Habeas Corpus Lives!

For yet a third time, the U.S. Supreme Court has rebuked the Bush Administration on it's handling of the detainees at Guantanamo. It struck down a 2006 law the Republican-controlled Congress passed at the request of the President, called the Military Commissions Act. The act suspended habeas corpus - a prisoner's right to challenge his or her detention. In the court's decision, Justice Anthony Kennedy, said, "The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times." I've found it very difficult to understand how it can be viewed otherwise. It is such a fundamental part of our justice system. I will be anxious to hear what the President has to say about this decision.

The Immigrant Poet Laureate

Jilly presents an interesting take on the selection of poet laureates in the U.S. While this is not totally new information to me, she has presented some good reference material and demonstrates the tendencies toward NE geographies and the male gender. Much will be made of it because much was made of it the last time, a NE male then too.

In my own humble view, there are quite a few women I believe would be excellent candidates. I am perhaps more bothered by the gender issue than the geographical one. Why? I suppose being from the Midwest I should have been jumping for joy at the Kooser appointment. It turns out that his being from a neighboring state meant little of nothing to me.

I believe what may say a lot about the latest selection, and a very positive way to view it, would be that Simic is a first generation immigrant to the U.S. This at a time when our own American culture seems to be at such odds with our own American heritage. Simic was born under the dark shadows of very troubling times in his native land. I've seen in his work a more worldly view of life and I think this is a good time for Americans to experience a poet with such background.

On another note my copy of Poems from Guantanamo: The Detainees Speak arrived on Friday.

Guantanamo Poetry - five commentaries

This past week I received an e-mail from Jeff Charis-Carlson, Opinion Editor for the Iowa City Press-Citizen. He noted an earlier post in which I referenced the book, Poems from Guantanamo: The Detainees Speak that UI Press has published and brought to my attention a series of op-ed pieces on the subject that have appeared in the Iowa City Press-Citizen. I promised him I would take a look at them and I did. There were some interesting point offered in these editorials.

Jeff Charis-Carlson himself writes of his reactions to reading these poems and relates it to the haunting feelings that surface from reading Psalm 137, a song of exile in which the psalmist denounces those who captured him.

Shams Ghoneim, in another op-ed writes about the contrasting values on which America was founded and the code we are operating on with respect to the detainees at Guantanamo. She writes of Moazzam Begg's poem, "Homeward Bound," in which she can sense his hopelessness and sorrow. Begg received a letter from his 7-year-old daughter in which the only line that avoided the censor's pen was, "I love you, Daddy."

Joseph Parsons noted the poet Adrienne Rich has expressed that poetry can remind us of what we are forbidden to see. Parsons believes"Poems from Guantánamo: The Detainees Speak," is not about these accusations of maltreatment... "Its only ambition is to provide a glimpse into the lives, hearts and minds of the men held by the U.S. military at Guantanamo -- something we have been forbidden to see....as they pine for their families, their homes and all they hold dear."

Spring Ulmer writes, that words are dangerous things and "Poems from Guantánamo," had to be liberated from the Pentagon's "secure facilities," where most detainee writing remains in confinement, as it is considered "a security risk." I was struck by Ulmer's story where a year ago, after reading detainee Jumah Al Dossari's descriptions of torture (smuggled out and published online), she began writing letters to Dossari, only to have them returned by the military, marked and brutally ripped open as if to frighten her.

Tung Yin is a law professor at the University of Iowa, specializes in constitutional law and national security law. He writes of the poems giving human voice to the problems caused by applying the war model to non-state actors. He distinguishes the differences between traditional wars between nations, and that between the United States and al Qaida/Taliban. In traditional war, the enemy easily is identified, whereas in this conflict, the enemy hides among civilians. Because al Qaida members deliberately conceal themselves and because even the Taliban fighters did not wear traditional uniforms, there's higher likelihood that the United States would have incorrectly identified a person as the enemy. And in traditional war, it may be unknown what date the war will end, but it is known that the war can end when there is an armistice. In this conflict, it is unlikely the United States would negotiate with al Qaida, and we never may know if we have succeeded in destroying it as a threat to this country extending indefinitely the detention of these individuals without any due process.

I applaud the Iowa City Press-Citizen for dialogue it has contributed to the discussion of the Guantanamo poems.

Tuesday Misc News...

Poetry fans gather for Ted Hughes's festival.

On a sad note: The poet Rahim al-Maliki wrote about his dreams of Iraqi unity in a place where such appeals are drowned out by daily bombings. One of them took his life on Monday.

NPR feature / More on Guantanamo Poetry. Plus more on the book of poems from Nafeesa Syeed here.

Dick Cheneny fails at American Civics.

Senator Richare Lugar changes tune on Iraq. Lugar called on Bush to "downsize" the U.S. military's role in Iraq and place more emphasis on diplomatic and economic options

Andrew Ervin reviews The Age of Huts (compleat) - By Ron Silliman

Stick Poet went over the 29,000 unique visitors milestone this past weekend. Thanks to all the SPSH readers. By the way, if you are not getting our syndicated feed of each day's posts by email and would like to, see the box in the sidebar to sign up to receive it that way. It's easy.

Guantanamo Poetry

Word this week hit the media that a book of poetry is being released in August that contains translations of poems written by detainees at Guantanamo. In all, there are 22 poems by 17 prisoners that will appear in a volume published by University of Iowa Press.

It is not at all surprising to me that the news of this is being greeted with mixed views. Some disapprove of the detainees having a public forum for their writing. Government and military sources have been quite concerned that the poems might hold some coded meaning and would not allow their publication without translation and vetting for such possibility. Still, others question the literary quality and perhaps value of these works. Indeed, these are not written by individuals who are known as poets or literary academics. Too, the whole matter of the impact of translation exists. Any work of poetry in translation perhaps loses something in the process and is only as good as the translator’s abilities with language, summation of the author’s intent and literary skills of the translator.

It is my opinion that these were not likely written for public consumption. I say that because initial indications are these detainees were crudely writing poems prior to them being allowed the use of pen and paper in 2003. Even in the general prison population in America it is not uncommon for inmates to turn to poetry in their solitary state to release emotion. I am assuming that in fact these were inspired by those same motives and not that of the paranoia expressed by Cmdr. J.D. Gordon, a Defense Department spokesman quoted in a June 20th article in the Wall Street Journal. Cmdr. Gordon said, “While a few detainees at Guantanamo Bay have made efforts to author what they claim to be poetry, given the nature of their writings they have seemingly not done so for the sake of art. They have attempted to use this medium as merely another tool in their battle of ideas against Western democracies.”

I have only seen the text of three of the poems. One riles on about President Bush, hypocrisy, and lies; it also denotes the anguish of his oppression and separation from family and references his religious faith. Is It True? by Abu Kabir has only the backdrop of nature against his fate and speaks of his family and his innocence. The third one written by a detainee who has made multiple attempts on his own life while in detention is largely laced with the sentiment of death.

The former poet laureate Robert Pinsky was asked to comment on the merit of these works. In the New York Times, Pinsky was quoted as saying, “I haven’t found a Mandelshtam in here,” referring to the Great Russian poet who died in a Stalinist labor camp. He notes also, the poems were written by amateurs in the Arabic tradition of poetry, and were translated into English by legal translators, not literary ones. But Pinsky seems to see a value in these words none the less. He is quoted by the publisher, University of Iowa Press as saying, “Poetry, art of the human voice, helps us turn toward what we should or must not ignore. Speaking as they can across barriers actual and figurative, translated into our American tongue, these voices in confinement implicitly call us to our principles and to our humanity. They deserve, above all, not admiration or belief or sympathy—but attention. Attention to them is urgent for us.”

The title is Poems from Guantanamo - The Detainees Speak - edited by Marc Falkoff.


Poems from Guantanamo: The Detainees Speak