Poetry As Testimony

This book analyzes Holocaust poetry, war poetry, working-class poetry, and 9/11 poetry as forms of testimony. Rowland argues that testamentary poetry requires a different approach to traditional ways of dealing with poems due to the pressure of the metatext (the original, traumatic events), the poems’ demands for the hyper-attentiveness of the reader, and a paradox of identification that often draws the reader towards identifying with the poet’s experience, but then reminds them of its sublimity. He engages with the work of a diverse range of twentieth-century authors and across the literature of several countries, even uncovering new archival material. The study ends with an analysis of the poetry of 9/11, engaging with the idea that it typifies a new era of testimony where global, secondary witnesses react to a proliferation of media images. This book ranges across the literature of several countries, cultures, and historical events in order to stress the large variety of contexts in which poetry has functioned productively as a form of testimony, and to note the importance of the availability of translations to the formation of literary canons.

Witness, I Am is divided into three gripping sections of new poetry from one of Canada’s most recognized poets. The first part of the book, “Dangerous Sound,” contains contemporary themed poems about identity and belonging, undone and rendered into modern sound poetry. “Muskrat Woman,” the middle part of the book, is a breathtaking epic poem that considers the issue of missing and murdered indigenous women through the reimagining and retelling of a sacred Cree creation story. The final section of the book, “Ghost Dance,” raids the autobiographical so often found in Scofield’s poetry, weaving the personal and universal into a tapestry of sharp poetic luminosity. From “Killer,” Scofield eerily slices the dreadful in with the exquisite: “I could, this day of proficient blooms, / take your fingers, / tie them down one by one. This one for the runaway, / this one for the joker, / this one for the sass-talker, / this one for the judge, / this one for the jury. / Oh, I could kill you.”

Life's testimony in poetry is a book that comes from the heart of a man. His life experiences, manifesting themselves in words. This book was written for everyone who has ever felt lonely. Poems that will take its readers on a journey that shows, hurt, pain, growth, faith, and victory. Everyday situations that we all have faced. Inspirational, uplifting, motivational, helpful and true emotions. Visual. Mentally caressing, passages giving emotional understanding, and enlightenment to anyone that will listen. Life's testimony in poetry is the first of its kind. I pray that, there are as many blessings in the reading of this book as there was in its creation. May God Bless.

Life's testimony in poetry is a book that comes from the heart of a man. His life experiences, manifesting themselves in words. This book was written for everyone who has ever felt lonely. Poems that will take its readers on a journey that shows, hurt, pain, growth, faith, and victory. Everyday situations that we all have faced. Inspirational, uplifting, motivational, helpful and true emotions. Visual. Mentally caressing, passages giving emotional understanding, and enlightenment to anyone that will listen. Life's testimony in poetry is the first of its kind. I pray that, there are as many blessings in the reading of this book as there was in its creation. May God Bless.

IBPA Benjamin Franklin AwardTM gold winner, poetry category Sierra Leone’s devastating civil war barely caught the attention of Western media, but it raged on for over a decade, bringing misery to millions of people in West Africa from 1991 to 2002. The atrocities committed in this war and the accounts of its survivors were duly recorded by international organizations, but they run the risk of being consigned to dusty historical archives. Derived from public testimonies at a UN-backed war crimes tribunal in Freetown, this remarkable poetry collection aims to breathe new life into the records of Sierra Leone’s civil war, delicately extracting heartbreaking human stories from the morass of legal jargon. By rendering selected trial transcripts in poetic form, Shanee Stepakoff finds a novel way to communicate not only the suffering of Sierra Leone’s people, but also their courage, dignity, and resilience. Her use of innovative literary techniques helps to ensure that the voices of survivors are not forgotten, but rather heard across the world. This volume also includes an introduction that explores how the genre of “found poetry” can serve as a uniquely powerful means through which writers may bear witness to atrocity. This book’s unforgettable excavation and shaping of survivor testimonies opens new possibilities for speaking about the unspeakable.

A major work by an essential American poet, published in full for the first time. Available again for the first time since 1978-and complete in one volume for the first time ever-Charles Reznikoff'sTestimonyis a lost masterpiece, a leg- endary book that stands alongside Louis Zukofsky's "A" and William Carlos Williams'sPatersonas a milestone of modern American poetry. Taking as its raw material the voices of witnesses, victims, and perpetrators discovered by the author in criminal court transcripts, Reznikoff's book sets forth a stark panorama of late- 19th- and early 20th-century America-the underside of the Gilded Age, beset by racism and casual violence, poverty and disease-in a radically stripped-down lan- guage of almost unbearable intensity. This edition also includes Reznikoff 's prose studies for the poem, unavailable to readers since the 1930s, and a new introduction by essayist Eliot Weinberger.

"The Testimony of Simone Weil, " the first of the four long poems that form Kate Daniels' new collection, gives voice to the radical French political thinker and religious philosopher. Here Weil meditates on some of the most famous images by Eugene Atget, the acclaimed documentary photographer who recorded a perishing Old Paris. Three survivors of the collapse of the Nimitz Freeway in the 1989 San Francisco earthquake tell of the calamity and its aftermath in the narrative poem "In the Marvelous Dimension." Echoing the Greek myth of Demeter and her daughter Persephone, "The Smash-Up" centers on a divorced woman and the sufferings of her grown daughter, whose husband has just committed suicide. In this poem, Daniels ruminates on marriage, sexuality, inherited behavior, and spousal abuse and portrays a mother's guilt at failing her offspring. "Portrait of the Artist as Mother, " twenty poems that compose the final sequence of the collection, finds new life and second chances, exploring the difficulties of motherhood as well as its bounties. Daniels artfully contemplates the obstacles involved in maintaining one's identity as a writer and as a woman while confronting the challenges of motherhood.

STARR-CROSSED LOVERS Taken word for word from the sworn testimony of Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky and arranged like free verse on the page, here is an unexpected collection of found poetry. Filled with the pleasures of language, surprising juxtapositions, and moments of truth, humor, tenderness and insight, Poetry Under Oath reveals the human side behind a history-making affair. A Partial Table of Contents WJC: "There Are No Curtains" "In the Context of Her Desire" "But" "I Get These Ties" "When We Were Alone" "No Recollection" MSL: "He Was Just Angry" "Mr. Ickes" "My Gifts" "With His Eyes Wide Open" "Little Tiny Spot" "Too Late"