I'm Won.

I once read an essay by Mark Halliday in The Georgia Review called "The Arrogance of Poetry." It's my favorite. The whole thing is good, and you must read it, but to sum up, he writes, of all poems, of any poem, of a poem:

"[The poem] says,‘Do you or do you not get it?’ It says, ‘Do you love me? You should. If you don’t, you’ve missed something. The problem is yours—some blindness, some crudeness, some insensitivity to nuance.’ Fortunately, persons don’t often have the gall to say, ‘If you don’t love me, the problem is yours.’ Poems say this every time."

He goes on to say, "Poems keep stroking their own hair."

It's true.

I hate poetry.

Am I a poet? Yeah, sure. But sometimes I hate it. In fact, lately, I hate all literature, all writing. I don't want to read it; I don't want to do it. I want to watch "American Idol" and eat marshmallows. It's been bad. I'm in a lit funk.

But today, teaching (bless teaching), my student gave a presentation on a poem by Carolyn Forche, and I was won over. This poem reminded me why I must try, why I must read. Forche wrote it when she was a civil rights worker in the 80s in El Salvador. It's brilliant. It's below.

(Dear Senstive Reader: this poem says the eff word and is ... slight gruesome. Just a heads up.)

(Dear Curious Reader: If you want to understand it better, here's a website with some stuff about the poem, including an interview with Forche.)



The Colonel


What you have heard is true. I was in his house.
His wife carried a tray of coffee and sugar. His
daughter filed her nails, his son went out for the
night. There were daily papers, pet dogs, a pistol
on the cushion beside him. The moon swung bare on
its black cord over the house. On the television
was a cop show. It was in English. Broken bottles
were embedded in the walls around the house to
scoop the kneecaps from a man's legs or cut his
hands to lace. On the windows there were gratings
like those in liquor stores. We had dinner, rack of
lamb, good wine, a gold bell was on the table for
calling the maid. The maid brought green mangoes,
salt, a type of bread. I was asked how I enjoyed
the country. There was a brief commercial in
Spanish. His wife took everything away. There was
some talk of how difficult it had become to govern.
The parrot said hello on the terrace. The colonel
told it to shut up, and pushed himself from the
table. My friend said to me with his eyes: say
nothing. The colonel returned with a sack used to
bring groceries home. He spilled many human ears on
the table. They were like dried peach halves. There
is no other way to say this. He took one of them in
his hands, shook it in our faces, dropped it into a
water glass. It came alive there. I am tired of
fooling around he said. As for the rights of anyone,
tell your people they can go fuck themselves. He
swept the ears to the floor with his arm and held
the last of his wine in the air. Something for your
poetry, no? he said. Some of the ears on the floor
caught this scrap of his voice. Some of the ears on
the floor were pressed to the ground.