Poetry Against Terror

by Fabrizio Frosini

After I wrote my poem, ‘Blood Rain’, my dear friend Pamela Sinicrope wrote to me saying that we had to think about a future collection of poems on the bloody Paris events of November 13th. From that suggestion the project was born. And I wanted it to become a large collective work: the voice of poets from many different countries, worldwide, who stand up and speak aloud — but without hatred — against the bloody madness of terror.

Astonishingly, 64* Poets from 43** different countries (counting both each poet's home country and the ones where some of the poets currently live) have joined this project, and I wish to say thank you to each of them.

To make this project a tribute to the countless innocent victims, worldwide, we — poets of the world — wish to make our voices resonate in the minds and hearts of all women and men who refuse to be silenced by hate and violence. For this reason, I addressed a letter to the Secretary-General of the United Nations (of which you can read an excerpt here below), and the other poets sent a similar letter to the Head of State of their respective countries. It is a symbolic gesture, but it highlights our commitment as "Poets against Terror".

Through a PDF file (§), easy to open by anybody owning a pc, tablet, smartphone, we wish to make our collection of poetry freely available, especially to students/schools, because we believe that education, fairness and justice are the crucial key to help fight and overcome ‘terror ideology’ — not discrimination, as some voices call for. On such a basis we seek a moral support from both national and international organizations, in order to give visibility to our project, because, to quote my friend and co-editor Daniel Brick, ''this project is about compassion for the victims of terrorism, it's a celebration of a simple equation: 'violence = more violence ; peace = peace'. We've made it clear, we're not debating causes, but mourning a particular 'effect' which is the intentional murder of innocents''.

This project would not have come about without the valuable help and support of my poet colleagues and friends Daniel Brick, Pamela Sinicrope and Richard Thézé. To them, my co-editors: Grazie di Cuore (my whole-hearted thanks). Thanks also to Leila Samarrai and Valsa George Nedumthallil, who have helped with the commentaries, and –last but not least– to Galina Italyanskaya, who has created the book cover. However, we need to recognize the role of another invaluable source of help: the Poetry website 'PoemHunter.com'. I would not have had the capacity, in such a short time, to invite so many poets worldwide to take part in this project without it.

As a final thought, I wish to remember all the victims of terrorism and their families —those who have suffered and those who have died — everywhere, in the world. Let me say, to them and to ourselves: We shall not forget.

(Fabrizio Frosini, Firenze, 19th December 2015)

__________

(§) To get a free PDF copy, register at https://groups.google.com/d/forum/ebook-poetry-against-terror

* Actually, the number of poets in this Extended Edition (Smashwords 1st Ed., April 2016) is 74, since ten more poets have later joined the project. They are: Billan Abdirhman Adam (Somalia), Ellias Aghili Dehnavi (Iran), Umaima Ahmed (Pakistan), Ammar Butt (USA/Pakistan), Jacob Dyck (USA), Max T. Edwards (USA), Emdadul Hamid (born in Bangladesh, living in the USA), Birgitta Abimbola Heikka (born in Nigeria, living in the USA), Stephen Sinicrope (USA), Joey Vlahakis (USA). Their poems can be read in section 'Addendum'.

** The 43 Countries: Australia, Bangladesh, Botswana, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Croatia, Egypt, France, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Kenya, Morocco, New Zealand, Nepal, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Somalia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, The Philippines, Tunisia, UAE, Uganda, UK, USA, Zimbabwe.

~*~

His Excellency Mr Ban Ki-moon

Secretary-General of the United Nations

Office of the Secretary-General

1st ave. and 46th street

New York, NY 10017 USA

Dear Mr Secretary General,

As a world citizen who loves peace and is adamantly against any kind of violence, I wish to inform your office of a project that came about after the brutal murders of so many innocent people in Paris, on November 13th, 2015. The project has been given the title

‘POETRY AGAINST TERROR’

as a tribute to the countless victims of terror, worldwide.

The book, which is an anthology of poetry, is a compilation of poems written by 64 poets from 43 different countries from all over the world. Through the poems, we, the poets, wish to express our unanimous desire for universal peace and to add our voice to those other unequivocal voices at the United Nations who say 'NO' to the scourge of terrorism that has horrifically affected so many human beings in so many locations around the globe.

The project, which was, primarily my own response to recent events in Paris, has grown to become the collective response of a large number of world poets, all of whom believe in liberty, equality and fraternity and who are totally against violence —against terror.

I am writing to you on behalf of all the poets involved in the project because we would like our message to reach the greatest number of people across the world as is possible. Particularly regarding the young, it would be wonderful having the book distributed freely to schools so to help people learn a message of peace and reject discrimination and hatred.

It is our fervent hope that your office kindly pass this information on to all the delegates of the United Nations and request their help in passing on the information further to colleagues working in national and international organizations that promote peace, especially those operating in the fields of culture and education.

I am grateful for your assistance,

Yours sincerely,

Fabrizio Frosini

(on behalf of the sixty-four 'Poets against Terror')

~*~

From many countries

The poets come together

To celebrate peace.

(Daniel J. Brick)

FOREWORD

by Daniel J. Brick

The Unified Field of Poetry

On November 13, 2015, I spent several hours composing a Poem of Memory, called ‘A Dome of Dutch Elms’. In my hometown, St. Paul, Minnesota, Dutch Elm trees had been planted along boulevards, and they formed a dome of leaves and branches arching over boulevards and streets. Sunlight filtering through that dome was a lovely sight. The loveliness was doomed when a disease invaded the city in the 1970s and destroyed virtually all of the trees.

I had planned to write that narrative but the poem decided on a different course, focusing on my adolescent experience. I followed the poem's direction instead of mine, and did not deal with the disease. Another issue took over the poem, namely, rites of passage. My developing appreciation of natural beauty proved to be the theme the very process of writing had chosen. This unplanned passage summed up the new direction of the poem:

That sight was not only beautiful

in itself, but I believe the source

of my sense of beauty..

This passage of observation segues into a passage of meditation:

Beauty does not wait upon our wills or nature.

[..] We who live out lives, burnished

and bright, under the light of the sun

must take what is offered, when it is offered.

Such a pattern of observation followed by meditation is characteristic of a kind of lyric poetry. It occurs in a moment of calm regard, when other issues can be set aside, as the mind assesses its sensory experiences and places them into a larger philosophical context, but what happened next on that night of composing this poem shattered that calm.

A window opened automatically on my computer screen with the terse news report: 118 killed in terrorist attack in Paris. I felt the life squeezed out of me, I went limp in body and soul. My first thought was of the grief family and friends would be feeling over the loss of their loved ones. Then I thought of the beautiful city of Paris, the City of Lights, darkened by violence and fear. It was only after these thoughts that a helpless compassion for the victims seared my consciousness. These three sensations swamped my mind for the next several hours. At some point the irony of my privileged situation of external peace and internal calm that made my lyric poem possible assailed me. This event, this time demanded a different kind of poem from sincere and caring poets. But I was feeling helpless, unable to focus my emotions, much less my thoughts. This sense of futility bothered me, because a poet rendered silent by external events is not fulfilling his or her poetic mission, which is to give voice to common human concerns.

I turned to the internet and found that poets at Poem Hunter, some of whom were familiar to me, were already responding to this terrible event with that other kind of poem. It was heartening in the isolation of my apartment, in the silence of the night, to read their words expressing grief, condemning violence, promoting the arts of peace. Reading their poems pulled me out of my paralysis of emotion, and before dawn, I too had written a poem in response.

Over the next few days, as news reports gave us more horrendous details and pundits commented on and assessed the facts, more poets offered their poems. Fabrizio Frosini and I have co-edited six eBooks of poems by poets who post their poems at Poem Hunter. Along with another co-editor, Pamela Sinicrope, we decided a new eBook of poems against terrorism was required. When we invited poets to join us, there were almost immediately tens and tens of respondents from many different countries. The poets had rallied to fulfill their poetic mission: to lend their voices in support of humane values.

I have alluded, in this Introduction, to a different kind of poem from the familiar lyric poem in which a poet speaks about issues of a personal nature. This other kind of poem does not derive from the poet's individual consciousness, but from events in the world. John Keats confronted the need for this other kind of poem at the end of his life. In the revision of the opening canto of his unfinished epic, The Fall Of Hyperion, he describes himself meeting a new Muse named Moneta, who sternly chides him for failing to write this other kind of poetry. Moneta says to the humbled poet:

None can usurp this height [of poetic achievement]

But those to whom the miseries of the world

Are misery, and will not let them rest.

Keats wrote those lines in 1819, but did not live to write the poetry they embody, but we poets of the early 21st century certainly can. And we should not rest until we have fulfilled that mission.

This kind of poem has been called ‘The Political Poem’, but the root word politics is a vexed word with too many connotations we may not intend. It has been called ‘The Poem of Conscience’, but that persists in locating the poem in a poet's individual consciousness. A more inclusive term was coined by the American poet, Carolyn Forche. She reversed the terms of a phrase by the Polish poet, Czeslaw Milosz, ‘The Witness of Poetry’, and offered us ‘The Poetry of Witness’. Her term directs our attention to the ‘what’ rather than the ‘who’ of the poem: the poet is looking outward, into the world, and finds his subject there, as ‘the miseries of the world’ summon him to become aware, to respond, to participate.

Carolyn Forche herself has written striking Poems of Witness. In ‘The Notebook Of Uprising’, she recalled what one of her aged relatives told her about the plight of refugees in the 1930s:

Anna said we were all to be sent: Poles, Romanians, Gypsies.

So she drew her finger across her throat.

Anna Ahkmatova's great poem, ‘Requiem 1935-1940’, remembers the victims of Stalinist oppression. In her prose preface, she tells us about her motivation in a chilling incident of despair and hope:

A woman, with lips blue from the cold, started out of the torpor common to us all..

Can you describe this?

And I said: I can

Then something like