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Today's
Stories
July
10 / 12, 2004
Kathleen
Christison
The Problem with Neutrality Between
Palestinians and Israel
July
9, 2004
Dave
Zirin
Carlos Delgado on Deck: Blue Jays Slugger
Stands Up Against War
Justin
Delacour
Wishing Kerry Would Shut Up About
Latin America
Robert
Fisk
Iraq in Reverse: Martial Laws Fuel Insurgency
Boris
Kagarlitsky
Two Congresses and a Funeral
William
S. Lind
The October Surprises
Sibel
Edmonds
Our Broken System: John Ashcroft's War on Truth
Ron
Jacobs
Reading Tea Leaves: What Vietnam Tells Us About Iraq's Future
Gary
Leupp
The Lie That Will Not Die: Cheney and
the Iraq/al-Qaeda Link
July
8, 2004
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
The Inexplicable John McCain
Toufic
Haddad
Protesting Israel's Apartheid Wall:
a Letter from the Hunger Strikers' Tent
Dave
Lindorff
Liberation as Martial Law
Joshua
Frank
The Fall: How Beltway Dems Sank Howard
Dean
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush & Cheney Play the Hitler Card
James
Petras
The Truth About Jimmy Carter
July
7, 2004
John
Chuckman
Kerry's BBQ: a Deafening Silence
of Meaning
Virginia
Tilley
A Line in the Sand: Azmi Bishara's
Hunger Strike
Susan
Martinez
A Letter to Bill Cosby
Mickey
Z
Elie Wiesel's Strange Parade
Michael
Donnelly
Our Own Private Wilderness: Trusting the Land in the Inland Empire
Sean
Donahue
Boston Social Forum: the Dems aren't the Only Show in Beantown
Diane
Christian
Sovereignty and Freedom in Iraq
July
6, 2004
Lisa
Viscidi
Fleeing Guatemala: Central Americans
Risk Lives to Reach El Norte
Marc
Norton
The Felonious Five Ride Again: the
Supreme Court and Enemy Combatants
James
Brooks
Chemical Warfare on the West Bank?
Ray
McGovern
Porter Goss as CIA Director?
William
Cook
Legacy of Deceit: If Dante Knew of Bush and the Neo-Cons...
July
5, 2004
Forrest
Hylton
US Imperialism in Latin America: Sept.
11, July 4 and Systematic Torture
Chris
White
A Former Marine Sgt. on the Meaning
of Independence Day
Joe
Bageant
Cranky Reflections on the 4th of July
Robert
Jensen
Stupid White Movie: What Michael Moore
Misses About the Empire
Kathy
Kelly
"Two Days an' a Wake-Up"
July
3 / 4, 2004
Elaine
Cassel
Bush's Police State and Independence
Day
Stan
Goff
ABC of Opportunism: "Progressive"
Latin American Leaders Support the Coup in Haiti
Snehal
Shingavi
"We Want Real Justice for Bhopal": Two Survivors Speak
Out
Bruce
Anderson
The Cheney-Leahy Metaphor and the Greens
Sharon
Smith
Twilight of the Greens: the Chokehold of "Anybody But Bush"
Josh
Frank
Ralph Nader's Revolt: an Interview with Greg Bates
Robert
Fisk
Pentagon Tried to Censor Saddam's Hearing
Joe
Bageant
Sons of a Laboring God: Leftnecks Unite!
Brian
Cloughley
Fortress Bush and the One Law Doctrine
Justin
Delacour
The Anti-Chavez Echo Chamber: Venezuela's Media Tycoons
William
S. Lind
Saudi Spillover
Linda
S. Heard
A Joke Called "Justice"
Greg
Moses
"It's Illegal, But It's Our Right": Korean Labor Won't
Back Down
Ron
Jacobs
"Ain't You Proud to be White on Independence Day?"
Toni
Solo
Weary of Indigenous Resistances? Just Pretend They're Not There
Dan
Nagengast
Chicken Manure as Cattle Food: Safe, But Do We Want to Eat It?
Stew
Albert
Brando, a Personal Recollection
Dave
Zirin
From the Black Panthers to Sacheen Littlefeather: a Eulogy for
Our Brando
Patrick
W. Gavin
The Progressive Case for Dodgeball
Steven
Rosenthal / Junaid Ahmad
The Problem is Bigger Than the Bushes: a Review of F911
Poets'
Basement
Kearney, Ford and Davies
Website
of the Day
Global Peace Solution
July
2, 2004
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Suicide Right on the Stage: the Demise
of the Green Party
Douglas
Valentine
Fahrenheit 911: Mocking the Moral Crisis of Capitalism
Gary
Leupp
"Just Because I Could": On Obscenities and Opportunities
Lee
Ballinger
Illegal People: Kerry Opposes Immigrant Rights
Robert
Fisk
Saddam in the Dock: Confused? Hardly
CounterPunch
Wire
"What Law Formed This Court?": a Transcript of Saddam's
Arraignment
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush's Drug Card Lottery: the Price Ain't Right
Saul
Landau
Buzz Words and Venezuela
July 1, 2004
Katherine
van Wormer
Bush's Damaged Mind: the Madness in
His Method
Joe
Bageant
Is Our President a Whackjob? Does It Matter?
William
James Martin
The Dogma of Richard Perle
Dave
Lindorff
Bush's Evacuation Moment
Robert
Fisk
Bread and Circus Trials in Iraq
Alan
Maass
Green Party in Reverse
Website
of the Day
Michael Moore and Israel: Blind or a Coward?
June
30, 2004
Kurt Nimmo
Nicholson
Baker's Checkpoint: a New Kind of Anger About Bush
Tariq
Ali
Getting Away with Murder in Iraq
Jennifer
Van Bergen
Bush and the Detainees
Douglas
Valentine
Apotheosis of the Psychopaths: Instead of Fahrenheit 9/11, Rescreen
The Quiet American
David
Price
Fahrenheit 9/11 Through the McCain-Feingold Looking Glass
Roger
Normand
America's Criminal Occupation of Iraq
Stan
Cox
Sanitized for Your Protection: Ashcroft's
War on Art
Henry
David Thoreau
On the Futility of Bush v. Kerry: All Voting is a Kind of Gaming
Ben
Tripp
Who Dast Call Him Liar: a Rebuttal to Nicholas Kristof
June
29, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
The Cloak-and-Dagger Handover
Robert
Fisk
Alice in an Iraqi Wonderland
Troy
Selvaratnam
New York Times Boosts Pet Developer
Harry
Browne
Bush in Ireland
Ray
McGovern
The CIA According to Anonymous
Elaine
Cassel
Hamdi, Padilla & Rasul: Who Really
Won?
June
28, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn / Leyla Linton
Grisly Rituals in Iraq
Amira
Hass
Confronting Myths and Deadly Power
June
26 / 27, 2004
Alexander
Cockburn
Venezuela: the Gang's All Here
Patrick
Cockburn
Iyad Allawi, the CIA's New Stooge
in Iraq
Dennis
Hans
Once They Were Sweethearts: Cheney,
the NYTs and the Myth of an Iraq Link to 9/11
Ben
Tripp
Adventures in Fuel Efficiency
Dave
Lindorff
That State Department Terrorism
Report: What They Knew, But Didn't Tell You
Chris
Floyd
Cold Irons Bound: the Russian Gambit
Ali
Tonak
Contamination at Berkeley: Profit Motives,
Academic Freedom and the Case of Ignacio Chapela
Keith
Rosenthal
The Withering of the Anti-War Movement
Bryan
Sacks
The Failure of the 9/11 Commission
Wayne
Madsen
Another Case of Blowback
Thomas
St. John
L. Frank Baum, Racist: Indian-Hating
in the Wizard of Oz
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
American Swadeshi
June
25, 2004
Stephen
Gowans
US to North Korea: "Trust Us"
Saul
Landau
2006 Pentagon Budget as Sacrilege:
Bush Invests the National Treasure in Death and Destruction
Amir
Butler
Iraq: the Deadly Embrace
Jack
McCarthy
Another Times Plagiarism Scandal?
Did Maureen Dowd Lift from the World Weekly News?
Greg
Bates
Chomsky and Zinn Plan to Vote Nader
June 24, 2004
Gary Leupp
John
Lehman on the Iraq / al-Qaeda Links
Patrick Cockburn
A
Day in the Life of Col. Abu Mohammed: Defusing Bombs, Facing
Death Threats
Harry Browne
On
the Rebound: Bush Bounces Back...in Europe
Bill Kaufman
Another
Marxist for Kerry: Joel Kovel's Sad Smear of Ralph Nader
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush,
Cheney and the 9/11 Commission: What Did They Know? What Did
They Tell?
Rick Gioimbetti
Andrea Yates: Victim of Psychiatric Violence?
John Chuckman
Call Center ID Hypocrisy
Diana Johnstone
Kerry
and Kosovo: the Lie of a "Good War"
June 23, 2004
Laura Carlsen
Bush
and Castro Face Off
Dave Zirin
Barry
Bonds vs. Boston: "A Flea Market of Racism"
Kurt Nimmo
From
Saddam, With Love
Patricia Wolff
Foundation Wars
Mahboob A. Khawaja
"They Had Me Arrested and Shackled My Son"
Patrick Cockburn
The
Pretense of an Independent Iraq
Website of the Day
The Road to Abu Ghraib
June 22, 2004
Dave Lindorff
The
Meaning of Putin's Pronouncement: Mutually Assured Pre-emption
Ron Jacobs
Nuclear Plants in US Protectorate of Iraq?
Vanessa Jones
Coogee, Peter Garrett and Valium Earrings
Mickey Z
An Open Letter to the People of Iraq
John L. Hess
Clinton Exhales
Pedro Marset/Ex-Solidarity
Committee for Pacho Cortés
An Exchange on the Case of Pacho Cortés
Bruce Jackson
Saying
No to Prosecutors: Why Steve Kurtz's Colleagues Refused to Testify
Website of the Day
From Boot Camp to Boot Hill
June
21, 2004
Gary
Leupp
Putin's Helpful Remarks
Lucson
Pierre-Charles
Haiti After the Press Went Home: Chaos
Upon Chaos
Cockburn
/ Khan
Saddam May Face Death Penalty
Uri
Avnery
Irreversible Mental Damage
June
19 / 20, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
Inside the Green Zone: US is Paranoid
and Isolated
Bruce
Anderson
Frozen Gringos
Diane
Christian
Morality and Death: a Meditation
on Bush and Blake
Walter
A. Davis
Passion of the Christ in Abu Ghraib
Josh
Frank
How Democrats Helped Bush Rape Mother
Nature
Col.
Dan Smith
Respectable Genocide?: the Crisis
in Sudan
Brian
Cloughley
A Profound Disruption of the Senses
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush and the Timken Plant, a
Year Later
Prudence
Crowther
Mr. Ashcroft, Deport Me!
Poets'
Basement
Iqbal/Alam, Krieger and Albert
Kathy
Kelly
Dying to See Their Kids
June
18, 2004
Chris
Floyd
Blood Victory
Dave
Zirin
Danielle Green, Basketball Player
& Disabled Vet, Speaks Out Against War
Justin
E.H. Smith
The Christian Question in American
Politics
Gary
Leupp
The "Long-Established" Link?:
Iraq, al-Qaeda, and al-Zarqawi
June
17, 2004
Noel
Ignatiev
Zionism, Anti-Semitism and the People
of Palestine
Kurt
Nimmo
The Bush-Kerry Conundrum
Ed
Cardoni
The Persecution of Steve Kurtz
Ron
Jacobs
Power Relations: Rounding Up Everyone Who Knows More Than They
Do
Dave
Lindorff
Philly Daily News: "Four Wasted Years"
Greg
Moses
Geneva Ignored
Norm
Dixon
How Reagan Armed Saddam with Chemical
Weapons
June
18, 2004
Noel
Ignatiev
Zionism, Anti-Semitism and the People
of Palestine
Kurt
Nimmo
The Bush-Kerry Conundrum
Ed
Cardoni
The Persecution of Steve Kurtz
Ron
Jacobs
Power Relations: Rounding Up Everyone Who Knows More Than They
Do
Dave
Lindorff
Philly Daily News: "Four Wasted Years"
Greg
Moses
Geneva Ignored
Norm
Dixon
How Reagan Armed Saddam with Chemical
Weapons
June
16, 2004
Lenni
Brenner
A Question for Kerry Supporters
Davey
D
Hip Hop Reflections on Reagan
Daniel
Wolff
Why Did Michael Moore Withhold Video Evidence of US Prisoner
Abuse?
Bruce
Jackson
Harry Levin and the Penultimate Manuscript of Finnegans Wake
Patrick
Cockburn
Boom! Boom! Out Go the Lights: Bombings Target Oil and Power
Facilities
Gary
Handschumacher
Mourn Ben Linder, Not His Killer: Reagan's Death Squads
JG
Turning Haiti into One Big Sweatshop
Mario
Benedetti
Obituary with Cheers
Vicente
Navarro
Meet the New Head of the IMF: Who
is Rodrigo Rato?
Website
of the Day
Iraqi Oil Revenue Watch
June
15, 2004
Harry
Browne
Ireland Adds a Brick to Fortress Europe
Neve
Gordon
The Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited
David
Palmer
Richard Armitage, Abu Ghraib and CACI
John
Blair
Lovelock's Misguided Call: Nukes Are No Solution to Global Warming
Dave
Lindorff
God Wins in TKO
Bill
Quigley
Blood-Pouring Peace Activists: State Charges Dropped; Feds Step
In
Patrick
Cockburn
Carbombs and Street Dances: 13 More Killed in Baghdad Blast
John
Chuckman
John Kerry, Political Placebo
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
Here for More Stories.
|
Weekend
Edition
July 10 / 12, 2004
A
Gathering of the World's Poets Against War
Trail
of the Comet
By
JANINE POMMY VEGA
"Before you see the world,
shouldn't you see a doctor?"
"Did you leave your bags
without attendance? They will be confiscated."
A cop and a soldier point machine
guns at the viewer: "SUPPORT OUR TROOPS!"
To do what? Strange messages in the
posters plastered across U.S. airports. They seem to encourage
xenophobia and a relinquishing of personal rights. Perhaps I'm
paranoid. Journeying to an international poetry festival in
Pistoia, just outside Florence, Italy, I pass through the grey
high-ceilinged light of Rome's Central Railway Station. On one
of the pillars is a museum poster of Aphrodite holding irrepressible
Eros in her lap; she is pointing at the viewer. Eros is fixing
an arrow onto his bow and looking straight at the viewer as well.
Will you be next? It's so much friendlier than the machine guns.
A half hour west of Florence,
Pistoia is a world center for the manufacture of trains. In
the 16th Century its metalworkers created the pistol, and named
it after the city. This is the fourth year of international
poetry festival Il Cammino delle Comete, the
Trail of the Comet-the brainchild of translator Raffaella
Marzano, Sergio Iagulli, archivist of Salerno, and their son
Pierpaolo Iagulli, graphic and video artist-all from Casa della
Poesia in Baronissi. The festival is funded almost entirely by
the City of Pistoia and the Toscana region, with some help from
arts organizations and state departments around the world. When
I expressed surprise at the support from the local government,
a rarity in the U.S., the Minister of Culture, Giovanni Capecchi,
said it was not unusual for left-leaning municipalities to support
artistic events, since they benefit the town's people and attract
visitors as well. Would any U.S. politician get the sense in
that?
"In light of Bush's arrival
in Rome," Capecchi said on opening night, "which we
know is to garner support for his war, we are here in the name
of peace. In corroboration with Spain and their courageous stance,
we have three Spanish poets, and poets from around the world
who are unrelentingly against the war."
Il Cammino delle Comete
has become a meeting
of different poets each year from around the world, who have
in common a fierce support of world peace and a sense of solidarity
that seems to grow of its own accord during the three days of
the festival. In the poetry world, where competition is as rampant
as the rewards are small, to find interest and support from newly
met writers who are not interested in standing on your shoulders
to reach the top rung of the ladder feels like a letter from
home.
This year the poets were Maria
Victoria Arencia, Francisca Aguirre, & Jorge Riechmann from
Spain; perhaps the best known poet from Iraq, Saadi Yousef; Hassan
Teleb from Egypt; Nimrod from Chad; Martin Reints of Holland;
poet, calligrapher and opera singer Taijin Tendo from Japan;
Carlos Nejar of Brazil; Maram al-Masri from Syria; Slovenia's
Kajetan Kovic; four poets from Italy: Biancamaria Frabotta, Roberto
Carifi, Giacomo Trinci, and Sardinia's poet/ activist Alberto
Masala; and three from the U.S.: Simon Ortiz, Amiri Baraka, and
Janine Pommy Vega.
Four musicians were on hand
to work with the poets: jazz pianist Riccardo Morpurgo; Luca
Colussi on drums; Andrea Lombardini on bass; and Marco Collazzoni
on sax and flute. On the video screen above the stage was a
line from Bosnian poet Izet Sarajlic: Even the lines of poems
are content when the people get together.
As night fell in the convent
garden of San Francesco, the festival began. Poets and musicians
played and read under a bright moon for three successive nights.
Iraqi poet Saadi Yousef, exiled
for years in London, read and sang his poem, America the Beautiful:
God save America/ My home sweet home!
We are not your hostages,
America
and your soldiers are not God's soldiers
We are the poor ones, ours is the earth of the drowned gods
the gods of bulls
the gods of fires
the gods of sorrows that intertwine clay and blood in a song
We are the poor, ours is the god of the poor
who emerges out of the farmer's ribs
hungry
and bright
and raises heads up high
America, we are the dead
Let your soldiers come
Whoever kills a man, let him resurrect him
We are the drowned ones, dear lady
We are the drowned
Let the water come
Francisca Aguirre's poems drew
from childhood memories of life with and without her father,
painter Lorenzo Aguirre, who was killed in prison, a political
prisoner of Franco:
When they killed my father
we stayed in that zone of the void
that goes from life to death,
inside that last bubble launched by the drowned
as if all the air in the world had suddenly disappeared.
I remember they gave my sister Susy and me
the news in the bathroom/ in that school for daughters of political
prisoners.
There was an enormous mirror
and I saw the word death grow inside that mirror
until it came out
and lodged itself in the eyes of my sister
like a lethal and pestilent vapour.
Egypt's Hassan Teleb said his
poems had been confiscated for impiety by AL-AZHAR, the Egyptian
Islamic Institution for all Moslems, and for treason against
the government by Mubarak. "I guess I am a danger to everyone,"
he said wryly. One poem written years ago, Prayer to the Mother
of Ali, was prophetic enough to give chills:
I am not the only one defeated
by plenty
the guards forced me to my knees
walk on four legs, they said
they wanted me to say I was the prey of the devil
and that now I repent.
I resisted.
I did not surrender.
They said, Say long life to the Sultan.
But I didn't, I wouldn't
We'll take your eyes out
make you crazy
and leave you alone and forgotten.
I could see the deluge coming.
So, Mother of Ali, before you
you have a different person.
Take a pen. I want to dictate the essence of my tragedy.
I know the word is weak and poetry resists
but I'll try. And who knows?
I might be successful
If the angels of poetry help me
and God gives me inspiration.
Simon Ortiz read from his newly
collected poems, Out There Somewhere, accounts of how
capitalism worked on the res in the Fifties in the uranium mines.
His story-telling voice, like one you might listen to in a long
drive across the southwest, told the heartbreaking facts with
humour and precision, leaving the listeners to judge for ourselves.
It made you want to send the owners packing underground to the
deepest pits and shafts-get a taste of how the system works in
real life.
Syria's Maram-al-Masri at first
glance looked like a movie star, decked out in a low-cut dress
and high heels. Her openly sensual intimate poems read in a
low captivating voice had everyone in the audience leaning forward,
convinced she was reading to him or her alone. There was wry
humour in her declaration of wanting to give pleasure, receive
pleasure. It took a minute to realize what a revolutionary act
this was for a woman from a Moslem country-openly avowing her
right to her own body, and anything she cared to do with and
in it.
Amiri Baraka read the last
night the whole text of Somebody Blew Up America, and
We. Accompanied by the band playing a John Coltrane tune
in regular, double, and triple time, Baraka launched into the
accusatory poem. He was riveting, brilliant-one of the best performances
I've ever seen.
Who
Who
Who
Who own the oil
Who want more oil
Who told you what you think that later you find out a lie
Who
Who
???
Who found Bin Laden, maybe they Satan
Who pay the CIA
Who knew the bomb was gonna blow
Who knew why the terrorists
Learned to fly in Florida
San Diego
The day following my own reading,
Casa della Poesia and Minister of Culture Capecchi got me clearance
to enter the medium security prison Casa Circonariale Santa Caterina
with poet Alberto Masala for a talk with the prisoners. Having
worked in New York State prisons for more than twenty-five years
teaching creative writing to men, women and children, I have
tremendous faith in the transformative power of poetry-in ordinary
people finding a voice of their own and using it for self-discovery,
and for changing the world around them. For some long-termers,
words are the only way they have to get over the walls.
Director of Education Liliana
filled us in on the people we would see. Most of the hundred
or so men in Santa Caterina's were serving three to five years
for using, selling, or transporting drugs. Their countries of
origin were as varied as the poets at the festival; only a few
old timers were Italian. About thirty men between nineteen and
thirty-five years old filed into the chapel for the talk. The
night before I'd performed a poem called The Draft, in
which I described my shock at seeing men with wrists and ankles
in chains, hobbling out in step to a bus that would take them
to another prison. The throwback to the slave days, so in your
face, was like a punch in the stomach. I handed out translations
of the poem, and read it for the group.
What followed was an open discussion
of some of the harsher conditions I've encountered in the U.S.
prisons. Sylvia Baraldini, an Italian citizen incarcerated in
America for twelve years for underground activities in the U.S.,
wrote in an article for Il Manifesto in Rome that no one should
be surprised at the horrible tortures inflicted by U.S. occupation
forces on Iraqi citizens; Amnesty International has been denouncing
analagous conditions inside the special U.S. prisons for years.
One man objected, defending
the system that had imprisoned him. "I am from Tunisia.
But you are describing harsh conditions that do not exist here."
I agreed. "For a similar
crime in the U.S., you would serve from ten to fifteen years.
The business of locking up mostly poor people and employing
many others to guard them is very large over there. We have
two million people in prison; imagine how many work in that field."
"And once convicted,"
said Fabrizio, an older Italian convict, "you lose many
of your civic guarantees. Here we still have civil rights after
conviction."
He gave Alberto a poem he had
brought with him to read aloud, called Sunset.
I raise my eyes
and scrutinize the sea
that shines and reddens
under the afternoon sun
My thought
follows the movement
of the water
runs in space
rides the waves
one behind the other.
Everyone applauded. An Albanian
sang a song he remembered from his childhood. Another man recited
a poem he had learned in school. Alberto Masala offered to return
with more poetry another day, if they wanted. They all agreed
to come back if he did. We left with handshakes all around. One
man waited until the chapel emptied to say I reminded him of
his mother.
In Italian train stations,
where the tracks spread out beyond the station to a flat bright
horizon, even standing on the platform you feel you're going
somewhere. The day after Il Cammino delle Comete ended in Pistoia,
I left with Alberto for Bologna.
Poet Jack Hirschman in San
Francisco had sent me a book of poems he had translated from
Italian of the poet Sante Notarnicola of Bologna the year before.
Most of the poems had been written in prison, where Notarnicola
did twenty years straight, and an additional nine years provisional
release, returning every night to sleep behind bars. He had
been among the youngest in the Red Brigade, robbing banks to
bankroll the revolution until he was betrayed by one of his own.
As he tells it, he had believed completely in the necessity
of supporting the struggle by any means necessary, including
violence. He was given five life terms, and had only been completely
released three years ago.
I had made copies of the chapbook,
Liberty, Understand? and passed them out to my class at
Eastern C.F. in upstate New York. We've been meeting as a class
and writing poetry for eight years, and that winter we spent
two weeks discussing his poems. One phrase, "the Big Turning,"
came up several times in the book: As logic dictates/ after
the Big Turning/ the freeze has set in. "What do you
think that means?" I asked. It became the homework assignment
for the week. I returned with the idea that perhaps it meant
the solidarity in the Brigade had disappeared, and some had turned
toward a self-serving or subjective position-a Big Turning away
from one ideology to another-sort of like selling out.
The class disagreed. The Big
Turning, they said, comes to a person doing long time when he
or she realizes the system has taken something from the inherent
personality that one cannot get back. One can't turn around and
look for it in the past; one is standing in the new way now.
Science, one of the poets in the class, wrote up their position,
and I mailed it to Hirschman and translator Raffaella Marzano;
both said they thought the understanding correct.
When Alberto Masala offered
to introduce me to his friend Sante Notarnicola, who owned a
bar in Bologna's equivalent of Greenwich Village, I jumped at
the chance. Fresh from the train, we walked over to Sante's
bar that same night. The place was packed. I recognized Sante
at once as a fixed gray point in the swirling mass of students
on a weekend night. He had white hair and looked to be in his
60's. After introductions he sat us down at the end of the bar
over a couple of beers. He wasn't a man of much small talk.
"What does it mean, the
Big Turning?" I said, getting straight to it. I gave him
the two ideas we'd come up with in class.
Sante shook his head.
"In 1985 we held a meeting
inside the prison of everybody who was left of the Brigade, and
we decided: Not in violence. The revolution will not be
won with violence. If it would,"-he lit the cigarette he
had just rolled up-- "I would use it, I have no problem-but
it won't. Turning away from violence is the only way the struggle
can be won."
The next day we went to meet
him at his place set improbably in the middle of a housing complex
behind an iron gate. It was a little country cottage with its
own tile roof and window boxes. He had said he didn't write
much any more, but as we sat down at the kitchen table, he presented
me with a poem:
Peace
is a colored dishrag
in your window.
Peace
is your two white breasts
freed in the wind
Peace
is that tool
the tranquilizing machine gun
that you have hidden
between the flower pots
of sweet basil and mint.
He went outside to the flower
boxes under his kitchen window, and returned with a snippet of
green in each hand.
"See?" he said. "Sweet
basil and mint."
The next day I flew to Napoli
for the last reading with Casa della Poesia in Baronissi. They
had published a chapbook of my poems translated into Italian;
the performance would also be a book party. Casa della Poesia
is lodged in an impressive library building that was once a Franciscan
convent. It stands on a cliff overlooking a wide valley. The
reading was set up with lights and sound system to happen outdoors.
Rehearsal took place in the blazing sun, with drummer Felice
Marino, bassist Mauricio Galidieri, guitarist Massimo Barrella,
and keyboard Renato Costarella. After an hour someone remarked
that drummer Felice in his green shirt looked a little like a
Christmas decoration.
That night we played to a good
crowd, and something magic happened-something when it goes beyond
what you're doing and becomes something else coming through.
The next to the last poem was a blues piece, Business on
the Hill, as Usual, with this last stanza:
How can we take apart the
premise
pull the nails out,
pull the Bastille down, plant the open market space,
watch the redwing blackbirds and think about nothing?
How can we create the grace of freedom?
We repeated the stanza again
and again. They were not hypothetical questions. How can we
do it? Maybe Sante in the Big Turning has the answer.
Janine Pommy Vega, author of twelve books and chapbooks
of poems since 1968, lives in Willow, New York. She can be reached
at: vega@counterpunch.org
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