This is so hard to do, Roger. How can one make a poem out of such?
I think a few have managed. Phyllis Webb has a poem, 'Prison Report,'
about Jacobo Timerman, the fact that he had written about it offering
her a way in to it.
So, yes, this is more record, & how could it be otherwise...?
Doug
On 1-Feb-08, at 11:21 AM, Roger Day wrote:
> I guess some preamble is in order. I write this poem primarily to
> record, not to shock. The spur was a LRB review of an Andy McNab
> "thriller" which said that this book contained something which most
> western literature did not: a description of water-boarding. It was an
> accusation of sorts, about something I suppose the reviewer thinks
> that the Western lit community is avoiding: engagement with deeds done
> in their name, and in particular the controversial water-boarding. I
> have some sympathies with that opinion. I know this will never be
> published, but I like to think it ghosts the attempt. It breaks some
> of my golden rules, never to ventriloquise experience which I've never
> under-taken, it is explicit, not oblique. In addition, It does not
> disguise itself through legend or myth. Maybe a better poem will arise
> that does; for now, this is it.
>
> He hears accents, American, English.
> A door crashes.
> They secure his feet and hands
> to a wooden board
> head down
> feet up
> his hood chafes
> on blood-flooded cheeks
>
> a joke
> someone laughs
>
> a metal hoop clanks
> uneasily under weight
> his breath comes fast, shallow
> fists balled, twisting
> the first time the wait was easy
> wet gag gag gag
> no choke no
> no no no
> no no gag
>
>
>
> --
> My Stuff: http://www.badstep.net/
> "She went out with her paint box, paints the chapel blue
> She went out with her matches, torched the car-wash too"
> The Go-Betweens
>
Douglas Barbour
[log in to unmask]
http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/
Latest book: Continuations (with Sheila E Murphy)
http://www.uap.ualberta.ca/UAP.asp?LID=41&bookID=664
& luckily people don't love us
for our virtue or
we'd be in a bad way.
Graham Greene
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