[Each weekday, since the beginning of the pandemic, I have been sharing a poem a day featuring a different short form. You can learn more about these forms here. After the poems you will find some poetry recommendations. I’ve decided to post these selections on Sundays from now on. Since I post a poem every weekday, this seems a better schedule. I’ll call these posts, rather prosaically, “Poetry on Sundays.”]
Some Poetry recommendations:
What is the history of the world, or that of any struggle, as told by the poets who have survived war, oppression, slavery, persecution (political or otherwise), or any of the numerous ways we have created to subject each other and our world to violence? Against Forgetting is a very well-used favourite and I can still remember how excited I was to find it in the early 90s. I was already a fan of Carolyn Forché’s work from having come across it after my years of involvement in Nicaragua, Honduras, and El Salvador in the 80s. Of all the poetry I read in the 80s, much of it would qualify as “poetry of witness.” Immersed in various social justice and human rights struggles (anti-apartheid, Latin American solidarity, indigenous sovereignty, and more) I sought out poetry that helped me understand the world through which I was travelling.
While Against Forgetting is a world-wide collection of 20th Century poetry, this international selection (despite being organized into specific contexts) makes the notion of witness a tad fuzzy. Poetry of Witness, by contrast, applies the notion of witness to one particular context (poetry written in English), albeit drawing from across 500 years. This seems to make the notion and practice of witness more coherent. Akin to a history - perhaps a different way of recounting history. This made me look back at Against Forgetting to read the various contexts as different historical accountings. And this lead me, in turn, to remember the dozens of poems I’ve read recently shared by friends, found in my library, and on the internet by and about Palestinians, about the history of Palestine and Israel, and especially about Gaza and to view these as a history of this moment.
A few things about witness now connect for me. In the 1980s and through the 90s,I did hundreds of workshops for international development NGOs, advocacy groups, human rights groups, affinity groups (of activists who were involved in protest, direct action, sometimes travel abroad), groups of teachers, and more. Sometimes this work involved going into dangerous places. It was then, travelling in Central America, that I learned about Peace Brigades International who practiced “protective accompaniment” of people in situations of danger. This work was referred to as “witnessing” though this particular form of witnessing required endangering oneself. Something that I had done, though not with an organization. A phrase I heard often in those days was “speaking truth to power” - made famous since the 1950s by Quaker peace activists. I fancied that this was what I aspired to do in my peace and justice activism. And it was true up to a point. It was only many years later that I learned how limited my notion of this kind of “speaking” was.
“Speaking truth to power” is sometimes seen as a form of parrhesia, a term that first shows up in the work of the Greek playwright Euripides in 500 BCE. This term is variously translated as “candid speech,” “frank speech,” “bold speech.” But my favourite translation is “fearless speech,” which comes from a remarkable history of this term done by Michel Foucault and presented in six lectures that he gave at UC-Berkeley in 1983. In these lectures Foucault explores the changing nature of parrhesia over 500 years and points to our contemporary practices. Long story short: in its earliest use, this term referred to speaking a dangerous truth to someone who had power over the speaker (e.g. a tyrant). Speaking this truth could bring harm upon the speaker, up to and including death.
What parrhesia makes clear to me is that merely speaking truth, however dissident from dominant common sense, is not enough. It matters who is speaking to whom and in what context. As Foucault says:
"Someone is said to use parrhesia and merits consideration as a parresiastes only if there is a risk or danger for him in telling the truth. For instance, from the ancient Greek perspective, a grammar teacher may tell the truth to the children that he teaches, and indeed may have no doubt that what he teaches is true. But in spite of this coincidence between belief and truth, he is not a parrhesiastes. However, when a philosopher addresses himself to a sovereign, to a tyrant, and tells him that his tyranny is disturbing and unpleasant because tyranny is incompatible with justice, then the philosopher speaks the truth, believes he is speaking the truth, and, more than that, also takes a risk (since the tyrant may become angry, may punish him, may exile him, may kill him). ...
"So you see, the parrhesiastes is someone who takes a risk. Of course, this risk is not always a risk of life. When, for example, you see a friend doing something wrong and you risk incurring his anger by telling him he is wrong, you are acting as a parrhesiastes. In such a case, you do not risk your life, but you may hurt him by your remarks, and your friendship may consequently suffer for it. If, in a political debate, an orator risks losing his popularity because his opinions are contrary to the majority's opinion, or his opinions may usher in a political scandal, he uses parrhesia. Parrhesia, then, is linked to courage in the face of danger: it demands the courage to speak the truth in spite of some danger. And in its extreme form, telling the truth takes place in the "game" of life or death." Foucault, Michel (1983) Fearless Speech (Joseph Pearson, ed.), LA: Semiotext(e), pp. 15-16. [You can read the entire text of this book here: http://foucault.info/documents/parrhesia/]
There is also, in the term parrhesia, an expectation of obligation to speak the truth. This, along with understanding that a risk of harm is part of the process, now makes clear to me many experiences i have had in which i have faced oppressive power and have either chosen to speak or not, according to my willingness to risk.
And, to return to my poetry recommendations, I now see that the “witness” to which Forché and Duncan Wu refer, is one that entails danger and risk. I have thought of this often as I have read the many poems from Gaza that have been shared by friends these few months past. And I feel like I have new eyes with which to re-read the many poems in these collections. Or rather a new capacity to respect more deeply the truth that a poet dared to share.
I only recently came to know of Carolyn Forché when she read a poem by Gazan poet Mosab Abu Toha as part of a reading (online) to benefit the rebuilding of the Edward Said library that Mosab had started in Gaza, that was destroyed by Israeli bombardment. Did you tune into those readings? I was transfixed by Carolyn’s voice! Thank you for sharing about these two collections.. poetry has been one of the refuges I’ve turned to in these horrific times. Music too. Thank you also for your detailed elaboration of parrhesia. (I wrote an open letter to a Buddhist magazine last week that I can say drew upon parrhesia energy, or, how I had been thinking of it, Manjushri energy - wielding a flaming sword, to cut through ignorance and delusion. Thank you Chris for your lovely Substack.