the script and discussion questions for voices in...
TRANSCRIPT
Discussion and Action Guide 1 3/16/2008
The Script and Discussion Questions for Voices in Wartime
Below is the complete script of the documentary, Voices in Wartime. On the left-side of the matrix names of those
interviewed, references to stock and documentary film are offered. Title slides and changes are provided by a
solid black line that runs across the matrix. The middle of the matrix contains the script from the film, and the far
right column offers discussion questions.
How each instructor or facilitator conducts a discussion of the film will vary tremendously. It is recommended
that after viewing the film time be dedicated to creating a list of objectives for conducting the discussion. This list
of objectives will help put structure to the types of questions you will want to use as part of the discussion. Some
instructors may be using the film to present, discuss and critique poetry, some facilitators may wish to concentrate
their line of questioning on issues of war and peace. Questions provided here are suggested as guidelines and can
be embellished or changed to meet the needs of the group and the expertise and comfort of the facilitator.
Note: The sections of the script that are shaded in gray indicate portions of the film that appear in the 74-minute
version of the film, but have been removed from the shortened 57-minute version of Voices in Wartime.
Title and Locator
Clues
Content Script Discussion Questions
STOCK –
Archetypical images of
war from planes being
blown up and
battleships firing
moving to soldiers on
the ground.
GENERAL LENNOX:
… for an infantry man. For those who are in
combat. It‘s very hard for them to articulate
what they experience. They go through a
whole series of emotions, joy, elation, horror,
fear… What literary genre allows you to
portray that better than poetry? I don‘t know...
1. How difficult is it for you to relate an
experience that has been monumental
in your life?
2. Have you ever used writing to convey
your feelings about such an
experience?
Title – THE
TEACHER. Silence.
Fade to black.
INTERVIEW –
Lieutenant General
Lennox,
Superintendent of
West Point
That‘s why I think poetry is so important.
Many have said that it‘s very hard to articulate
that experience. And I think that poetry gives
you probably the only way you can deliver all of
those feelings simultaneously.
1. How have you relied on poetry to
express what you were thinking or
feeling?
2. What purpose does poetry serve for
you?
3. What are your thoughts on the
healing power of poetry?
Title – THE
SOLDIER. Silence.
Fade to black.
DOCUMENTARY –
David Connolly walks
down city street.
Rat Shit and the Weasel and I
are behind this paddy dike,
and Victor Charlie‘s giving us what
for.
And Rat Shit, he lifts his head,
just a little, but just enough
for the round
to go in one brown eye,
1. Who is ―Victor Charlie‖ in this poem?
2. What might be going through
Connolly’s mind as he sees his
―buddies die in front of him?‖
3. What picture does this poem paint in
your mind? How does Connolly’s
poem allow for you to create this
picture?
Discussion and Action Guide 2 3/16/2008
Connolly stops by a
fence, an American flag
in the background.
and I swear to Christ,
out the other.
And he starts thrashing,
and bleeding, and screaming,
and trying to get the top of his head
to stay on,
but we have to keep shooting.
A B-40 tunnels into the dike
and blows the Weasel against me.
He doesn‘t get the chance
to decide if he should give up and
die.
Now I‘m crying
and I‘m screaming, ―Medic,‖
But I have to keep shooting.
DOCUMENTARY –
Connolly is sitting
inside his bedroom.
At this point, I always wake,
and big, black Jerome
and little white William,
my brothers
are not dying beside me
even though
I can still smell their blood,
even though
I can still see them lying there.
You see, these two,
they‘ve been taking turns
dying on me,
Again and again and again
for all these long years,
and still people tell me,
―Forget Nam.‖
1. Why is it that friends and family might
suggest to Vietnam veterans that they
―forget Nam?‖ Why might this be
impossible?
2. What are the most powerful lines in
the poem for you?
3. How do you relate to them?
Title –THE
DOCTOR. Fade to
black.
STOCK – Soldiers
help each other in
combat.
JONATHAN SHAY:
…I don‘t believe that the metaphor of the
brotherhood of arms is strong enough. In
combat, men become each other‘s mothers…
What is meant by the brotherhood of
arms?
INTERVIEW –
Jonathan Shay
…we are talking about a clicking in of some
very deep emotional mechanisms that bond
soldiers
DOCUMENTARY –
Soldiers grieving
to each other. And, the grief that a soldier
feels when a comrade is killed or severely
maimed,
INTERVIEW –
Jonathan Shay
is akin to the grief of a mother whose child has
just been killed …
How might Shay’s reference to men acting
as each others mothers in war supersede
that caring notion of brotherhood?
Title – THE
DAUGHTER. Fade
to black.
STOCK – EMILY WARN:
Discussion and Action Guide 3 3/16/2008
Paratroopers. Soldier
arrives home.
My father was a paratrooper in D-Day, in
World War 2, and like many men, after the
war when we were victorious, he arrived back
home… and was thought of as a war hero…
INTERVIEW – Emily
Warn
He was a war hero, and then the rest of his life
he suffered from being a war hero…
DOCUMENTARY –
Emily Warn recites
―California Poppy‖
I was crying for you.
You brought me a California poppy
in the scented warmth
under the eucalyptus.
INTERVIEW – Emily
Warn
…my father suffered from combat trauma,
something that did not have a name then, so
he drank a lot, he fought a lot, he was unable
to hold down a job, and the marriage ended
when I was quite young…
What emotion is felt by the poet for her
father?
DOCUMENTARY –
Emily Warn recites
―California Poppy‖
You knelt beside me
and let your eyes be my eyes
to the bottom of the earth.
Was that the look we held
that later was no more?
What does this poem say about the
importance of a relationship of a child to
his/her father?
INTERVIEW – Emily
Warn
He died at the age of 53, walking home from
a tavern. He was found in a snowdrift the
following day.
DOCUMENTARY –
Emily Warn recites
―California Poppy‖
Come back,
moment in the grass.
Come back, momentary father.
1. What feeling does ―California Poppy‖
leave you with after having heard it?
2. What feeling does ―California Poppy‖
leave you with after having heard it?
What emotion is felt by the poet for
her father?
Title – THE
REPORTER. Fade
to black.
INTERVIEW – Chris
Hedges
CHRIS HEDGES:
The reality of combat is nothing like the image
I think many of us carry into combat. First of
all, there‘s the factor of fear, which is
overpowering in situations where violent death
is all around you. Fear is something which you
have a constant second-by-second, minute-by-
minute, hour-by-hour battle to control. And you
always have moments in which fear takes
control in which you fail. Which your instincts
towards self-preservation make you crumble…
1. How would you define fear? How do
you think fear affects your body?
How does it affect you mentally?
2. How do you control free?
STOCK – ―Thin Red
Line‖
…Although we see very graphic images of
violence presented to us by the entertainment
industry, we taste a bit of wars exhilaration
and its perverse thrill without tasting that
fear… We learn that we‘re not the people we
thought we were.
How do you imagine that fear is
controlled in battle?
INTERVIEW – Chris We have images, all of us, I think of heroics, of How might fear overpower a person?
Discussion and Action Guide 4 3/16/2008
Hedges being able to do noble deeds under duress.
And we find that fear is so pervasive that often
times carrying out just very basic functions is
very difficult.
What might be the end results of this
reality?
Title – THE
LIEUTENANT.
Fade to black.
INTERVIEW – Paul
Mysliwiec
LT. PAUL MYSLIWIEC:
You know, we didn‘t want to have to be part of
that war. And given that we were put there, it
wasn‘t like, it wasn‘t like we were going out
and causing harm to people because we
wanted to. It was just – the more efficiently,
the faster, the more – the better aim we had
while killing people, more likely the faster we‘d
get to go home, which is what we wanted to
do.
1. Have you ever done something you
didn’t want to do? How did you react
under that situation?
2. How is Lt. Mysliwiec’s statement
surprising for a warrior? How does
the statement reflect the reality of
being a human being?
3. What is Lt. Mysliwiec saying about the
role of being a warrior?
Title – THE
WITNESS. Fade to
black.
DOCUMENTARY –
Chris Abani
CHRIS ABANI:
―BREAK A LEG‖
His foot, torn off at the ankle,
Half wrapped in corrugated iron
Held the promise of a gift.
Jesus smiled sadly from the
Photo taped to his gun‘s stock.
Blood, like the rain, soaked
everything.
The medic, impotent,
Suspicious, like God, lied.
1. What is the promise of the gift
referred to in this poem?
2. Why might Jesus be depicted as smiling
sadly?
3. What was the state of mind of the
medic upon seeing the boy?
4. Why is the medic suspicious?
5. About what did the medic lie?
6. How might you have reacted in this
situation?
INTERVIEW – Chris
Abani
The poem ―Break a Leg‖ comes from two
places… several photographs taken by actually
an American photographer from… Life
magazine who was murdered… and never
came back from the Biafran war. And there is
a photograph he took of a young soldier who
has no leg, holding an AK-47 with a
photograph of Jesus taped to the gunstock. So
that‘s where part of that came from. But also
I have an older relative who fought in the war
who was 12 years old, as a soldier. And his
whole foot was torn off by a claymore mine.
ACT 1
STOCK – Cave
painting – primitive
warriors
RACHEL BENTHAM:
―War‖
DOCUMENTARY –
Rachel Bentham
STOCK – Bombs
contention between people
this is how we begin
specific conflicts
armed hostilities
1. What are the contentions in today’s
world?
2. What do you think Bentham means by
the title of her poem, War—the concise
Discussion and Action Guide 5 3/16/2008
dropping/woman
running
STOCK – Napalm
baby
STOCK – Woman
kisses Sailor
STOCK –
Hitler/bodies in river
STOCK – Over the
top
STOCK – Marines at
funeral
STILL – Marine in
Pacific
the ―art of war‖
- it‘s certainly not a science,
is it?
but doesn‘t art create?
strategy and tactics
been in the wars?
war baby
war bride
war crime that which violates
international laws of war
as if laws are effective in wartime
war cry
war of attrition
war of nerves
war grave
war weary, just hearing the words.
version?
3. In your thinking, what is the difference
between the ―art of war‖ and the
―science of war?‖ Is one better than
the other? If so, how?
4. Bentham speaks of war crime in her
poem. How might war generally be
considered a crime? What are some
of the international laws of war?
Historically and in today’s wars how
have these laws been violated?
5. Explain each of the words Bentham
uses that follow the word ―war.‖
6. How are you a victim of being ―war
weary?‖
STOCK – Soldiers
march off to war.
They are enthusiastic,
unprepared for the
carnage they will soon
face.
STOCK – Africans
march and sing a
cadence. Marines
march.
DOCUMENTARY –
Cadets at West Point
GENERAL LENNOX:
These cadets… know that they might be in
combat pretty quickly after they graduate. So
they want to know. They want to get as much
information as they possibly can.
1. What is it that warriors need to know
before they go off to war?
2. Who should warriors listen to about
going to war?
INTERVIEW –
General Lennox
…And poetry provides us a great vehicle to
teach the cadets, as much as anyone can, what
that combat is like.
Of the poems you have heard in Voices in
Wartime how do you think they are great
teaching tools?
INTERVIEW – Paul
Mysliwiec
LT. PAUL MYSLIWIEC:
―I have a rendezvous with death,
At midnight in some blazing town,
When Spring trips north again this
Year.
And I to my pledged word am
true.
I shall not fail that rendezvous.‖
1. How does the poem, ―I Have a
Rendezous with Death,‖ by Alan Seeger
speak to the role of a warrior?
2. What is meant when Seeger claims: ―I
shall not fail that rendezvous?‖
STOCK – American We all of course now volunteer for the army. Why does this poem resonate for so many
Discussion and Action Guide 6 3/16/2008
soldiers fight in Iraq There is no draft anymore. There hasn‘t been
awhile. And it‘s not particularly pleasant that
we have to go do these things. Now that it‘s a
peacekeeping mission, it‘s even less pleasant.
And Alan Seeger‘s ―Rendezvous with Death,‖
people?
INTERVIEW – Paul
Mysliwiec
as well as anything describes how I feel about
my duty to go over there. It‘s very much that I
to my pledged word am true. I shall not fail
that Rendez-vous.
Do most warriors who enter battle have
the same feelings as expressed in Seeger’s
poem?
STOCK – Greeks
fighting.
SUPER
STILLS – Greeks
fighting.
HOMER:
Rage—Goddess, sing the rage of
Peleus' son Achilles,
Murderous, doomed, that cost the
Achaens countless losses,
Hurling down to the House of
Death so many souls,
Great fighters' souls, but made
their bodies carrion,
Feasts for the dogs and birds,
And the will of Zeus was moving
toward its end.
Begin, Muse…
1. Why is it that Achilles is filled with
rage?
2. What is meant by the phrase ―made
their bodies carrion?‖
3. What is the will of Zeus?
4. What is the role of the Muse in this
story?
STILL - Close-up –
Original of text of
―The Iliad‖
JON STALLWORTHY:
The Iliad is the earliest full comprehensive
account of battle… You have the violent
hand-to-hand combat
INTERVIEW – Jon
Stallworthy
which is described with a terrible force. I mean
the account of spears going through a brain
and what actually then happens, how the brain
spatters the shield of the man who‘s thrown
the spear and so on is very, very graphic…
1. How would you describe the Illiad?
2. How might the Illiad be overlooked as
a chronicle of war?
STILL – Plato. TODD SWIFT:
Poets are unpredictable. Plato banned them
from his Republic. He thought they were
troublemakers.
…the thing about poets
What is the role of a poet in society?
INTERVIEW – Todd
Swift
is they‘re always the first to broach a subject,
or to dare to say something. They break
taboos – that‘s what they do in society.
What expectations do you place on the
poet?
TITLE – ―2003‖
over burning Baghdad.
STOCK – Invasion of
Iraq
SINAN ANTOON:
the wind was tired
DOCUMENTARY –
Sinan Antoon
from carrying the coffins
it leaned against a palm tree
A satellite inquired:
Whereto now?
1. How does Antoon use metaphor in his
poem?
2. What is the significance of the question
that satellite asks? Why does the palm
Discussion and Action Guide 7 3/16/2008
the silence
in the wind‘s cane murmured: ―Baghdad‖
and the palm tree caught fire
tree catch fire with the answer to the
question?
STOCK – Baghdad
burns
DOCUMENTARY –
White House
invitation. Move to
Laura Bush.
TITLE – JANUARY,
2003
EMILY WARN:
In January 2003, Laura Bush invited poets
from around the country to a gathering at the
White House to honor Emily Dickinson, Walt
Whitman, and Langston Hughes. (All three
were very anti-war.)
What do you know of the poetry of
Dickinson, Whitman and Hughes?
INTERVIEW – Emily
Warn
Poets Against the War began when Laura Bush
invited Sam Hamill to the White House. I also
received an invitation from Laura Bush to
attend a symposium on American Voices. Sam
invited 50 of his closest friends to use the
occasion to speak out against the
administration‘s policies that seemed to be
leading us to war.
Is it the role or duty of poets to speak out
when their consciousness guides them?
How do you support your position?
INTERVIEW – Sam
Hamill
SAM HAMILL:
I think they thought we could actually go to the
White House and they could do their little
presentation to honor Walt Whitman and
Langston Hughes and Emily Dickinson without
any political fallout. It was a stupid, and naive,
virtually illiterate way of thinking. Anybody who
has read Whitman or Langston Hughes knows
that these were men who were outspoken in
their devotion to our constitution, to the
democracy and human dignity. All those things
have enormous political implications. They
were overtly political poets.
1. How does democracy support are
right to state our beliefs?
2. How does democracy guarantee
human dignity?
STILL – Emily
Dickinson, hair pulled
back tight.
And Emily Dickinson was a divine political poet
in a subtle way.
STILLS – The
aftermath of a Civil
War battle. We hear
Dickinson’s poem
#639.
My Portion is Defeat—today—
A paler luck than Victory—
Less Paeans—fewer Bells—
The Drums don't follow Me—with tunes—
Defeat—a somewhat slower—means—
More Arduous than Balls—Balls --
1. How is Dickinson using the word
―portion‖ in this poem? Check out the
various meanings of the word.
2. What does defeat look and sound like
in this poem?
3. How does defeat look and sound?
STILLS – More
close-up we realize
that the lumps in the
landscape are corpses.
Moving closer into the
faces of the dead –
'Tis populous with Bone and stain—
And Men too straight to stoop again—,
And Piles of solid Moan—
And Chips of Blank—in Boyish Eyes—
And scraps of Prayer—
And Death's surprise,
What is the message that Dickinson is
conveying in the last stanza of the poem?
Discussion and Action Guide 8 3/16/2008
surprised and frozen. Stamped visible—in Stone—
STILL – Walt
Whitman, bushy white
beard, piercing eyes.
JON STALLWORTHY:
Whitman, I mean in every way, stands at the
gate of modern poetry. …he‘s one of the first
poets, I think,
INTERVIEW – Jon
Stallworthy
to give a full, and rich, and moving expression
to the cost of warfare…
STILLS – American
Civil War
SUPER
―Wound Dresser‖
manuscript
WALT WHITMAN:
The neck of the cavalry-man with
the bullet through and through I
examine,
Hard the breathing rattle, quite
glazed already the eye, yet life
struggles hard,
Come, sweet death! be persuaded
O beautiful death!
In mercy come quickly.
1. What conflict does Whitman present in
this excerpt from his poem, Wound
Dresser?‖
2. What picture does this poem present to
you?
3. Who is wishing for death to come
―quickly?‖
INTERVIEW – Jon
Stallworthy
JON STALLWORTHY:
…he writes with tremendous compassion, and
compassion was not a note often heard in
poems about war before.
How is compassion expressed in the poem,
―Wound Dresser?‖
INTERVIEW –
Marilyn Nelson
MARILYN NELSON:
Like anyone else who knows anything about
the poetry of Whitman and especially Langston
Hughes, I can‘t imagine what Mrs. Bush and
her people were thinking about.
STILL – Langston
Hughes, self-
possessed, calm, black.
The voice of Langston
Hughes reads
―Expendable.‖
LANGSTON HUGHES:
We will take you and kill you,
Expendable.
DOCUMENTARY –
Moving past the
gravestones in
Arlington cemetery.
We will fill you full of lead,
Expendable.
STILL – Soldier looks
at gravestone.
And when you‘re dead
In the nice cold ground,
We‘ll put your name
Above your head –
If your head
Can be found.
1. How would you characterize the tone
of the poem?
2. What feeling(s) are you left with after
having heard the poem?
3. What does the poem have to say
about warriors in war? What does it
say about those who declare war?
How might you say that this poem is as
relevant today as it was when it was
written?
INTERVIEW –
Marilyn Nelson
I can‘t imagine how they could imagine a
symposium about the poetry of Langston
Hughes, especially, which didn‘t at some point
Discussion and Action Guide 9 3/16/2008
become political. Langston Hughes was a very
political poet.
STOCK/STILLS –
9/11
TITLE – SEPTEMBER,
2001
GEORGE W. BUSH:
We must choose between a world of fear and
a world of progress. We cannot stand by and
do nothing while dangers gather. We must
stand up for our security and for the
permanent rights and hopes of mankind.
In your thinking, what are the conditions
for one country to wage war on another?
STOCK – President
George W. Bush
outlines the case
against Iraq to the U.N
By heritage and by choice, the United States of
America will make that stand.
STOCK – Japan
attacks Pearl Harbor.
ANNOUNCER:
We interrupt this program to bring you a
special news bulletin. The Japanese have
attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii by air, President
Roosevelt has just announced.
STOCK - Battleship
Arizona burning in
Pearl Harbor.
ROOSEVELT:
Since the unprovoked and
STOCK – Franklin D.
Roosevelt addresses
Congress.
dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday,
December 7, 1941, a state of war has existed
between the United States and the Japanese
empire.
STOCK – Americans
and Vietnamese fight
and die in Vietnam.
LYNDON B. JOHNSON:
Tonight Americans and Asians are dying for a
world where each people may choose its own
path to change.
STOCK - Lyndon B.
Johnson speaks at
Johns Hopkins.
(4/7/65)
This is the principle for which our ancestors
fought in the valleys of Pennsylvania. It is the
principle for which our sons fight tonight in the
jungles of Viet-Nam…
INTERVIEW –
Christopher Hedges
CHRIS HEDGES:
When a country prepares for war and goes
into war, there is a kind of collective euphoria
or madness that takes over the population.
What are you recollections of how we
prepared to go to war in Afghanistan and in
Iraq?
STOCK – Soldiers
load onto planes.
What happens in wartime, …the state and the
media…gives us the language by which we
articulate the experience we are undergoing.
How did our language change?
INTERVIEW –
Christopher Hedges
You know, Countdown with Iraq. Showdown
with Iraq. All these kinds of clichés and
aphorisms, seep their way into our language.
So that even when we have a kind of disquiet
about what‘s going on, we‘re trapped. Because
How can repetition of language change
human behavior?
Discussion and Action Guide 10 3/16/2008
it‘s those clichés and aphorisms we use in
order to try to explain our experience.
ACT 2
INTERVIEW –
Marilyn Nelson
MARILYN NELSON:
If we lose sight of our humanity, our limitations,
our poverty and believe that we are able to
know the all over arching truth then we lose
something fundamental
1. How is it that we know truth?
2. What is the gauge that humans can use
to measure what we should and should
not do?
STOCK – New York to all ethics I think… The role of poets is to
remind us of our humanity…And I think poetry
takes us back to the center of who we are as
human beings.
How do poets pave the way for others to
say what is on their minds?
DOCUMENTARY –
Sam Hamill looks over
manuscript
And I think poetry takes us back to the center
of who we are as human beings.
Why is it that poets seem to be the first to
speak out on a social issue, cause or
political event?
DOCUMENTARY –
Sam Hamill looks over
manuscript
SAM HAMILL:
In the midst of preparing a big event in San
Francisco to honor the life and work of
Kenneth Rexroth, the great poet,
INTERVIEW – Sam
Hamill
I took a little break and ran to the post office
to get my mail. And there was a
DOCUMENTARY –
Invitation
large, cream colored, square envelope with
―The White House‖ in gold in the upper left
hand corner.
INTERVIEW – Sam
Hamill
I knew what it was. There was no other
reason I would get anything from the White
House. And I felt queasy…
DOCUMENTARY –
Hamill in his office.
It was more about how best to respond. In
what way to say no. Should I simply write a
polite letter and decline? Or should I speak for
my conscience…
How do you respond to requests that you
find unacceptable in your own thinking?
INTERVIEW – Sam
Hamill
I really felt I had to make my position known.
And to state it pretty clearly.
How can you constructively say no?
DOCUMENTARY -
Hamill’s fingers dance
across the keyboard.
I would invite my fellow poets to stand beside
me, as many as wished to. Because I invited
poets to speak from their conscience. Poets
tend to be humanists.
In your thinking, was Hamill’s response
constructive? Appropriate?
INTERVIEW – Sam
Hamill
And they tend to see things from angles that
other people don‘t pause long enough to look
at…
What constitutes being a humanist?
DOCUMENTARY –
Poems on screens.
Lines of poetry close-
up.
And I sent the letter off to about 3 dozen
friends. And the poems began coming in and
the word began going out…
PETER LEVITT:
Sam sent me an e-mail and said I‘m going to
the White House and I want to present some
poems
How can citizens make their voices heard?
Are there times when it is inappropriate to
speak out in a democracy? If so, when and
what are those times?
INTERVIEW – Peter against the war because it‘s impossible for me
Discussion and Action Guide 11 3/16/2008
Levitt to just stand up and pretend this war is not
going forward and is not going on. And I want
to make some kind of statement on behalf of
all the people in the nation. And I want the
poets to be able to do it.
DOCUMENTARY –
Peter Levitt recites his
untitled poem.
Fill the air with poems
so thick---
even bombs
can‘t fall through.
In ―untitled‖ what hope does Levitt have
for poems? How does this poem reflect his
thoughts about the power of poetry?
DOCUMENTARY –
Snow falling .
Unbelievably beautiful.
ALEXANDRA SANYAL:
Snow so fluffy and soft.
DOCUMENTARY -
A little girl –
Alexandra - nine years
old in Massachusetts.
In her room. She is
reciting a poem.
I like to run and jump into it.
It leads to peace and love.
Snow stops war
and fights
that lead to killing.
So snow come today.
Why does snow usually reflect peace?
What images does Alexandra’s poem bring
to your thinking?
Why are poems like Alexandra’s so
impressive? Important?
DOCUMENTARY –
Sherman Pearl
SHERMAN PEARL:
The Poem in Time of War
should wake the city shouting
EXTRA! EXTRA!
then whisper the story behind the
story
like a conspirator. It should be
short, stirring
as the president's call to arms;
soft enough for a flag at half-mast;
strong enough to stiffen the
bereaved;
spacious enough to serve as a body
bag.
The poem should carry the news
that men
die miserably for lack of. It is
a brief on behalf of the living, a
paper megaphone
for the voices of the dead. It must
be
the world's last will and testament,
a listing
of what will be left. It steals from
forebears:
Sassoon's doomed diary and
Auden's call to love.
1. What is the significance of comparing a
breaking story with shouts and then
whispering the meaning of the story?
What is the story that is being talked
about in this poem?
2. Tell about the comparisons made in
this poem.
3. Compare Pearl’s poem with Peter
Levitt’s ―untitled‖ poem.
Discussion and Action Guide 12 3/16/2008
DOCUMENTARY –
Manhattan.
MARILYN NELSON:
Who are the Good Guys now? Who
are the bad?
DOCUMENTARY –
Marilyn Nelson recites
―unrhymed peace
sonnet.‖
Nobody's wearing Stetsons, black
or white.
Each has a history of evil deeds:
one individual, one centuries
of rapine and ideals. It's almost
noon.
One leader straps on bombs. The
armies mass.
We'll blow that s.o.b. to kingdom
come,
everyone thinks; bring on
Armageddon!
Yosemite Sam, frustrated and
enraged,
jumps up and down, shooting holes
in the clouds.
And Africa is dying out, of AIDS.
Why the hell doesn't the moving
finger write?
What the hell are you waiting for,
my God?
Why don't you tell those bastards
not to fight?
For Pete's sake, send an angel!
Burn a bush!
1. What confusion is expressed in the
poem, ―Unrhymed Peace Sonnet?‖
How is this addressed?
2. How much do you know about the
film, ―High Noon?‖ Read up on it and
relate it to the poem.
3. How does the Looney Tunes
character, Yosemite Sam, fit into this
poem?
4. Why does the poet talk about Africa in
the middle of the poem?
5. What are the answers being asked for
in the poem?
INTERVIEW – Sam
Hamill
SAM HAMILL:
I thought we would have a few hundred
poems. Because all the major poets in the
United States oppose this administration in
various ways. But, within about 36 hours, we
had 1500 entries. The e-mail site basically
collapsed from overload.
What is the role of a poet in time of war?
How is this role different as to what it
might be at other times?
DOCUMENTARY -
Seattle
EMILY WARN:
I, at that point, was traveling across the
country… and called in a couple days after I
received the invitation for Laura Bush,
INTERVIEW – Emily
Warn
and said ―How‘s it going?‖ and he said, ―Help!
I need some help!‖ …
DOCUMENTARY –
Emily Warn types
Sam asked if I would help set up an
infrastructure, a technological infrastructure on
the web, so that those voices could be heard...
INTERVIEW – Emily
Warn
In fact, the entire poetry website, Poets Against
the War, was on a
DOCUMENTARY –
Poets Against the War
website
laptop that a friend of mine carried around.
ALEXANDRA SANYAL:
Well, my mom said,
INTERVIEW – ―Do you want to come see your poem?‖ And I
Discussion and Action Guide 13 3/16/2008
Alexandra Indira
Sanyal.
said, ―Yes!‖ And she came up and she showed
it to me. And I just paused for a minute.
Because I was thinking – wow! I‘m actually on
a computer! My poem is actually in there.
And what will happen? Where will it go? Who
will find it? Will people actually read it?
How does poetry move people to seek
truth?
DOCUMENTARY –
London. A red two-
decker wipes the
frame and we move to
the windows of a
second floor
apartment.
TODD SWIFT:
…I decided to email a hundred poets.
DOCUMENTARY –
The book comes out
of a printer.
Some of them were in Ireland, some were in
Australia, New Zealand, Canada, America,…
INTERVIEW – Todd
Swift
…really all around the world, India as well. I
just asked them to send me poems with their
feelings about what was happening.
What place does poetry have in a time of
war? For the poet? For those who listen
to poetry?
DOCUMENTARY –
Sampurna Chattarji in
Mumbai, India is
reading ―Easy‖ in a
market and a lush
garden.
SAMPURNA CHATTARJI:
Death is easy to pronounce.
He deserved to die.
They ought to be shot.
Hanging‘s too good for him.
The words fall glib.
Throwaway lines
sentencing them to death.
Distant observer,
you speak without guilt, or fear
of misplaced allegiances.
You just need something to say,
that‘s all.
The right sentiment, rightly
declared
whichever way your loyalties blow
in the gust of the smokefilled air.
A country burns.
The death-dealers deserved to die,
you say.
Death is easy to pronounce.
It‘s the smell of burning children
that‘s hard.
1. Who are these people who deserve to
die, of whom Chattarji speaks in her
poem? How do they represent the
enemy?
2. Why is it easy to speak so negatively
about human beings who may be the
enemy?
3. Who are the distant observers? How
does Chattarji mock them?
4. What is right, the correct, sentiment
to be made about war? About victims?
About the reality of war? About the
possibility of peace?
5. What are the hidden realities of war
that are not often considered? How
might these realities, if acknowledged
initially, make war more difficult to
initiate?
INTERVIEW – Todd
Swift
TODD SWIFT:
…this wasn‘t a Dentists Against the War
experience. This wasn‘t Zoologists Against the
War or surgeons, or policemen. This was a
Poets Against the War movement. It was
How are poets subversive?
Discussion and Action Guide 14 3/16/2008
originally generated by people that write
poetry, that get excited about poetry, that just
happened to communicate on the Internet.
And it spread.
STOCK – White
House
Laura Bush, we think,
INTERVIEW – Emily
Warn
hearing some kind of news about what was
happening in response to her invitation,
cancelled the event.
STILLS – Newspaper
articles about Poets
Against the War.
And she cancelled it very quickly.
The symposium‘s cancellation drew intense
DOCUMENTARY –
Montage of poems
media attention. By that time, Poets against
the War had 1000‘s and 1000‘s of poems.
We wanted these voices to be heard.
Poets Against the War put out a call for
readings to happen on March 5th… …we put
out the call
How would you define the process that
poetry allows the listener to explore after
hearing a poem?
INTERVIEW – Emily
Warn
and hundreds of readings were organized all
over the world. In little tiny towns in New
Mexico, in Washington state, in Ohio. And we
would keep getting emails from people. They
felt a sense of connection, that they too could
join. Not just by submitting poems, but by
organizing readings in their communities.
How might poetry be an invitation to
dialogue?
ACT 3
STOCK – Ancient
war.
Poets‘ involvement with war was nothing new.
It was as old as poetry itself.
STILL – Move in on
Enheduanna, she
stands in a procession,
two priestesses behind
her.
TITLE –
ENHEDUANNA –
2100 B.C.
STILL – Panning
across to the Goddess
of War; ―Lament to
the Spirit of War‖
ENHEDUANNA:
God of War, with your fierce wings
you slice away the land and charge
STOCK – A storm
rages, knocking down
trees. The wind howls.
Fire rages.
disguised as a raging storm,…
Like a fiery monster you fill the
land with poison…
You are blood rushing down a
mountain,
Spirit of hate, greed and anger,
dominator of heaven and earth!
Your fire wafts over our land,
riding on a beast,…
1. In what spirit is this poem written?
What does the title of the poem say to
us about Enheduanna’s feeling about
war and destruction?
2. Is there indication in the poem as to
the cause of destruction brought
against humanity by the God of War?
If so, what is it?
3. What are the ways in which the God
Discussion and Action Guide 15 3/16/2008
You decide all fate.
You triumph over all our rites.
Who can explain why you go on
so?
of War brings about destruction?
4. What was Enheduanna hoping to learn
by asking the last question in the
poem?
STILL – The Light
Brigade gathers in a
wide shot.
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON:
Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
What countries were involved in the
Crimean War and for what reasons?
STILL—Manuscript—
―Charge of the Light
Brigade‖ – black and
white
"Forward, the Light Brigade!‖
Charge for the guns he said,
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
"Forward, the Light Brigade!‖
Was there a man dismay'd?
1. As hear the poem aloud what do you
notice about its rhythm?
2. What is meant by ―league‖ in the
poem?
3. Why is the phrase: ―Their’s not to
make reply, Their’s not to reason why,
Their’s but to do and die‖ referred to
as an anthem of futility?
STOCK – ―Charge of
the Light Brigade‖
Not tho' the soldier knew
Someone had blunder'd:
Their's not to make reply,
Their's not to reason why,
Their's but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
Why do you think the poem is one of the
most quoted in the English language?
STILL – ―Charge of
the Light Brigade.‖
JON STALLWORTHY:
And the courage
INTERVIEW – Jon
Stallworthy
was just extraordinary, but the blunder was
extraordinary. And Tennyson‘s poem captures
the futility, the blunder, the wastage…
STOCK – World
War I – muddy,
desperate, and full of
technology far
advanced from the
previous century.
JONATHAN SCHELL:
By the time of the First World War, the means
available for war had overwhelmed and grown
beyond any conceivable purpose for which the
war might be fought. If you were going to fight
a great power war, then necessarily it was
going to be a war of millions of men facing one
another with artillery, with tanks. That is what
a war was going to be if you were going to
fight one at that time…
INTERVIEW –
Jonathan Schell
And that was the tragedy of the First World
War. And that was why so many millions had
died. It was because of this transformation
that had occurred in the character of warfare.
STOCK – Army
charges.
…the armies on each side were just thrown
into this gap where they were chewed up and
destroyed.
INTERVIEW –
Jonathan Schell
…it was a zone of absolute horror but in a
Discussion and Action Guide 16 3/16/2008
rather limited area. And it
STOCK – Soldiers
rush at each other.
Corpses lie stacked up
in piles.
was a war of horror for soldiers, much more
than for civilians.
STILLS – Montage of
World War I poets in
uniform – young,
innocent, and doomed.
TODD SWIFT:
At the beginning of the 20th century, the idea
of the war poet was not an anti-war poet. The
war poet was someone who was in the war,
probably an officer who had been educated at
Cambridge or Oxford,……with these very
refined sensibilities.
1. How do poets pave the way for others
to say what is on their minds?
2. Why is it that poets seem to be the
first to speak out on a social issue,
cause or political event?
INTERVIEW – Todd
Swift
These were not 20th century poets, up until the
moment that they experienced these
bombardments and this horrific mass-
slaughter.
STILL – Siegfried
Sassoon
TITLE – Siegfried
Sassoon
JON STALLWORTHY:
Sassoon was a decorated soldier. A man of
legendary courage, he was known
INTERVIEW – Jon
Stallworthy
as ―Mad Jack‖ because of his bombing
exploits. He used to go out at night on patrol
with a pocket full of hand grenades and throw
them at the enemy. And then come back
again.
STILL – Siegfried
Sassoon
Sassoon‘s poems… deliver a tremendous sort
of shock…
STILL – ―Does it
Matter?‖ – in period
type
SIEGFRIED SASSOON:
Does it matter?—losing your
legs?...
For people will always be kind,
And you need not show that you
mind
When the others come in after
hunting
To gobble their muffins and eggs.
Does it matter ?—losing your
sight?...
There's such splendid work for the
blind;
And people will always be kind,
As you sit on the terrace
remembering
And turning your face to the light.
1. What do you think are the true
feelings of Sassoon in his poem, ―Does
it Matter?‖
2. What would be your feelings if you
were in this situation?
3. How do you think the phrase ―And
people will always be kind‖ is meant?
INTERVIEW – Lt.
General Lennox
GENERAL LENNOX:
In World War One, particularly with the British
poets, I think we see that they were brought up
Discussion and Action Guide 17 3/16/2008
in a very romantic era. Their concept of war
was built on the 17 and 1800s where battles
were fought one on one with dignity.
STILL – Australians
at Gallipoli
SUPER
STOCK – World
War One
And they found themselves in trenches
confronted with modern technology, concertina,
machine guns, things that were not expected
and the war was long and drawn out.
JON STALLWORTHY:
And Sassoon… made this public protest, he
wrote to his commanding officer saying,
How do feel about Sassoon’s statement?
INTERVIEW – Jon
Stallworthy
SIEGFRIED SASSOON:
―I am a soldier speaking for soldiers and I must
protest that the war on which I entered as a
war of defense has now become a war of
aggression and conquest.‖
In your thinking, do people have a right to
protest war if they feel it wrong? Is this a
right or a duty?
STILL – The original
of Sassoon’s
declaration.
―I am making this statement as an act of
willful defiance of military authority… I am a
soldier,… I have seen and endured the
sufferings of the troops, and I can no longer be
a party to prolong these sufferings for ends
which I believe to be evil and unjust…‖
How would you respond to the adage, ―My
country right or wrong?‖
INTERVIEW – Jon
Stallworthy
JON STALLWORTHY:
Now I suppose it is not unthinkable that he
could have been court marshaled and shot for
that. But he wasn‘t, he was something of a
hero because of his, he had the Military Cross,
he had a medal, the public knew him. The
government was severely embarrassed by
this,…
STOCK – Train
through English
countryside.
Sassoon was whisked away… to Edinburgh, a
long way from London and sent to a military
hospital called the Craig Lockhart,
Why might Sassoon have felt ashamed of
being at Craiglockhart?
STILL –
Craiglockheart Mental
Hospital
which was a hospital for people suffering from
shell-shock.
INTERVIEW –
Dominic Hibberd
TITLE – Dominic
Hibberd
DOMINIC HIBBERD:
Sassoon was rather bored by newcomers. He
didn‘t really want to meet anybody else while
he was at Craiglockhart. He was ashamed of
being there anyway. He felt he was a failure.
He felt he‘d been silenced by authority and he
shouldn‘t have given in. So he wasn‘t terribly
enthusiastic when Owen knocked on his door.
STILL – Wilfred
Owen
TITLE – Wilfred
Owen
But Owen, on the other hand, was immensely
excited to meet a published poet… And they
did eventually become close friends, very close
friends, I think. And they found they had a
great deal in common… Wilfred Owen came
from a
STILL – The family is
together in a garden.
lower middle class background… Four
children to be brought up. So there was never
any spare cash around.
Discussion and Action Guide 18 3/16/2008
STILL – Wilfred
Owen in garden.
Owen was a committed poet from his late
teens onwards. He was a great admirer of
Keats…
INTERVIEW –
Dominic Hibberd
and other romantics, Wordsworth in particular,
and he knew from them that to be a poet was
the greatest calling that anybody could possibly
have. And he had never had any doubt that
that‘s what he wanted to be.
1. How would you assess Owen’s belief
that being a poet was the greatest
calling that anybody could possible
have?
2. How are poets regarded today?
STILL – Wilfred
Owen
…he was sent out to France at the beginning
of 1917 and within three weeks he was in one
of the
STOCK – Machine
guns and cannon firing.
most appalling circumstances one could
possibly imagine… …he was sent into a
German dugout in no man‘s land that had
recently been captured as a British outpost.
And he had to keep his platoon there for 50
hours, he says under constant shellfire,
INTERVIEW –
Dominic Hibberd
expecting at any minute to be buried alive.
The place was slowly flooding with rainwater,
with the water rising above their knees so that
at any moment they might have been buried or
drowned or just died of shock…
Given Owen’s and his men’s service in the
army how do you think they would be
affected by their experiences?
STOCK – Soldiers in
trenches moving
They were then taken out for a short period,
put back in again in a quite different situation
on the top of a hill in very hard frost. So it had
been heavy rain and mud but now it was bitter
frost. And they were out on the snow exposed,
unable to move. One man in his platoon froze
to death…
STOCK - Explosion … And he was eventually almost killed by a
shell that
INTERVIEW –
Dominic Hibberd
dropped near his head while he was asleep
and he was blown into the air. And that finally
broke his nerve.
STILL – Wilfred
Owen
JONATHAN SHAY:
In World War One, it was called shell shock.
In World War Two, it was called combat
neurosis. And now it‘s called post-traumatic
stress disorder, but it‘s all the same
phenomenon…
Expound on what Shay means when he
claims that ―what spills blood, spills spirit?‖
INTERVIEW –
Jonathan Shay
There will always be psychological injuries in
war just like there are always physical injuries.
And, the historical record is that they rise and
fall together. What spills blood, spills spirit.
INTERVIEW –
David Connolly
DAVID CONNOLLY:
I don't believe that the trauma of combat ever
goes away, whether you win or lose the war.
My father used to wake up at night. I know
plenty of WW II vets, the last "good" war, the
Connolly speaks of going through ―unholy
and unnatural‖ things. Do people outside
of warfare experience the same
phenomenon? If so, what are they? How
do you deal with these events?
Discussion and Action Guide 19 3/16/2008
war we won, the war that saved the whole
world, I know plenty of them that still wake up
nights. You don't go through things that are
that unnatural, that are that unholy, you don't
go through them unchanged.
STILL –
Craiglockhart military
hospital
JON STALLWORTHY:
Now Wilfred Owen was already at Craig
Lockhart and he was suffering from shell-
shock… And so it came about that Sassoon in
a sense, undertook the tutelage of Owen…
INTERVIEW – Jon
Stallworthy
It was a wonderful good fortune of Owen‘s
that he should have met Sassoon when he did -
because Sassoon
STILL – Owens’
manuscript;
―Fragment: A
Farewell‖
showed him how to find his own voice and find
his own subject.
WILFRED OWEN:
―I saw his round mouth's crimson
deepen as it fell,
Like a Sun, in his last deep hour;
Watched the magnificent recession
of farewell,
Clouding, half gleam, half glower,
And a last splendour burn the
heavens of his cheek.
1. How do you imagine it would be like
to see someone die? What would you
see? What would you feel? How
would you describe what you
experienced to another person?
2. What imagery in the poem strikes you
as being appropriately descriptive of
the moments of death?
3. What is meant by the title of the
poem, ―Fragment: A Farewell?‖
STILL – Owen’s
manuscript – move in
on ―In different skies.‖
And in his eyes
The cold stars lighting, very old
and bleak,
In different skies.‖
STOCK – World
War One at the front.
JONATHAN SHAY:
People who have been through heavy fighting
where many people have died
Shay talks about carrying an imprint of
death on you when you’ve experienced
seeing someone die. How might having this
INTERVIEW –
Jonathan Shay
seem to carry a kind of imprint of death on
them where the dead are more real to them
than the living…
imprint affect your daily life?
STOCK – Soldiers at
the front, exhausted
and numb
Owen speaks of such people as the men
whose minds the dead have ravaged…
WILFRED OWEN:
―Above all I am not concerned with Poetry.
What does Owen mean when he claims
that poetry is the ―pity of war.‖
STILL – Owen’s
writing.
My subject is War, and the pity of
War.
The poetry is in the pity…
...All a poet can do today is warn. That
is why true Poets must be truthful.‖
JON STALLWORTHY:
…he had to go back to the front to bear
witness.
INTERVIEW – Jon
Stallworthy
And he says in one of his letters, ―I came out to
lead these boys as well as an officer can and to
watch their sufferings that I may speak of
What does it mean to bear witness? Or, to
testify to an event such as those
experienced in war? Is bearing witness and
Discussion and Action Guide 20 3/16/2008
them as well as a pleader can.‖ So he goes
back so that he can testify to the horrors of the
war.
testifying to the horrors of war an ethical
cause?
STILL – Sambre and
Oise canal
TITLE - Sambre et
Oise Canal
And I think he went, knowing he wouldn‘t
come back. …they were trying to throw a
pontoon bridge over a canal and the German
machine guns were about 30 yards away. And
these chaps were just carrying their pontoons,
putting them in the river. And Owen went
backwards and forwards between them
INTERVIEW – Jon
Stallworthy
saying, ―You‘re doing very well my boy, just
move that a little bit to the left, a little bit to
the right. You‘re doing very well, you‘re doing
very well.‖ And then he was hit and killed…
STILL – Owen’s
manuscript; reading of
―The Last Laugh‖
SUPER
STOCK – World
War One
WILFRED OWEN:
'Oh! Jesus Christ! I'm hit,' he said;
and died.
Whether he vainly cursed or prayed
indeed,
The Bullets chirped-In vain, vain,
vain!
Machine-guns chuckled,-Tut-tut!
Tut-tut!
And the Big Gun guffawed.
Another sighed,-'O Mother, -
Mother, - Dad!'
Then smiled at nothing, childlike,
being dead.
And the lofty Shrapnel-cloud
Leisurely gestured,-Fool!
And the splinters spat, and tittered.
1. How has Owen used personification in
―The Last Laugh?‖
2. What are the feelings behind the last
words of the soldiers in ―The Last
Laugh?‖
3. Who/What has ―The Last Laugh‖ in
the poem?
4. Looking through the words of ―The
Last Laugh‖ how would you speak of
the death of these three soldiers?
What feelings would you experience?
STILL - Manuscript 'My Love!' one moaned. Love-
languid seemed his mood,
Till slowly lowered, his whole face
kissed the mud.
And the Bayonets' long teeth
grinned;
Rabbles of Shells hooted and
groaned;
And the Gas hissed.
STOCK – Bells
ringing. Armistice
celebration.
JON STALLWORTHY:
…as the bells were ringing for the armistice in
Shrewsbury where his parents lived,… …their
front doorbell rang bringing the telegram saying
that he was killed,
LT. GENERAL LENNOX:
I think Wilfred Owen is
Discussion and Action Guide 21 3/16/2008
INTEVIEW – Lt.
General Lennox
probably the archetype of a poet who comes in
with a romantic feeling and just recoils at that
horror and probably writes the best war poetry
of World War One.
How was it that Owen leaves his romantic
feeling about war and becomes one of the
greatest writers of war poetry?
INTERVIEW – Jon
Stallworthy
… I don‘t think there‘s another poet of the
Great War to equal him.
Does this change relate to his bearing
witness to the war? If so, how?
STILL – Owen’s
original manuscript
SUPER
STILL - Owen
WILFRED OWEN:
…true Poets must be truthful.
ACT 4
DOCUMENTARY –
A small group of
shivering Poets
crosses the street to
the White House.
There is a banner for
―Poets Against the
War.‖
EMILY WARN:
On the day that the symposium was supposed
to happen, on February 12th,
If you were in the position of Sam Hamill
or Emily Warn how would you have
responded to the White House invitation?
DOCUMENTARY-
Emily Warn in front of
the White House with
other poets.
I organized a group of poets from the
Washington, D.C. area.
Why might the White House have
cancelled the event?
INTERVIEW – Emily
Warn
I began just with one poet, who called another
poet, who called another poet.
DOCUMENTARY –
Emily Warn
It is our hope and conviction that the true
American voice conveyed in part and without
historical precedent by the poets of this country
may help to avert a disaster of tragic
proportions.
INTERVIEW – Emily
Warn
So we gathered in front of the White House to
read our poems. It was an extremely cold,
windy day. Some very distinguished poets from
Washington joined us.
DOCUMENTARY –
Bundled up in down
jackets, poets recite
their work. The
conditions are
adverse.
We felt that it was important that, even
though the symposium had been cancelled,…
INTERVIEW-Emily
Warn
that we raise our voices in front of the White
House…
DOCUMENTARY-
Stanley Plumly
STANLEY PLUMLY:
―Vigil for comrades swiftly slain, vigil and never
Discussion and Action Guide 22 3/16/2008
TITLE – Stanley
Plumly
forget how his day brightened, I rose from my
chill ground and folded my soldier well in his
blanket and buried him where he fell.‖
DOCUMENTARY -
New York city - Avery
Fisher Hall. Night.
JONATHAN SCHELL:
…it was a very snowy night. There were
something like two feet of snow on the ground
at that time, and they got several thousand
people to come and listen to poets read their
poems…
INTERVIEW –
Jonathan Schell
it was a very lively and feisty atmosphere…
DOCUMENTARY –
inside Avery Fisher
Hall. Andre Gregory
is the host. Audience
cheers.
TITLE – Andre
Gregory
ANDRE GREGORY:
All of you here tonight on this beautiful snowy
evening. Welcome to Poets Not Fit for the
Whitehouse.
DOCUMENTARY –
Sam Hamill at the
microphone.
SAM HAMILL:
This poem is called – ―Sheepherder Coffee.‖
I used to like sheepherder coffee,
a cup of grounds in my old
enameled pot,
then three cups of water and a fire,
and when it's hot, boiling into froth,
a half cup of cold water
to bring the grounds to the bottom.
It was strong and bitter and good
as I squatted on the riverbank,
under the great redwoods, all those
years ago.
Some days, it was nearly all I got.
I was happy with my dog,
and cases of books in my funky
truck.
But when I think of that posture
now,
I can't help but think
of Palestinians huddled in their
ruins,
the Afghan shepherd with his
bleating goats,
the widow weeping, sending off her
sons,
the Tibetan monk who can't go
How is it the good, peaceful moments
return to you as you think about events
that are unpleasant?
1. What is the significance of the act of
―squatting‖ in this poem? Who is
squatting?
2. What emotion does this poem invoke
in you?
Discussion and Action Guide 23 3/16/2008
home.
There are fewer names for coffee
than for love. Squatting, they drink,
thinking, waiting for whatever
comes.
DOCUMENTARY –
Saul Williams
SAUL WILLIAMS:
Your angry god
Craving the sacrifice of virgin
generations
Sons degenerate
Your holy books written in red ink
on burning sands
Your prayers between rounds do no
more than fasten the fate of your
children
To the hammered truth of your
trigger
A truth that mushrooms its
darkened cloud over the rest of us
So that we too bear witness
To the shortlived fate
Of a civilization that worships a
male god
1. Who are the virgin generations
that Williams refers to in his
poem?
2. What is the significance of holy
books being written in red ink?
What does red ink usually imply?
3. What is Williams saying about the
prayers that are being said?
4. How do we bear witness to this
picture that Williams offers in his
poem?
5. What is the significance of
Williams claiming that we worship
a male god? Would the situation
be different if we thought of god
as a female or as andrynous?
DOCUMENTARY –
Arthur Miller ARTHUR MILLER:
We have to stop speaking in codes. Collateral
damage is code for 1000‘s of people being
killed who are powerless to change their rulers.
1. What is meant by collateral damage?
2. What was the intent of Miller’s
comment?
DOCUMENTARY –
Marie Howe
MARIE HOWE:
Six lines by a hero of mine. He‘s a visionary.
His name is Cameron Penny and he is in the
fourth grade. He is… amazing… he‘s in the
fourth grade in a Michigan school. Cameron
Penny wrote this. He said:
―If you are lucky in this life
A window will appear on a
battlefield between two armies
And when the soldiers look into the
window
They don‘t see their enemies
They see themselves as children
And they stop fighting
And go home and go to sleep.
When they wake up, the land is well
again
1. Why does Howe call Cameron Penny
a visionary?
2. How are poets visionaries?
DOCUMENTARY –
Terry Tempest
Williams.
TERRY TEMPEST WILLIAMS:
This poem that I‘m going to read next was
submitted to the website by Pamela Hale.
DOCUMENTARY-
Pamela Hale at
As far as we know her first published poem.
She‘s 35 years old,
Discussion and Action Guide 24 3/16/2008
computer typing.
DOCUMENTARY –
Terry Tempest
Williams.
from Houston, Texas and she writes
DOCUMENTARY-
Pamela Hale at
computer typing.
―I‘m an ordinary person from an ordinary
place.‖
PAMELA HALE:
I wanted it to be understood that
INTERVIEW –
Pamela Hale
it wasn't just crazy left-wing people who were
against the war. And it wasn't just people who
were, you know, were activists or people who
had an agenda or something. It was ordinary
people in ordinary places.
How has Hale personalized the Iraqi War
in her poem? What are your opinions
about this personalization?
DOCUMENTARY –
Terry Tempest
Williams recites
Pamela Hale’s poem.
I‘m sorry that your mom was killed
When a missile struck your home
You were only three, and innocent.
Your mother too was innocent.
What is the enormity of loss to the young
Iraqi child whose mother was killed?
DOCUMENTARY –
Pamela Hale is walking
on the beach.
That missile came in my name,
Paid for by my tax dollars.
I was against the bombing, but
Not registered to vote,
Afraid to make a stand.
1. What accusation is Hale making in her
poem?
2. What are the comparisons that the
poet uses in her poem?
STILL – Pamela
Hale’s daughter with
her mom.
I have a daughter, about your age.
She is beautiful and strong.
Her mother is here, her father
there,
How is Hale’s daughter an inspiration for
her?
STILL - Pam’s
daughter at Christmas.
But her home has never been
bombed.
DOCUMENTARY –
Pamela Hale walks on
the beach.
She makes fliers to pass out at
school.
―no one should have to die for oil.‖
She scares her teachers and school
counselor.
She is too young to vote.
But not afraid to make a stand.
What might Hale’s feelings be about her
daughter’s actions expressed in the poem?
DOCUMENTARY –
Terry Tempest
Williams is reading.
This time I will not stand idly by
While politicians propagandize and
Big corporations divvy up the booty
In advance. No.
DOCUMENTARY –
Pamela Hale
This time I will make my voice
heard,
Say the things I couldn‘t say
before,
Support my daughter and the
others when
They stand against another unjust
war.
What about this poem resonates for you
and for what reason?
STOCK - Bomb bay JON STALLWORTHY:
Discussion and Action Guide 25 3/16/2008
is open and bombs
tumble down towards
a distant city – it could
be in England or in
Germany. Civilians
dead on ground.
Increasingly in the Second World War – with
total war – you get the impact on civilians…
…from the First World War
How has war changed through the years
and continues to change?
INTERVIEW – Jon
Stallworthy
with its dominant image of the trench, you
move to the Second World War which, if it has
a comparable image, is the image of the fire
from heaven, the bomb.
Who are the majority of today’s causalities
of war in countries like Iraq and
Afghanistan?
STOCK – Cities
burn. Night bombing,
London blitz.
LT. GENERAL LENNOX
…There was a dehumanizing that was going
on.
INTERVIEW – Lt.
General Lennox
In fact, some of the poems go back to the
pilots when they are resting back in England
and they are reflecting on what they have
done, the horrors of what they have done.
If you were an fighter pilot and had
returned from a ―successful‖ mission, what
would you be thinking?‖
STILL – Randall Jarell …Randall Jarrell in ―Losses‖ writes…
―We read our mail
DOCUMENTARY –
Lt. General Lennox
reads a poem by
Jarrell.
and counted up our missions – What is the significance of counting
missions?
STILL-Pilot on plane
―Barbara‖
In bombers named for girls, we
Burned
The cities we had learned about in
school
Why might these pilots decided to name
their bombers for girls?
DOCUMENTARY –
Lt. General Lennox
reads a poem by
Jarrell.
Till our lives wore out; our bodies
lay among
The people we had killed and never
seen.‖
What was the fate of many of the pilots
Jarrell writes of in his poem?
STOCK – Wide shot
Tinian Island, Bomb
being loaded onto the
Enola Gay.
TITLE – August 6,
1945
STOCK – Hiroshima
– shots of the bomb
and the mushroom
cloud.
STOCK –
Devastation of
Hiroshima after the
bomb had struck
JONATHAN SCHELL:
Hiroshima announced the possibility of the end
of the world.
Although it‘s true that many cities had been
destroyed by so-called conventional bombing
before Hiroshima
How was the dropping of the atomic bomb
a milestone in human warfare? How did
these acts change not only the course of
human history, but the make the world
more vulnerable?
INTERVIEW –
Jonathan Schell
and Nagasaki, it was impossible to imagine
previously that every city in the world
Discussion and Action Guide 26 3/16/2008
could be so destroyed. But the minute
Hiroshima was destroyed it became
perfectly obvious to every thinking person
that if one bomb could destroy one city,
then it wouldn’t take very many bombs to
destroy every city on earth. And indeed
during the Cold War, those numbers were
quickly achieved, and quickly surpassed.
STOCK – Atomic
bomb explodes –
beautiful and terrifying.
Title— (Tanka I)
In madness
a woman cries
―I left my child in the
flames.‖
Now all I have
Is my own life.
--Shoda Shinoe
SHODA SHINOE:
In madness
a woman cries
―I left my child in the flames.‖
Now all I have
Is my own life.
In ―Tanka (I)‖ how would you depict the
state of mind of the woman in whose voice
the poem is written? Why might she be
feeling as she does? What would be your
feelings if this poem represented an event
that happened to you?
STOCK – Hiroshima
is a city leveled.
Title—(Tanka II)
I wonder
If there is an operation
That removes
memories.
Where is a cure
For my pain filled
heart?
SHODA SHINOE:
I wonder
If there is an operation
That removes memories.
Where is a cure
For my pain filled heart?
1. How might making a wish as that
expressed in ―Tanka (II)‖ be helpful in
dealing with the sorrow experienced
by the poet?
2. What strikes you the most about
these two poems?
STOCK- Atomic
Bomb goes off.
STOCK – Atomic
bombs go off in every
type of location.
JONATHAN SCHELL:
You entered into the paradoxical situation that,
that the United
INTERVIEW –
Jonathan Schell
States and the other nuclear powers began to
rely for their safety, on the ability in retaliation
to absolutely annihilate the civilian population
of the other side.
When you talk about the ability to
annihilate a population does your concept
of war change?
STOCK – An atomic
bomb goes off.
…at the Strategic Air Command, they called it
―nation killing‖, which is a livelier phrase for
what we call genocide. At the same time, and
this is the paradox of the whole strategy, the
purpose of having that ability was to never
have to use it.
How is ―nation killing‖ a form of genocide?
How is ethnic cleansing a form of genocide?
INTERVIEW –
Jonathan Schell
…Once nuclear weapons were introduced into
the picture you could no longer settle your
political disputes with warfare because it simply
meant mutual annihilation. So the result was
paralysis. It was more than a revolution in
warfare. It was the end of warfare at that level,
simply the end of it.
If nuclear weapons can result in mutual
annihilation, how can/should we go about
solving the world’s problems?
Discussion and Action Guide 27 3/16/2008
STOCK – Wars
around the world.
CHRIS HEDGES:
Since the Second World War, war has largely
been against civilians… I mean there‘s roughly
three dozen wars going on around the globe at
any one time… Real images of war are
carefully sanitized.
What wars do you know are occurring
now? How many wars can you name that
have occurred in the last ten years?
STOCK – Civilians as
victims and soldiers
fighting with weapons.
…massive, powerful weapons of terror are
unleashed, not only on troops, but on civilians.
And that has become the characteristic of
modern warfare. … civilians are the primary
victims now of war… we don‘t hear enough
about war from the perspective
Who are the victims of these wars?
INTERVIEW – Chris
Hedges
of the victims. And the only way to understand
war is to understand it through the eyes of the
victims.
Why is Chris Hedges so intent on telling us
that the only way to understand war is
―through the eyes of the victims?‖
STOCK – War in
Columbia.
ANTONIETA VILLAMIL:
The conflict in Columbia started a very long
time ago, more than 50 years ago….
What initiated the conflict in Columbia
nearly 50 years ago? How often do we
know of wars, but not the causes? Why is
this so?
STILL – Pedro
Villamil
…I‘m very close to my brother. Pedro is his
name, Pedro Villamil… He just went out one
day, like anybody else, never came back.
INTERVIEW –
Antonieta Villamil
… going back to Columbia after the
disappearance of my brother, was not only
asking about my brother Pedro but it was
asking, oh, where is Julietta? Where is
Chaparro, where is Juan, where is Maria,
where is Marlene, where is – I was afraid to
ask.
Why is ―disappearing‖ people used so
frequently in conflicts and wars? What
does it do to those left behind? What does
it do to protest movements?
STILL – Pedro
Villamil
…we realized it was just a whole generation.
… in that poem- ― My name is Pedro‖
INTERVIEW-
Antonieta Villamil
he becomes a symbol of all the people
disappeared in Central and South American
countries.
DOCUMENTARY –
Antonieta Villamil
―Letter to the Brother that Went to War. ..‖
What can I tell you, dear brother?
Mutilated in silence
You disappeared as so many of
my brothers
With rigorous synchronicity.
The dripping of the clock
Coagulates my eyes.
Between brows and eye corner
glances,
I keep an ash that repels the fire
That doesn‘t find your bones.
A tomb I know by heart
Butchers my hands.
With the only effort I have left
I write these lines
While outside and around us
1. What is the war that Villamil speaks of
in the poem?
2. What does Villamil mean when she
refers to the disappearance of her
brother and others ―with rigorous
synchronicity?‖
3. What does it mean that Villamil’s
hands are butchered by a tomb? What
does the tomb represent?
4. How can Villamil respond to her
brother’s disappearance?
5. What responsibility does Villamil take
for her brother’s disappearance and
the disappearance of others?
Discussion and Action Guide 28 3/16/2008
Everything collapses
And bleeds.
STOCK – Protests
against the war.
Seattle and London.
TITLE – February,
2003
TODD SWIFT:
…there was a moment when it felt like maybe
poets and the millions of people marching in
the street might have an impact. … it was a
very heady time in that way as well… not only
personally but seeing friends and colleagues
and comrades around the world coming
together and actually making a difference.
Is it important to join protests and causes?
Why?
INTERVIEW – Todd
Swift
…what happened is that we presented for
history a record of bearing witness, and of
standing up to authority. And we proved that
at a critical time in Western Civilization‘s
history there are still millions of people with a
conscience, who don‘t think that wars need to
be fought unless they‘re absolutely necessary.
When Swift talks about the importance of
protest being recorded for history, and
being a record of bearing witness, what
does him mean? Is this bearing witness
similar to what Owen felt?
STOCK – Massive
attack on Iraq.
American and British
air power is supreme.
Night vision rockets.
TITLE – INVASION
OF IRAQ 2003
INTERVIEW – Craig
White
CRAIG WHITE:
Two soldiers were killed. One had his head
blown off. The other one had a big hole in his
side. One guy was actually blown right out of
his vehicle. The other one pretty much was
killed and splattered over the rest of the
people that were in his truck…
If pictures of war were not sanitized by the
media and censors do you think we would
be more outraged by the results of war?
Why or why not?
STOCK – Heavy
fighting at the
intersection, night
vision through scope.
We're surrounded. Fire's coming from all sorts
of directions, …and we all thought we might
not make it out of here. It looked very, very
close…
INTERVIEW-Craig
White
I saw soldiers running into these burning trucks
full of ammunition popping off. These are
tank rounds. These are large scale
ammunition, much of it radioactive. It's
depleted uranium. But when it burns, it cooks
off and you've got radiation going up into the
air,
How is it that soldiers risk their lives to
save fellow soldiers? Does it have
something to do with what Jonathan Shay’s
claims that in combat men become each
other’s mothers?
STOCK – Soldiers
jumping into burning
trucks.
Civilian in war.
everywhere. And this is a few hundred feet
away from me. People actually running into
these burning trucks trying to save them.
Innocent families who were trying to get out of
a war-type situation, trying to flee, trying to get
to a safer place,
INTERVIEW – Craig
White
would get caught in the middle of a battle, and
they always lost. They always got blown up.
INTERVIEW – Paul
Mysliwiec
PAUL MYSLIWIEC:
My priority was making sure my guys got home
1. As a warrior in charge to whom do
Discussion and Action Guide 29 3/16/2008
safe. You know, my priority was not making
100% sure that every engagement was clean
and I never got in trouble, whether or not it
cost, you know, my guys life or limb. My
decision-making process was - Are these guys
threatening my men? Maybe? You know.
Well, you gotta, you gotta protect the force.
you think your first duty?
2. Do Mysliwiec’s comments surprise
you? If so, how? What are the
implications in what he is saying?
STOCK – Searching
cars and guarding
children in Iraq.
CRAIG WHITE:
In modern warfare, as I saw in Iraq, people
don't die like they do in television or the
movies.
What reactions do you have to modern
warfare?
INTERVIEW – Craig
White
You don't see people get hit with a weapon,
have a big red spot and fall down. People
explode. Arms come off.
Can anyone be a winner in such a
circumstance?
STOCK- Dead
people with blown off
arms.
Heads come off. Torsos are severed. They just
explode.
ACT 5
STOCK – Tank rolls
over picture of
Saddam Hussein.
GEORGE W. BUSH:
My fellow Americans, major combat operations
in Iraq have ended.
STOCK – President
Bush speaks on the
USS Abraham Lincoln,
aircraft carrier, May 1,
2003. Crowd
applause follows his
remarks.
…the United States and our allies have
prevailed.
STOCK – Building
exploding at night,
view of Baghdad at
night.
DOCUMENTARY –
British funeral on
carrier.
RACHEL BENTHAM:
―News from Iraq.‖
DOCUMENTARY -
Rachel Bentham
recites ―News from
Iraq.‖
Mars‘ bloodshot gaze
considers the ‗peace‘ –
more soldiers killed
than during the war.
1. In ―News from Iraq,‖ what is meant by
―Mars’ bloodshot gaze?‖
2. What is the contradiction in News from
Iraq?
STOCK – American
wounded in Iraq,
burning trucks.
PAUL MYSLIWIEC:
…the suicide bombing, the mortars out of the
back of pickup trucks
INTERVIEW – Paul
Mysliwiec
instead of regular, you know, track vehicles.
Those are all things that make it harder for me
to distinguish who‘s the bad guy. And that
made it very tense for, for everybody. On top
of the fact that, that four guys in our battalion
had been destroyed by a car bomb by some,
you know, guy asking for help in a taxi cab,
really put us on edge the whole time.
Why is it that individuals revert to suicide
bombing?
STOCK – Americans
Discussion and Action Guide 30 3/16/2008
police Iraq. Statue of
Saddam falls.
DOCUMENTARY –
Baghdad through car
window
INTERVIEW –
Hashim Shafiq
HASHIM SHAFIQ:
I am happy of course. Very happy that
Saddam Hussein is gone.
How might Hashim Shafiq’s reaction to
Hussein being gone, be similar to many
Iraqis?
DOCUMENTARY -
Cafe
Because I am back among and friends, writers,
poets, and artists whom I have not seen for a
very long time.
INTERVIEW –
Hashim Shafiq
My experience with the past regime was
terrible indeed. Like the fascists in Germany
How was Saddam Hussein’s regime
crippling to many Iraqis?
DOCUMENTARY -
Cafe
the secret police burned my books, my
pictures,
INTERVIEW –
Hasham Shafiq
and my poetry.
STOCK – Saddam
Hussein
This poem about the killer of Iraq. About
Saddam Hussein. And about my country.
About Iraq.
INTERVIEW –
Hasham Shafiq
―A man walks by
Trips on his shadow
Thinking it was stone.
A lady walks by
Leans down to pick up a star
Thinking she found some money.
Poetry comes upon words
Painting them with color and
decorating them with beads.
A killer comes upon Iraq,
Thinking that he can plunge it
like a sword, wherever he
pleases.‖
1. The man, the lady, poetry and a
killer—what do they have in common
in this poem?
2. What is being said about poetry in
Shafiq’s poem?
3. What is truth in this poem? What is
disillusionment?
4. Who is the killer? What is the nature
of the killer?
DOCUMENTARY -
Cafe
INTERVIEW – Ali
Habash
ALI HABASH:
Life in Iraq after the occupation is becoming
worse.
STOCK – Injured
Iraqis. Angry Iraqi
demonstrations.
Americans policing
Iraq.
What happened is that the American army
didn‘t just destroy Saddam‘s regime but
destroyed the Iraqi government which was
established in 1921.
How can we respond to Ali Habash’s claim
that the Iraqi government was destroyed by
the U.S. Army?
INTERVIEW – Ali
Habash
We used to hear a long time ago that
Americans never had a civilization. That they
were just
STOCK – Americans
and Iraqis shooting.
cowboys.
INTERVIEW – Ali
Habash
But when we saw them here in Iraq and were
able to communicate with them, we found out
that they have no sense of civilization. That
Why might Habash’s feeling of Americans
be justified in his eyes?
Discussion and Action Guide 31 3/16/2008
they really are just cowboys. And very
disorganized people.
STOCK – Rockets
fire.
INTERVIEW – Ali
Habash
―Rockets Destroying a Happy Family‖
Rockets fill my heart and head
Time is running by
All your friends are being blamed
for this, Oh Iraq.
These are our dreams
Barbed wire crowds the streets
and people are entangled by it and
get lost in between.
I tried to slip through all this
chaos.
I saw a family trying to climb a
truck
and I saw a child with eye full of
tears behind a tank
and I saw a coffin waiting beside
the Euphrates bank.
Life has no meaning anymore.
Just tons of metal and iron
Are all these arms just for me,
For my children, my old home?‖
1. Have you seen pictures of rocket
attacks or heard their deafening noise?
How do you think you would feel in
being in the middle of an attack? What
would it do you physically? Mentally?
2. Who is blaming whom for this
destruction?
3. What is being implied by the dream?
4. What emotion does this poem instill in
you? What emotion do you think is
being felt by the poet?
5. What answer do you think the poet
expects to get for the question he
raises in the poem? What do you
believe is the answer?
STOCK – Corpses
in an Iraq in chaos.
Dead baby.
CHRIS HEDGES:
What war is about is the
INTERVIEW – Chris
Hedges
glorification of death. Death of the comrade,
death for the country, sacrifice for the nation,
paying
Comment on Hedges’s idea that ―war is
about the glorification of death.‖
STOCK- Faces of
soldiers in Iraq.
the ultimate sacrifice …once we have
sacrificed all for the god of war,
INTERVIEW – Chris
Hedges
we become in the service of death, not life and
that ultimately is what war demands of us.
INTERVIEW –
David Connolly
DAVID CONNOLLY:
It‘s called ―Food for Thought‖
―They moved in unison
like dancers in a ballet,
the spider, 20 inches from my rifle, the
Vietcong, 20 feet farther out,
in line,
each slowly sliding a leg forward. I let the man
take one more step
so as not to kill the bug."
What I tried to do there was to give you this
vision of looking down my rifle, you know, and
1. What was going through Connolly’s
mind as he looked down his rifle?
2. How would you describe the poet’s
emotions at this moment in time?
3. Why are these seconds in Connolly’s
life so important?
4. What is he saying about himself in this
poem? What meaning is evidence of
this by the title?
5. How is it that this poem can tell you in
just a few lines more about what is
happening on the battlefield than a
descriptive paragraph might convey?
Discussion and Action Guide 32 3/16/2008
give you the feeling of how hard-hearted I was
at the time, that I could put this spider's life up
above this, really, my contemporary, you know?
He may have been my enemy, but I'm sure he
was a 19-year-old kid, too, you know?
INTERVIEW – Craig
White
…I think combat is a one-way door. When
someone is in that and witnesses it and
participates in it, especially, I think you never
come back. I don't think you possibly can.
You're altered.
According to White when you witness war
or participate in it, you are never the same.
What does this mean for the thousands
upon millions of people who have bore
witness?
STOCK – War in
Iraq
CHRIS HEDGES:
If you look at human history war has been part
of our landscape from the beginning.
STOCK – American
military might
We as a country are the largest arms
exporters on the face of the earth. We export
two or three times more weapons than all the
other countries combined. And flooding
countries that lack stability with weapons are a
major cause of the prolonged conflicts that
countries have been suffering from for years…
There are many powerful institutions and
forces at work
1. What are your feelings about
exporting weapons?
2. How does the export of weapons
contribute to numerous global wars?
3. Who is responsible for weapons
exportation?
4. How does the impersonal nature of
modern war almost seem as if these
arms have no ―real‖ destination?
STOCK – War
around the world.
behind the scenes, beyond public scrutiny that
bear a great deal of responsibility for the
horrific blood letting that has been going on
and continues to go on in various parts of the
globe that we very rarely focus on or
acknowledge.
INTERVIEW – Chris
Hedges
…the ethnic wars of the 20th Century were
primarily wars against civilians. There‘s little
fighting between the combatants.
Given that civilians are the primary victims
of war today what should be our thinking
about war?
STOCK – Civilian
victims of war.
Civilians in modern war serve as either victims
or adjuncts of the war effort, civilians are
pawns and seen as kind of a collateral in war
time.
STOCK –Starving
children in Biafra.
…over the course of time the government of
Nigeria changed tactics and began to use
hunger as a way to win the war…And all the
planes that brought in food and medical
supplies were being shot down… They were
killing all the red cross officials.
What other forms of war exist besides
using arms? How effective are these
means?
INTERVIEW – Chris
Abani
CHRIS ABANI:
So essentially what happened is that the
Biafrans began to starve to death. And in the
process of that three year war over three
million children starved to death and have been
accounted for. We can‘t begin to talk about
the bodies that have never been found.
DOCUMENTARY –
Chris Abani
―Stabat Mater‖
Through gaps in trees, moonlight
The term Stabat Mater comes from a
Medieval Latin hymn that speaks of Mary‘s
sorrows on viewing the crucifixion of her son,
Discussion and Action Guide 33 3/16/2008
veins night with the remembrance
of
dawn. Among ferns stubbling the
forest
floor a mother squats, watching the
child in
her arms losing its grip on life,
it‘s hacking breath, a suffering
hanging on.
gently she closes her eyes as her
fingers
pincer its nose and mouth,
easing the passage across.
Jesus.
1. How does this poem speak to the
sorrows of the mother as she holds
her child? How does this event
compare to that of Mary at the site of
the crucifixion?
2. What importance does ―dawn‖ play in
this scene?
3. What might be the mother’s feelings as
she squats in the forest with her child
in her arms?
4. How does the mother react to her
dying child? What does she do to ease
its suffering? What opinion do you
have of this act?
5. What ―details‖ might the mother be
left with at the death of her child?
STOCK – Iraqi
victims of war; Antoon
reads, ―Wars I‖
SINAN ANTOON:
When I was torn by war
i took a brush
immersed in death
and drew a window
on war‘s wall
1. What is the significance of what the
speaker in the poem is seeing? What
does he have to say about war?
2. How does the poet use metaphor in
his work?
3. What is the meaning of the title of this
poem?
DOCUMENTARY –
Sinan Antoon
i opened it
searching for
something
But
i saw another war
and a mother
weaving a shroud
for the dead man
still in her womb
What feeling does the poem convey to
you? What is the vision held in the poem?
INTERVIEW - Sinan
Antoon
We live in a very bleak world so that‘s how it
affects me personally. And, you know, you
can‘t escape it in a way. And it‘s very bloody.
And the bloodiness is showing in the writing
and in the tone, a very, very sad tone.
What is the vision that the speaker of this
poem has?
STOCK – American
soldiers in Iraq and
funeral
DOCUMENTARY –
David Connolly
DAVID CONNOLLY:
―Wearing Faces‖
Stand-down, guard duty on the
bunker line,
weed rapping about the last
operation.
What does Connolly’s poem say about the
human condition? About being and acting
like men?
Discussion and Action Guide 34 3/16/2008
And someone said
you remember when that little dude got blown
away in the shit storm of
r.p.g.s?
Then someone cried
and none of us could hold it.
And for awhile afterwards,
it seemed easier for us to act like we were
men.
INTERVIEW –
David Connolly
…poetry became one of the ways that I tried
to sort things out in my head to try to stay
sane, to try to make some sense out of what
was going on around me. And once I got home
it became even more so. If something woke
me up in the middle of the night, some
remembrance of a man's death or whatever, I
would sit and I'd think about it. And I'd write
about it.
How is writing a form of therapy? How
does it help to get our thoughts out and
enable us to reflect on them?
STOCK – Vietnam
War, wounded
soldiers.
And I'd try to almost exorcise the ghost… And
if you can do that, you not only
INTERVIEW –
David Connolly
create something that's better than this terrible
remembrance, you also bring some credit and
some justice and some remembrance to these
men who died. And these things that
happened.
How does writing about an event and the
people that were a part of it bring about
recognition? Why is it important to have
this remembrance honored?
DOCUMENTARY –
Todd Swift recites a
poem.
TODD SWIFT:
Men and women are small
When bullets are put inside them.
They lie down like stones.
All the bodies lying on the ground.
Like children throwing glass at
rain,
This could almost be strange new
fun.
Even when you are dead,
gentlemen,
No one will forget what you have
done.
1. What does the name of the poem
imply? Whose promise is being
invoked?
2. How is it that the size of a human can
be minimized when something as small
as a bullet enters the body?
3. When you hear this poem read out
loud what describe the image with
which you are left? What emotion are
you left with?
4. What is the significance of children
―throwing glass at rain?‖
5. Who is it that will not be forgotten?
6. What scars are you left with when you
think of war? What memories are you
left with? Whom do you blame for
war?
INTERVIEW – Todd
Swift
That‘s the power of poetry, is that it cuts
across time and space, it always exists. And it
can reverberate or resonate in different ways
for different people, at different moments in
time. We‘ve created those poems, they‘re still
out there, and they‘re available again next time
Discussion and Action Guide 35 3/16/2008
people want to go to war. We can remember
what we did this time, people can go back read
those poems again, and be inspired to do
more. Maybe next time we‘ll succeed, and
maybe next time we‘ll stop the war.
INTERVIEW –
Sampurna Chatterji
SAMPURNA CHATTARJI:
The language of war is overt, mechanical,
aggressive, out there. The language of poetry
is inward. It‘s searching. It‘s tentative. It‘s
hopeful and I think that‘s what makes poetry a
valid response at any time. But especially in
the time of war.
INTERVIEW – Emily
Warn
EMILY WARN:
…poetry allows us to exist in uncertainty. To
heal as a result of listening to a poem doesn‘t
mean that you sew everything up and it‘s all
rosy and you feel consoled. It‘s that you
somehow are then given strength to then exist
with the uncertainty that anything could and
might happen.
INTERVIEW – Chris
Hedges
FADE OUT
CHRIS HEDGES:
So I can remember standing in the rain over a
mud puddle and drinking this water the color
of coffee, which was turning my own guts
inside out, and seeing a young woman with her
two small children drinking out of the same
puddle. And I knew what that water had done
to me and knew very well what that water
would do to these kids. And I stood over them
and recited in English (not a language anyone
around me understood), W. H. Auden‘s
―Epitaph on a Tyrant,‖ which is…
―Perfection, of a kind, was what he
was after,
And the poetry he invented was
easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back
of his hand,
And was greatly interested in
armies and fleets;
When he laughed, respectable
senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little
children died in the streets.‖
1. Define the use of the word ―epitaph‖
and ―tyrant‖ as used in the title of this
poem.
2. What type of perfection might the
tyrant be seeking?
3. How is the tyrant in the poem seen as
being human?
4. Why is tyranny so frightening?
5. How is a tyrant absolute?
6. How does this poem exemplify
perfection?
7. In another poem, Auden wrote: ―But
time is always guilty. Someone must
pay for our loss of happiness, our happiness
itself." How might these lines pertain
to war? How do they reflect life in
general?
TITLE - Poem
―History says, Don’t hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The Cure of Troy is Seamus Heaney’s
version of Sophocles’ Philoctetes.
How might the verse above represent a
Discussion and Action Guide 36 3/16/2008
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme.
Seamus Heaney
(based on Sophocles)
conflict between a person’s personal and
moral belief? How does it represent a
symbolic call?
THE END 1. As you contemplate what you have
seen in the film, Voices in Wartime,
what resounds most profoundly in
your thinking and emotions?
2. What immediate thoughts do you want
to be voiced?
3. What questions do you feel need to be
answered?
4. What comments would you like to be
made?
Discussion and Action Guide 37 3/16/2008