Martín Espada’s Poem for Howard Zinn on Bill Moyers

Split This Rock friend and featured poet, Martín Espada was recently featured on Bill Moyers show reading a new poem of his for the late Howard Zinn -- historian and activist and, as Espada puts it:  “the most decent, most generous human being I have ever known.”

Watch the video here.

Split This Rock Poem of the Week: Celebrating 50 Weeks with Kenneth Carroll

Dear Friends,

This week we celebrate 50 weeks of Split This Rock Poem of the Week! For the past 50 weeks, the poems have come to your Inbox, showcasing the voices of tomorrow, the poets who are telling the true story of our lives, the complexity, the fear, the despair, the determination, the vision of another world, just at the edge of the horizon.

And the 50 poems have flown around the world, thanks to all of you, to those who are hungry for these essential voices. Please keep forwarding them widely - including to all your friends and colleagues and family members who you think aren't inclined to read contemporary poetry - especially to them!

To mark this special week, we are happy to feature DC native Kenneth Carroll and his poem "A People's Historian" - a tribute to Howard Zinn. In it, he asks, "who speaks of our triumphs, of how we/altered the course of a raging river of oppression/how we turned our love for each other into a/garrison of righteous rebellion"? Howard Zinn, of course, but also the poets we have featured in Poem of the Week, all the poets "root(ing) around the muck of history" for truth, for the beauty and the difficulty that will help us find our way forward. We salute them all and invite you to forward this email widely, to share the good word. (Just be sure to include all the info about the poet and Split This Rock. Thanks!)

To read past poems of the week, visit the blog archive. In peace and poetry,Split This Rock

A People’s Historian

For Howard Zinn

who will come to tell us what we know
that the king’s clothes are soiled with
the history of our blood and sweat

who memorializes us when we have been vanquished
who recounts our moments of resistance, explicates
our struggles, sings of our sacrifices to those
unable to hear our song

who speaks of our triumphs, of how we
altered the course of a raging river of oppression
how we turned our love for each other into a
garrison of righteous rebellion

who shows us even in failure, when we
have been less than large, when our own
prejudices have been turned against us like
stolen weapons

who walks among us, willing to tell the truth
about the monster of lies, an eclipse that casts
a shadow dark enough to cover centuries

what manner of man, of woman, of truth teller
roots around the muck of history, the word covered
in the mud of denial, the mythology of the conquerors

let them be Zinn, let them sing to the people of history
let their song come slowly, on the periphery of canon
of history departments owned by corporate prevaricators

let their song be sung in small circles, furtive meetings
lonely readers, underground and under siege
their song, the seed crushed to earth, and growing
now a tree, with fruit, multiplying truth.

Used by permission.

Kenneth Carroll is a native Washingtonian. His poetry, short stories, essays, and plays have appeared in Black Literature Forum, In Search Of Color Everywhere, Bum Rush The Page, and American Poetry: The Next Generation. His book of poetry, So What: For The White Dude Who Said This Ain't Poetry, was published in 1997 by Bunny & The Crocodile Press. He is executive director of DC WritersCorps and past president of the African American Writers Guild. He received a 2005 Literary Fellowship from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, was nominated for a 2004 Pushcart Prize for Poetry, and received the Mayor's Arts Award for Service to the Arts. He was named one of WETA's Hometown Heroes in 2004. Carroll was a featured poet at the inaugural Split This Rock Poetry Festival in March, 2008.

Please feel free to forward Split This Rock Poem of the Week widely. We just ask you to include all of the information in this email, including this request. Thanks!

Split This Rock

http://www.splitthisrock.org/

info@splitthisrock.org

202-787-5210

Andy Shallal's Tribute to Howard Zinn

The following is a tribute to Howard Zinn written by Busboys and Poets owner Andy Shallal for the Split This Rock Memorials.
Most historians report history – Howard Zinn made history through the history he reported. When asked about being objective about writing history – he replied with his signature saying – you can’t be neutral on a moving train. It is also the name of his autobiography and a film about his life.

He understood that writing about history it is not what you say that matters but what you leave out.

So he wrote about what has historically been left out in history books – he wrote about the steel mill workers and the robber barrons. He wrote about the disaffected and disenfranchised. His books went beyond heroes and holidays and into the lives of ordinary people – people like you and me – people who believe that peace and justice is not just something to dream about but an attainable goal.

The people he wrote about did not wear a cape or leap tall buildings in a single bound – they were people who organized and fought back when the odds were clearly stacked against them.

Howard had a major influence on so many people around the world and many of you in this room. Through Howard, I learned about Eugene Debs who formed the Socialist party in America and was arrested for sedition because he spoke out against WWI. I learned about John Brown – the abolitionist who was hung after trying to free slaves at Harper’s Ferry

I learned about people like Eugene Debs, Helen Keller, Emma Goldman, Jack London and Upton Sinclair were wonderful writers who joined the movement against war and injustice, against capitalism and corporate power.

I also learned about movements – the Civil Rights Movement – the sit ins – SNCC – the Pentagon Papers –

A People’s History of the United States became my go to book – it was everything you always wanted to know about history but were afraid to ask – I can honestly say that it was the most important book I ever read.

Howard understood the power of history – he said “I suggest that if you know history, then you might not be so easily fooled by the government when it tells you you must go to war for this or that reason -that history is a protective armor against being misled.

Howard had so many fans…

One woman wrote on his fan page:

Rest in peace, Howard, I thank you for teaching me to look at history through a different lens than was presented to me in school, that government can be as dangerous to a nation as it is useful, and that we all have a responsibility to be informed and aware.

But he was not without doubt… he wrote: “I'm worried that students will take their obedient place in society and look to become successful cogs in the wheel - let the wheel spin them around as it wants without taking a look at what they're doing. I'm concerned that students not become passive acceptors of the official doctrine that's handed down to them from the White House, the media, textbooks, teachers and preachers."

Early on in his career, while working on his book The Politics of History – Howard Zinn went back to revisit the cities that he bombed during the time when he became a bombardier during WWII - he learned that his raids would have killed at least 1000 people – people he could not see from thousands of miles above the ground – he interviewed some of the survivors and heard about the horrors of his actions.

This became the turning point for Howard’s life – he said that he received his orders by people who were more interested in career advancement than saving humanity or ending fascism.

He said … “I suggest that the history of bombing—and no one has bombed more than this nation—is a history of endless atrocities, all calmly explained by deceptive and deadly language like 'accident,' 'military target,' and 'collateral damage.'"

He was a radical through and through; he embodied the idea of speaking truth to power. Zinn’s classes at Boston University were large, often hundreds of students in one class. His classes were popular for his teaching style and growing reputation. He was funny and eloquent and engaging - but he also had a reputation as an easy grader.

He was neither a Democrat nor a Republican and did not adhere to any specific party affiliation… and understood that politics can be deceptive and self serving; instead he believed in the people's power.

He wrote…
“I think some progressives have forgotten the history of the Democratic Party, to which people have turned again and again in desperate search for saviors, later to be disappointed. Our political history shows us that only great popular movements, carrying out bold actions that awakened the nation and threatened the Establishment, as in the Thirties and the Sixties, have been able to shake that pyramid of corporate and military power and at least temporarily changed course.”

He was also one of the most patriotic people I have ever met. He once said that "Men who have no respect for human life or for freedom or justice have taken over this beautiful country of ours. It will be up to the American people to take it back.”

One of the proudest moments of his career came when he was able to finish his most ambitious project, making of the film… “The People Speak” - the film was based on his people’s history and people’s voices – the film is now on DVD and was shown on the History Channel a few months ago – Imagine, Howard Zinn on the History Channel – now millions of people will be witness his incredible body of work – over 20 books and thousands of articles in newspapers and magazines – and just recently People’s History made the NY Times best seller list for non – fiction.

He loved his wife Roz – an incredible artist and fierce critic of his work – without her, he would often say, he would not have written People’s History of the United States… They were the most incredible and elegant couple and both of them made you feel like you were the most important person in the world.

Of course anyone who knew Howard knew that he was the quintessential optimist… about optimists he wrote…

"An optimist isn't necessarily a blithe, slightly sappy whistler in the dark of our time. To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something..."

"If we remember those times and places--and there are so many--where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand Utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory."

Photo Credit: Robin Holland

Video of the Howard Zinn Tribute at Busboys!

Click here to watch a video of the Zinn tribute at Busboys and Poets.

Inspiration for Many Generations

The following is an excerpt from Mendy Knott, a blogger for peace. You can read the full post here

My favorite book by Howard Zinn is a slim volume which you can read in a couple of hours. It's called artists in times of war and other essays published in 2003 in Canada. It is a book to be kept on your shelf and read again and again. He directs his words to the artist, the writer, the poet when he says, "The word transcendent comes to mind when I think of the role of the artist in dealing with the issues of the day. I use that word to suggest that the role of the artist is to transcend conventional wisdom, to transcend the word of the establishment, to transcend the orthodoxy, to go beyond and escape what is handed down by the government or what is said in the media."

I interpret this admonition seriously. We as artists have a duty, a responsibility that comes with our gifts. And that responsibility is to rise above mediocrity, to reject a herd mentality in favor of expressing what we perceive to be the truth, no matter how dangerous, outrageous, or unacceptable to the status quo it may be. I take that responsibility seriously and reading "Artists in Times of War" reminds me of my duty as an artist and activist.