"On poetry and Nine Eleven. Last year, a local civic group put on a Nine Eleven Remembrance in a local park (Montclair Park), and I was chosen to give a short address. I was selected because I was a poet (some debate this point), and I was the only poet known to the producer of the event, who had earlier given me the seed money for the successful poetry meet. My requirements were to keep it short, and not offend anyone. This last point was most important, the civic group sponsoring the event was made up of Republican small business people (there may have been an exception or two), and the event would include representatives of the police and fire departments, and city government. I would be speaking under an American flag, on stage with police and fire brass, and the City Council president. What I wrote to prepare myself for this occasion appears at http://www.swans.com/library/art10/mgarci21.html called "Pericles' Funeral Oration For The 911 Dead." What I actually delivered is shown at the bottom.
Well, the response to my performance last year was quite favorable (no one was offended), and so I've been asked to provide a new address for a similar event this coming September, near the 11th. But, oh my, how am I to say anything meaningful and not offend somebody this time? The poet must speak truths directly to the heart, to puncture delusion and yet have compassion. Can I really offer something to "bring us together" at this stage in the Iraq War? Can I really speak with soothing clarity to both the faithful of the white-power cornucopia-America fantasy -- championed by Bush but a dying vision -- and the Cindy Sheehan awakened? What if somebody in the audience has a son or daughter in Iraq, how do I keep it meaningful to them? I am no Euripides or Sophocles, I cannot easily put the essence of life-and-death national struggles laced with overwhelming personal tragedies into an art so compelling it can transcend political divisions even in its own day. I feel a weight of poetic responsibility that is quite different from a purely artistic challenge. I will probably use compassion as my standard of judgment as I select my words, but compassion for some must of necessity produce some slight agonies for others. I expect some long nights, and emptied bottles in early September.
Three years ago today, three thousand people died in terror attacks from the skies above Boston, New York, Washington D.C. and Pennsylvania.
Our nation and much of the world were stunned by the suddenness, the violence, and the sweeping cruelty of these strikes.
As we look back on that day, can we say we have learned anything from the tragedy?
Each will have their own answer, usually reflecting their emotional fears or political biases; some will have great learning in history and psychology and will spin elaborate explanations of what the 11th of
September -- Nine Eleven -- means for us in our world at this time. And it is possible that many of these explanations will have some truth to them.
But perhaps the deepest, truest lessons of all are not in any words, but in the hand-to-hand experiences of those fateful moments.
As hijacked passengers in pirated airliners are carried closer to their doom high above the streets of New York, a flight attendant uses her cell phone and calmly talks to air traffic controllers, reporting the
events to alert the world of what is happening. Realizing that fate had overrun her, she used her time with consummate professionalism to extract what she could from the situation so that we could carry on the
fight she realized she was on the front lines of.
And on these planes, didn't mothers and fathers wrap their arms around their children and each other, to do that most essential job of a parent -- just this once more and just as good as they would ever do it -- to
be the strong, calm, warm comfort that melts the terrors of the young as they sink into their parents' love?
Firefighters rushed into crumbling infernos of molten glass, exploding stone, and vaporized plastic, leading frightened people out of their immobilizing panic and giving them a direction, a realization of hope,
a direct hand from life and our larger society saying "Yes! I want you to live, to be with us, let us make this perilous journey together! I am with you! and even the yawning of the gates of hell will not shake our
resolve, our bond to each other, for in this handclasp we are one."
And some came out to the light of day while others were lost, leaving us their survivors with torn memories. Did these rescuers first ask: "is this wise?," "do I profit from this?," "do I know the politics of those I expose myself for?," "will this advantage me later?" Did they in fact ask anything beyond "is there a person in danger who needs my help?"
Isn't that what brought us together on September 11th as a nation and world? Isn't that what made us proud of our fellow Americans who paid the heaviest of prices on that day? Isn't that the great truth we
learned with so much blood three years ago today? We are proudest of ourselves when we are one, we are freest and most powerful when each hand helps another without thought. And to live this ideal is enough
for many ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances to know that their lives have been fulfilled in selfless gestures of human connectedness, even as death springs upon them.
That is what the fallen of September 11 bequeath us, the example of being fully and consciously human at its most essential level: they looked after each other. This is the glue of human society, the foundation of civilization. We redeem what we are able for the great price that they have already paid, by re-enacting their great example as we continue the lives and society they were a part of.
Do you imagine they would want their sacrifice to be redeemed in political scheming, tawdry commercialism, or mindless violence? No, the imminence of death made these doomed heroes realize that the precious moments they had left must be used for the best that was in them, and that was in the thought and care of others, an outstretched hand to another human being -- a stranger no longer.
How can we do less?
© Copyright Manuel Garcia Jr.
This note will describe the change to the event of 11 September 2005, in Montclair Park.
In brief, I will only give a few words as part of a Nine-Eleven memorial, these words having been approved by the event organizer. I will not say anything about the hurricane disaster because my statement
on that is deemed too frank to be aired by the groups sponsoring the event (to see Manuel's commentary about the hurricane disaster, please see http://www.angelfire.com/poetry/wordbeat/HurricaneKatrinaDisaster/ManuelGarciaJr.html). I will include a copy of my original text, further below.
I will deliver the Nine-Eleven statement because it was not edited, though the organizer did swallow hard over certain phrases, and because the original request I had agreed to was for a Nine-Eleven event. I
don't want to leave the organizer flat, nor will I grandstand by surprising them with a guerrilla poetry performance, using their event as my own private soapbox. However, I did suggest they find someone else for the event, who could essentially mouth what they wanted said, without feeling this as a constraint of principle or art.
This turn of events makes me realize that it is a waste of my time to try to do anything with poetry here in Montclair -- and I will be making no such further efforts. The residents of Montclair are the business
successes of the economy in Oakland, those who manage the systems, are part of the professional sports world, collect the rents, own the beer joints, wear the robes and suits downtown in city hall and the courts,
and are immersed in the real estate market. Montclair is where money goes to sleep, and one is certainly not welcomed to disturb the dreams of these self-satisfied. This is the bourgeoisie, I can understand why
the French Revolution resorted to the guillotine, for ears closed to national poverty are useless to society and such heads might as well be chopped off. Yesterday, a local Montclair resident, and a shop owner,
on reflecting on the need for me to "wake them up" with my planned short speech -- and encouraging me to do guerrilla theater if necessary -- said of the hurricane disaster, "Well, its pretty obvious now that America is a third world country."
Unfortunately for me, the freedom of speech granted to Euripides and Sophocles to spell out the grim truths of the Peloponnesian War to the Athenians of 400 BC is just too discomforting for the Montclair
burghers of 2005 -- not that I'm a Euripides or Sophocles, but I'm not so bad either.
So, if you do wish to come to the Nine-Eleven interlude during the hours-long flea market, public safety fair and relief agency fundraiser in Montclair Park, you will probably hear me deliver only the Nine-Eleven statement below -- I will make the effort to say it well. After that, I'll keep my poetry out of chamber-of-commerce circles and practice more piano. Since the event organizer is the only addition to the distribution list of this message, I can't guarantee my appearance on the 11th.
When it comes to my writing, there are no compromises, I've used all of those to make a living, protect the family and maintain what personal weaknesses I keep.
Poetry is to feel the heart of a people and express it with compelling clarity, with art. You show the audience respect by presenting them truth without being hesitant over their possible fear of such truth --
perhaps they will appreciate clarity, perhaps they can rise to social challenge. Why not assume they are capable of doing so?
What has stopped me in Montclair is marketing, the poet versus the marketeer. Marketing is telling people what they want to hear so they will do what you want. What could be nicer for the self-satisfied to
hear than that they are generous in making tax-deductible contributions to aid disaster victims far away, as a short interlude in an afternoon of buying used bric-a-brac to refine the decorations of their personal palaces? We are a third world country.
Manuel Garcia, Jr., 9/04/05
Manuel García, Jr. is a graduate aerospace engineer working as a physicist (nuclear weapons). He is an amateur poet who is fascinated by the physics of fluids, zen sensibility, and the impact of truth. García's father is also a poet, and this inspired him to begin writing poetry in his boyhood. García's poetry is often inspired by nature, Buddhist themes, the politics of war and peace, family, love, Jesus, alcohol, redemption, and the magic of awareness (he writes oddball stuff, too). Authors he draws inspiration from include Li Po, Ryokan, Thoreau, and Orwell. He is less concerned with the words themselves, or constructs made from them, than he is with leaving an impression of experienced truth. Sometimes, he succeeds. García uses the essay form to deal with topical issues, so in his poetry he usually triestackling the universal, systemic, fundamental and illogical, or perhaps better stated, the trans- or supra-logical. He is a regular member of the Bay Area Poets' Coalition (BAPC), and has had his poetry published in EXTRA! (NY) and in Flaunt Peace In The Face Of War: Volume 3 of Poems For Peace Anthology (Berkeley: Rudge/Mother's Hen/ARC Press, 2003), Mother Earth International Journal (SF), BAPC Anthology 24 (Berkeley), and electronically at SWANS.com. García invented and produced the Montclair Poetry Meet, held in 2003 (and may be again, given sponsorship), and coordinated the presentations (by others) of poetry and spoken word at the Montclair Jazz & Wine Festival 2003. By sheer chance, García received prizes, in 2002 and 2003, at the contests associated with the Dancing Poetry Festival and the Poets' Dinner. García's poetry is forever
amateur: it is unbiased by a need to produce money, gain credentials, degrees or professional standing, or become fashionable entertainment; it is an aspect of his life reserved for artistic expression without compromise. García takes as his own Marcus Aurelius' self-description of his poetry book: "Some good, some bad, most just so-so." García has produced two recent chapbooks:"Poems On Everyday MatterS," (58 poems, 78 pages, poems from 1969, the 1980's and 2001), and "Pointing Out Each Moon's Smile," (45 poems, 26 photographs [b&w], 84 pages, poems of 2002). Information about García the essayist is found at http://www.swans.com/contrib/mgarcia.html.
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