Alison:

<snip>
Against that view of the world in which the US is both the actor and the
audience... [CW]

If there were something that could be practically done by poets to
address the US assertions of power [AC}
<snip>

Two misunderstandings. For which I'm probably responsible.

What I'd intended in the first case was simply to compare: we can't fight
catastrophe with a typewriter, as was said (more or less) of Tucholsky;
however, we _can_ review our own worldviews against those of others.
Secondly, 'that view of the world' (rather than, say, 'American worldview')
was meant to suggest that not all and not only Americans held it.

Omitting the tunes imposed by *the oppressor*, by whatever definition, is
something that we can, perhaps, try to do. As I'd also tried to imply.
Hence, in part, the second 'Jewish' story.

<snip>
So why not imagine a world where men and women are equal? It is harder than
you think - for example, to imagine thus can not assume that women are
simply victims of men. (I am thinking here of Gillian Rose's objection to
feminism: that it does not acknowledge the power of women) [AC]
<snip>

Yes. Rose's objections to some sorts of feminism would be mine. My 'moral
invisibility' involves saying, in effect, 'It wasn't us: we weren't there;
someone locked us in the cupboard.' 'Victimhood,' as you say, 'elides moral
agency'. Indeed the one can be conferred and the other taken away _from
outside_ through narrative presentation. In the 18th C Scots ballad known to
Child as *Young Hunter* (#68) or as *Young Riedan*, a woman betrayed by a
lover exacts her revenge:

      'He leant him owre his saddle-bowe
             To gie her a kiss sae sweet;
       She keppit him on a little penknife,
              An gae him a wound sae deep.'

The song crossed the Atlantic at some point. It appears in the 1920s,
recorded by country/white blues musicians, as *Lowe Bonnie*. In Jimmy
Tarlton's powerful version, it is the penknife rather than the lady that is
foregrounded:

     'A little penknife so keen and sharp
             It wounded him so deep.'

In the public domain, of course, Israel and the Palestinians face (and
fight) one another in the guise of competing victims, with the Sharon
government even referring (in a linguistic welcoming of Israel's client
status that matches the $3 billion arms grants received last year alone) to
a domestic version of 'Ground Zero'.

*Equality*, though, I distrust: an apple is not _the equal_ of a pear. I
know, of course, what you mean: an absence of oppression. But *equality*
also implies a false sense of substitution, interchangeability, a conceptual
by-product of mechanical reproduction, along with deskilling in the
workplace and an impoverishment and/or diminishment of various social ties.
We need to get quite away from that sort of thing. (Ulrich Beck says
something similar, I believe.)

<snip>
One of the poisons [...] is the sanctification of victimhood
<snip>

Precisely. One of my brothers-in-law comes from a very secular, non US
background. He is married to an American of Mennonite stock. Now (re)settled
in the States, they are exploring his 'heritage': they keep Friday nights,
read about Jewish suffering (which his wife once compared to Mennonite
suffering) and so on and so forth. I have no objection to this. Except that,
all things considered, it feels to me a bit like a cultural version of
applying for one's green card.

<snip>
[Victimhood] also cheapens the situation of those who are real victims
(those who actually died in the WTC, for example) by equating their reality
with a negative emotion which is really a covert assertion of power.
<snip>

That sense of cheapening (I entirely agree with your point) has several
origins and multiple effects.

Andrew Motion's WTC poem, recently aired on this list, blends Holt Marvell's
*These Foolish Things* ('A telephone that rings but who's to answer, / Oh,
how the ghost of you clings'; the calls' direction is reversed) with
revenge-seeking ghosts (eg: *Hamlet*):

           'The voices live which are the voices lost:
           we hear them and we answer, or we try
           [...]

           ... we find a way to keep
           the dead beside us as our time goes on'

In interview, Motion has described being asked to incorporate references to
the telephone messages recorded by the victims and to the building itself:
'the deep / foundation of ourselves, our cornerstone' is how the poem ends.
What he has done, however, is to versify, to render falsely pastel ('An
airline ticket to romantic places'), and thus to make covert, Blair's
bellicose exhortation (I paraphrase only a little) to 'keep those telephone
calls in your minds, and keep on supporting the bombing'.

So what should poets do? What _can_ they do? The questions you began with. I
too don't believe that poetry can (or should) be justified by its
_usefulness_. It's certainly not very 'useful' in any direct or obvious way.
But as writers and as readers we _can_ 'work and eat at the same table', as
Prynne puts it. We can remain alive to the consequences of what is on that
table. We can 'look to [our] limits and employ them' (also Prynne).

Christopher Walker