Essays by Clive Matson

Clive Matson has written and published a number of essays. His most recent is the introduction to An Eye for an Eye Makes the Whole World Blind - Poets on 9/11 (Edited by Clive Matson and Allen Cohen, Regent Press, Oakland: 2002. 286pp ISBN 1-58790-034-3).

          Since the tragedies of September 11, 2001, we haven't had a clear public voice for the body politic. I hear war talk, recalled horror, and patriotic clichés that all seem like armor covering an uncomfortable wound. "One wonders if nature — instinctual wisdom," Adrienne Rich wrote of a poet, "might not have led him to drop the greaves and breastplates of those old warriors and to step, finally, light and self-exposing, into the fray." Even several voices, however different, speaking with that self-exposing honesty, would be a monumental relief.

          This country has embraced a veneer of righteousness as its armor. From the day the administration called the terrorist attacks "acts of war," that righteousness has drummed through public consciousness. The president made his declarations, Congress followed suit and upped the ante, international law was ignored, the military geared for action, and mainstream media dismissed any dissent.

          What underlies this veneer? That's not easy to determine, since the righteousness accelerated quickly into a "din of collective madness," as Allen Cohen observes. Shock and anger have taken over and drowned out the heart. And how can we hope to think and act with integrity, if we don't know the voices within us? That's the first wish for this anthology: to become a forum for those voices.

          I cherish Robert Hass's conviction that "poetry is at the very core of the culture." A year after September 11 grief is still central, but it's skewed. So little grief is expressed for foreign dead, and so much for our dead, that grief seems a justification for more bombing. The fact is, I think, that we've plunged into a chaos underneath the grief. A chaos of horror, of anger, of doubt, of poorly formulated guilt, of despair, of loss of the comfortable self, of feeling something's terribly wrong.

          It's natural, of course, for people to have huge responses to the attacks. We are a passionate people — witness rock music, football, space heroes, flappers, all the way back to tea rotting in Boston Harbor. We honor gut responses. But it's not appropriate to act impulsively. We have no excuse, we are no longer a young country expanding into a continent where we proceed, seemingly, without consequence. We are part of a world community and everyone knows it: it's the 21st century. Anything we do has repercussions. In fact, September 11 is itself a repercussion — of an ugly situation created throughout the developing world.

          The media say people support the U.S. government. But how do those who believe, "There must be a better way," answer the pollsters? How do you answer a question posed with the facts: "Do you support the war on terror as it is being carried out, even though Afghanistan is in shambles, hundreds of thousands more Afghans now living in tents; even though Osama bin Laden has not been apprehended; even though Al Qaeda has probably become more popular; even though twice as many innocent people have died by U.S. bombs than on September 11; even though the war has put our future and our children's future in hock?" The people of the U.S. are not dumb. We do not, certainly not to the extent the polls suggest, support the war on terror.

          Slanted polls help that righteous armor permeate the culture, and the Vietnam War demonstrated very well how opinion gets manipulated. Is this knowledge being applied today? Aside from Pacifica Radio and a few journals, we don't have a forum with real discussion of issues. What can be done? What can we do, when the president talks about using nukes on a half dozen nations and sending the military into Iraq on his own?

          In a positive sense, September 11 gives the U.S. a chance finally to come of age. The Friday after September 11, Gail Ford went ahead with her monthly poetry gathering. She noted the same thing Dana Gioia remarked in his essay, "All I Have is a Voice": his speaking tour and her salon were rather exceptionally well attended. People came to be in the presence of poets, who were expected to approach the event in a real fashion, even if this meant expressing doubt and confusion — perhaps because doubt and confusion would be expressed.

          Clear understanding of political forces, as Michael Parenti demonstrates in his foreword, can help. But the most forceful cracks in the veneer, I believe, will be made by information in our hearts, thrusting upward. Some material from our wounds, some knowledge of being human, some understanding of pain and consequences, must be able to break through. Surely the armor, all that fear and shock and need for revenge, is vulnerable. I look for a bursting up in the individual and in the body politic. It would be most natural for poets to help with the words.

          The call for poems for this anthology went to email lists, to all the poets Allen Cohen and I know, and to almost 200 of the better-known poets in POETS & WRITERS. Everyone was asked to forward the call. Even with this wide net, many fine poets were left out, partly because the time was so short, partly because some poets list with publishers — many of those letters came back "forwarding order expired" — and partly because the poetry world is segmented. Poets seem to form affinity groups that don't overlap easily: Language poets, Spoken Word poets, and academic poets are not fully represented. The poems here are drawn from half or perhaps two-thirds of the poetry world.

          One poet even expressed doubt that linking poetry and September 11 is valid. To be sure, much 20th Century poetry has been a sanctuary for alienated and gifted sensibilities. By a similar token some poets admit inability to find words for such a terrible event. September 11 is, nevertheless, a call for poets to reclaim our oldest, most basic tradition: giving identity to — and thereby healing — the unknown and the chaotic. This role dates back to 2,000 BC in the Greeks, 7,000 BC in Sumeria, and probably for 35,000 years of human consciousness.

          That tradition has generated at least one book already: William Heyen chose prose writers and poets for SEPTEMBER 11, 2001: AMERICAN WRITERS RESPOND (Etruscan Press, Maryland, 2002). "O Books" is also preparing a journal "Enough," and the activist group "Poets For Peace" has a collection in progress. The present anthology is another step, hopefully a large one; AN EYE FOR AN EYE MAKES THE WHOLE WORLD BLIND is a gathering place.

          The voices here do not show unity. They show passion, grief, outrage, dismay, hopelessness — all the difficult stuff. The contradictions and the dissent are not unpatriotic, they're real. And the power of the words demonstrates that, all along, the poets have been doing their jobs. But our culture has been ignoring the poets. How many people know, for instance, that at the onset of the Gulf War, Robert Bly led his workshop out into the streets of Los Angeles in a grief march?

          If the U.S. government invades Iraq, that will be a rallying point for dissent — a very late one. We are a much smarter people if we act sooner. Who shall we be, in the next period? To take in these voices — to listen and honor any resonance — is to exploit the role of poets properly. Righteousness is almost everywhere. If the sentence I posed for the pollsters provokes disbelief, the veneer has permeated dangerously far. The poets' 35,000-year-old tradition is in the reader's body, too, under the veneer. Perhaps only a thin skin needs to be split away.

          I have great hopes for this anthology: I believe words and images have the power to define the chaos we're floundering in. A multiplicity of poets are working, each in different ways, throughout these pages with just the required honesty. And the day that spawned their poems couldn't have greater impact on our lives — perhaps couldn't have greater impact on the future of the planet. The reader will discover how worthy these voices are of Adrienne Rich's insight, stepping "...light and self-exposing, into the fray."