz Masters Award for Jazz Advocacy. He was a poet-in-residence at Morehouse College, in Atlanta, Georgia, where he taught various courses in African-American culture, and at Emory, Rutgers, and Harvard Universities, where he offered courses in modern poetry, creative writing, and jazz.

The DC Youth Slam Team - These young poets utilize their vocal energy and strength to channel emotions, to generate a message, or to just participate in the artistic field they enjoy. Through their poetic works, they rejuvenate the art of poetry and create individual identities with distinct voices. These teens are the future voices of Amerca. Welcome to the beginning of a movement.

Regie Cabico is the Director of Split This Rock's World & Me youth poetry contest and Artistic Director of Sol & Soul. Cabico is a poet, playwright, and spoken word performer. He took top prizes at the 1993, 1994, and 1997 National Poetry Slams. His work appears in over 30 anthologies and he co-edited Poetry Nation: A North American Anthology of Fusion Poetry. He received a NYFA Artist Fellowship for Poetry in 1997, NYFAs in 2003 for Poetry and Performance Art, and two Brooklyn Arts Council Poetry Awards. Cabico has been a teacher for Urban Word and developed a poetry and performance program for teens with psychiatric illness at Bellevue Hospital. He received the 2006 Writers for Writers Award from Poets & Writers in recognition of his work with diverse communities.

From the redoubtable Michael Gushue, the remaining 2009 readings in this terrific DC series, below.

Dear poetry, literature and Brookland aficionados:

Here’s an omnibus note on readings coming up at the Brookland Poetry Series for the remainder of 2009.

Brookland Poetry Series # 66 - August 12, 2009 @ 7:00 PM
Our annual Iced Tea Social Poetry Reading.

Poems designed to cool you off and a variety of special iced drinks to quaff. An illustrative list: Lemon Ginger Tea, Rosemary Lemonade, Cherry Balsamic Iced Tea, Nectarine Basil Lemonade, Cucumber Mint Lemonade, Lemon Fennel Iced Tea, Watermelon Lemonade, Raspberry Limeade.

Brookland Poetry Series # 67 - September 9, 2009 @ 7:00 PM
Our annual Sterling A. Brown Brookland Invitational Poetry Reading.

Celebrating the legacy and poetry of Brookland’s own Sterling Brown—D.C.’s first poet laureate. Readings of Sterling Brown’s poetry, poetry honoring Brown and his legacy, and poetry by others taught or influenced by Brown. Come hear Sterling Brown’s vibrant, scintillating and deeply moving verse.

Brookland Poetry Series # 68 - October 14, 2009 @ 7:00 PM
It Came From Beneath Brookland.

The monster of all poetry readings. Celebrating monsters, the monstrous, Godzilla, Gojira, and other teratogenic-, teratophobic- and teratophilic-related matters.

Brookland Poetry Series # 69 - November 11, 2009 @ 7:00 PM
Lament for the Makers.

A celebration of departed poets. Poems by some of the poets who have died in the last two years will be read, along with brief bios or appreciations, or both. Poems by Tom Disch, Grace Paley, Aimé Césaire, Mahmoud Darwish, Hayden Carruth, W. D. Snodgrass, John Updike, Deborah Digges, Craig Arnold, Kamala Das and others.

Brookland Poetry Series # 70 - December 9, 2009 @ 7:00 PM
St. Lucie’s Day reading.

A celebration of light during the year’s midnight. Poems in honor of the winter solstice, the winter season, and the wintry subjects. Poems by Kenneth Rexroth, Jonh Donne, Kathleen Raine and others.



Join us for these readings at the Brookland Visitors Center, 3420 9th Street, NE. The BVC is 1/2 block from Brookland/CUA Red Line Metro across Monroe Street, and right across 9th Street from Colonel Brooks' Tavern. This reading is free and open to all. For further information call (202) 526-1632 or email mgushuedc@yahoo.com.

AND…please check out our website at http://www.bawadc.com/ for addition information, fabulous-looking posters for the readings, and other Brookland Area Writers and Artists* related matters.

Great new issue of Beltway, with photos by the incomparable Thomas Sayers Ellis!

Beltway Poetry Quarterly
http://www.beltwaypoetry.com

A terrific new issue of Beltway Poetry Quarterly is now posted online! The IT’S YOUR MUG ANNIVERSARY ISSUE celebrates the first spoken word venue in Washington, DC, founded 15 years ago by Toni Asante Lightfoot. This special issue, guest edited by Toni Asante Lightfoot, with an introduction by Holly Bass, and photographs by Thomas Sayers Ellis, features 18 contributors, all active in the Mug Series:

Eric Antonio * Holly Bass * Toni Blackman * Jane Alberdeston Coralin * Joel Dias-Porter * Twain Dooley * Thomas Sayers Ellis * Brian Gilmore * Monica A. Hand * Reuben Jackson * Brandon D. Johnson * A. Van Jordan * Carolyn Joyner * Dehejia Maat * Ernesto Mercer * Lisa Pegram * Venus Thrash * Patrick Washington

As Holly Bass writes in the introduction: “Running from February 1, 1994 to August 20th 1996, the It's Your Mug's Tuesday night poetry reading was a community event had a lasting impact on Washington’s poetry scene. So many prize-winning books, plays, reading series, recordings and writing careers can trace their beginnings back to that humble little café. So much of DC spoken word community owes a debt to this reading series.” Holly tracks this rich history, including the artist collectives and reading series that were an outgrowth of this pioneering venue.

The issue includes 46 new poems. Read and be inspired!

Beltway Poetry Quarterly
http://www.beltwaypoetry.com

Many thanks to my Dad, Preston Browning, Jr., who let me know that in fact "who" is correct in the following sentence:

Plus a bunch of nonfiction writers who I'm sure are just as cool.

This was in a previous post about Sweet Literary Journal -- I had thought that the correct usage in that sentence was "whom," but Dad, the expert, says that: "'who' is correct since it's the subject of the verb 'are.' Using 'whom' in such a construction is sometimes done today but it's incorrect."

Thanks, Dad!

From the good folks at the Poetry Foundation:

Remember that poetry is life distilled.
—Gwendolyn Brooks

June 7, 2009, would have been Gwendolyn Brooks's 92nd birthday; to join us in celebrating one of America's greatest poets, check out the Hall Library stop on the Chicago Poetry Tour, which features archival recordings of Brooks reading from and speaking about the impressive span of her work. The program ranges from the intimate neighborhood portraits included in her first collection, A Street in Bronzeville, such as "kitchenette building" and "the rites for Cousin Vit," to the political turn her poetry took in the '60s as she became involved with the black arts movement:

And we did such exciting things. And we went into the park and recited our poetry and we went to city jail. And the most exciting thing we did was just to walk into a tavern, and someone like Haki Madhubuti, once known as Don L. Lee, would say, "Look folks, we're gonna lay some poetry on you!" . . . And they would turn from their drinks, temporarily, and listen to poetry, which they hadn't come to the tavern to hear, of course.

The Poetry Foundation website offers a critical biography of Brooks, as well as contemporary articles, including Danielle Chapman's "Sweet Bombs," a review of the recently issued collection The Essential Gwendolyn Brooks.

For a broader look at Brooks’s effect on Chicago poetry, listen to "Confronting the Warpland," an original one-hour radio documentary produced by the Poetry Foundation. The show presents African American poets who have found influence and inspiration living in the city, and features Brooks, Tyehimba Jess, Quraysh Ali Lansana, Haki Madhubuti, Sterling Plumpp, and Margaret Walker in interviews, readings, and archival recordings.

Finally, Brooks is showcased in the Essential American Poets archive, selected by Donald Hall during his poet laureateship in 2006. Recorded at the Library of Congress in 1961, Brooks, in her early 30s, reads several poems not available on the Chicago Poetry Tour, including "the mother," "of De Witt Williams on his way to Lincoln Cemetery," and "A Sunset of the City," which ends,

Tin intimations of a quiet core to be my
Desert and my dear relief
Come: there shall be such islanding from grief,
And small communion with the master shore.
Twang they. And I incline this ear to tin,
Consult a dual dilemma. Whether to dry
In humming pallor or to leap and die.

Somebody muffed it? Somebody wanted to joke.

On Obama's Speech in Cairo and US Policy in the Middle East
by John Feffer, the always-astute co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus


In 1697, five years after the judges of Salem, Massachusetts sent 20 suspected witches to the gallows, one man stood up in front of his congregation and apologized. Samuel Sewall was one of the nine judges that gave official sanction to the hysteria of the witch trials. In a remarkable act of contrition, Sewall took upon his head the "blame and shame" of the tragedy and wore a hair shirt until the day of his death to remind him of his sin. More intriguingly, he went on to become a champion of civil rights and an early abolitionist.

It would be truly breathtaking if George W. Bush - or any of the architects of the U.S. foreign policy fiascos of the 21st century - donned a hair shirt, repented of his actions, and performed an ideological about-face. The parallels with Salem are not trivial: the hysteria, the torture, the legal travesties. But don't hold your breath waiting for a mea culpa from the 43rd president. Instead, it's left to Barack Obama to come to terms with the Bush legacy.

Last week in Cairo, President Obama gave a much-anticipated speech to the Muslim world. In many ways the speech was extraordinary. The president reaffirmed his own personal ties to the Islamic world, quoted from the Koran, lauded religious tolerance, upheld the rule of law, recognized that "the situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable," called on Israel to stop settlements, reaffirmed his commitment to nuclear abolition, and tactically refocused U.S. military campaigns against "violent extremism in all forms."

The speech "reflected a significant shift away from the ideological framework of militarism and unilateralism that shaped the Bush administration's war-based policy toward the Arab and Muslim worlds," observes Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF) contributor Phyllis Bennis in Changing the Discourse. It will be remembered, as Akiva Eldar writes in Haaretz, "as the last day of the 9/11 era." And the speech could also help shift the U.S. public's attitudes about Islam, which have been largely negative. "If it reduces American prejudice against Arabs and Muslims, then his address would truly mark a new beginning for U.S.-Muslim relations," writes FPIF contributor R.S. Zaharna in Improving U.S.-Muslim Relations.

For all its strong points, however, the speech didn't contain any apologies. The president might have taken the opportunity to apologize for the way the Bush administration demonized Islam, killed countless Muslim civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan, supported repressive states in the region, and abrogated the civil liberties of Muslim and Arab-Americans in the United States. But the United States rarely does apologies. And Obama prefers to focus on the future rather than the past.

The closest the president came to an apology was when he mentioned U.S. complicity in the overthrow of Iran's democratically elected government in 1953. He didn't apologize for the act (nor did Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in 2000 when she too acknowledged U.S. involvement in the coup). "Rather than remain trapped in the past," Obama said in Cairo, "I have made it clear to Iran's leaders and people that my country is prepared to move forward."

The president no doubt fears a slippery slope - apologize for one U.S. policy and the demands will escalate to apologize for them all. For the conservative attack dogs, meanwhile, the word "sorry" is like the scent of fear and weakness. At the merest mention of an apology, they will leap at Obama's throat.

And then there's the problem of current U.S. actions. We continue to support autocratic leaders in the Arab world. "Many Arabs and Muslims have expressed frustration that Obama failed to use this opportunity to call on the autocratic Saudi and Egyptian leaders with whom he had visited on his Middle Eastern trip to end their repression and open up their corrupt and tightly controlled political systems," writes FPIF senior analyst Stephen Zunes in How Not to Support Democracy in the Middle East. The Egyptian government's crackdown on dissent prior to Obama's visit was a painful reminder of U.S. double standards on democracy in the region.

Obama pledged to adhere to the timeline for withdrawing troops from Iraq, noted that the United States desires no military bases in Afghanistan, and referred to the $1.5 billion in infrastructure assistance for Pakistan. But we're still at war in these countries, and apologies, if they come at all, are issued long after the last shot is fired.

For all of the president's attempts to focus the debate on "violent extremists," U.S. aerial assaults and counterinsurgency operations are still claiming civilian lives in the Muslim world. This is particularly problematic in Afghanistan, as FPIF contributor Farrah Hassen points out. In his Cairo speech, the president "failed to acknowledge the growing civilian casualties due to increased U.S. drone attacks ostensibly aimed at dismantling the Taliban - a reality that only increases the risk of blowback against the United States, as opposed to winning the hearts and minds of Afghans, and of Muslims, alike," she writes in Lifting the Veil. "Indeed, a military investigation concluded the United States made mistakes after the May 4 airstrikes in the western province of Farah that killed dozens of civilians."

On the ground in Afghanistan, where support for NATO military operations has declined precipitously over the years, U.S. forces are experimenting with a new policy of prompt apologies for civilian casualties. The apologies are welcome in the region, but words can only go so far. "Apologies are good things," Maolawi Hezatullah, provincial council head in Kunar where U.S. troops killed six civilians in April, told Reuters. "But the foreign troops should convince the people that there will be no more such incidents."

Samuel Sewall didn't simply apologize for his role in the Salem witch trials. He tried to remedy his errors by working to ensure that such atrocities would never reoccur. We may not see apologies for U.S. conduct in the Muslim world coming from top U.S. officials. But if Obama manages to end the "collateral damage" to civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, then U.S. policy will change indeed.

Links

Eve LaPlante, "The Opposite of Thanksgiving," The Boston Globe, November 18, 2007; http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2007/11/18/the_opposite_of_thanksgiving/?page=full

"A New Beginning: Obama's Egypt Speech," The Huffington Post, June 4, 2009; http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/04/obama-egypt-speech-video_n_211216.html

Phyllis Bennis, "Changing the Discourse: First Step Toward Changing the Policy," Foreign Policy In Focus (http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/6169); Obama's approach toward the Muslim world may be diplomatic, but it remains the work of mobilized people across the United States to end Obama's war in Afghanistan and Pakistan, halt the occupation of Iraq immediately rather than years from now, stop U.S. military aid to Israel, and launch new negotiations with Iran not based on military threats.

Akiva Eldar, "Obama's Cairo Speech Signals End of 9/11 Era," Haaretz, June 8, 2009; http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1090535.html

R. S. Zaharna, "Improving U.S.-Muslim Relations," Foreign Policy In Focus (http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/6171); For the United States to focus only on improving its image in the Arab and Muslim world is to see only half of the picture.

Madeleine Albright, "American-Iranian Relations," March 17, 2000; http://www.fas.org/news/iran/2000/000317.htm

Stephen Zunes, "How Not to Support Democracy in the Middle East," Foreign Policy In Focus, http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/6173; Obama failed to address Egyptian and Saudi repression in his address to the Muslim world.

Hossam el-Hamalawy, "Cairo Under Siege Ahead of Obama's Speech," The Huffington Post, June 3, 2009; http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/03/cairo-under-siege-ahead-o_n_211154.html

Farrah Hassen, "Lifting the Veil," Foreign Policy In Focus (http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/6170); A Muslim-American reflects on Obama's Cairo speech.

Peter Graff, "New Tactic for U.S., NATO in Afghanistan," Reuters, April 17, 2009; http://uk.reuters.com/article/usTopNews/idUKTRE53G3L620090417?sp=true

The new issue of Sweet: A Literary Confection is online, happily including my poem, "Kissing Girls" from The Smart Girl Poems. I'm very happy to be in the company of the magnificent Tim Seibles, as well as poets Barbara Daniels, Hugh Behm-Steinberg, Laura McCullough, and Emily K. Bright. Plus a bunch of nonfiction writers who I'm sure are just as cool. (Should be "whom" but that would be um... uncool). Check it out here: http://www.sweetlit.com/issue1.3.html

GirlChild Press is moving to the West Coast and they need help. Here's a note from the publisher, Michelle Sewell:

We have 300 first edition copies of Just Like A Girl left from our 1,200 copy run. It is cost prohibitive to ship them to the west coast when we relocate so we are asking that everyone buy a copy. Simple as that. They are $20.00 a piece. Go to www.girlchildpress.com/products.html

to make your order. We have about 20 copies of Growing Up Girl if you are interested in that anthology. If you would like a bulk order of 12 copies or more please email me at girlchildpress@aol.com for a special rate!

If you can't afford to buy a copy pass this announcement to someone with deeper pockets:)

Thank you for your continued support!

Michelle Sewell

Editor/Founder of GirlChild Press

(ps from Sarah - My poem "Poem for Turning 40" is included, plus lots of other terrific writings, poetry and prose. A perfect gift for the feisty gals in your life!)

From The Guardian (UK):

Augusto Boal, the visionary Brazilian theatre director and dramatist, who has died aged 78, spent his life proving that you didn't have to wait until "after the revolution" for worthwhile social improvements - you could use theatre to make radical changes in the here and now. Best known as the author of the 1974 classic Theatre of the Oppressed, which had grown out of his theatre movement of the same name, Boal was an inspirational and internationally recognised theatre guru.

Full obituary here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/may/06/augusto-boal-obituary

Dear Friends,

We've extended the deadline for proposals for panels, workshops, and sundry exciting festival events. Please spread the word - and send us your fabulous ideas. Thanks! The "Call" is below, for your convenience, with a link to the full guidelines.

- Split This Rock Team
**

Call for Proposals: Split This Rock Poetry Festival 2010

Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness invites poets, writers, activists, and all concerned citizens to Washington, DC, March 10-13, 2010 for four days of poetry, community building, and creative transformation as our country continues to grapple with two wars, a crippling economic crisis, and other social and environmental ills.

The festival will feature readings, workshops, panel discussions, youth programming, film, activism -- opportunities to imagine a way forward, hone our community and activist skills, and celebrate the many ways that poetry can act as an agent for social change.

We invite you to send proposals for panel discussions, group readings, roundtable discussions, workshops, and small-scale performances on a range of topics at the intersection of poetry and social change. Possibilities are endless. Challenge us.

NEW DEADLINE: June 30, 2009.Details and guidelines are online at: www.splitthisrock.org/documents/2010_panel_proposals.doc

Discussion and community building are at the heart of Split This Rock. We value diversity, creativity, and new ideas. Check out last year's schedule for inspiration: www.splitthisrock.org/schedule.html.

Please join us!

Help Split This Rock Spread the Word

Forward this email, post it on your blog, send a message to all your Facebook friends. We are a grassroots movement and need your help to reach a wide variety of poets and poetry lovers. Thanks!

Reviewed by Michael Roth in the San Francisco Chronicle:

In an essay on the poet Muriel Rukeyser, Rich says that Rukeyser "was one of the great integrators, seeing the fragmentary world of modernity not as irretrievably broken, but in need of societal and emotional repair." And this, too, has been Rich's own perspective: a vision both unsparing and full of hope. Poetry has the power "to revive spirit, stimulate consciousness, restore a brutalized humanity."

Read the full review here:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/04/24/RV6E174N6U.DTL