Poem of the Week: Saul Landau

       

                                 

The Living Need a Poem   

    

The Cold War is over

why aren't we having fun

I have destroyed my internal Timex

kicked an innocent dog

stiffed four ratty beggars

my team has triumphed over

the incarnation of wickedness

I etch acrid sarcasm

on a child's mind

can I pull a poem from shrapnel

fashion words of beauty

from shrill shrieks of falling bombs

submerge the laments of those

with investments

in times of need

the living need a poem

 

-Saul Landau 

Used by permission.  

From My Dad Was Not Hamlet (Inst. for Policy Studies 1993)

Saul Landau is an internationally known scholar, author, commentator, and filmmaker on foreign and domestic policy issues. He has been a fellow at IPS since 1972 and at the Transnational Institute since 1974. He has written 13 books, thousands of newspaper and magazine articles and reviews, and made more than 40 films and TV programs on social, political, economic and historical issues.

Among his numerous accolades, Saul received the George Polk Award for Investigative Reporting and an Emmy for his 1980 film, "Paul Jacobs and the Nuclear Gang" (with Jack Willis), as well as the Letelier-Moffitt Award for his human rights work. He won a Golden Apple award for "The Sixth Sun: Mayan Uprising in Chiapas" as well as first prizes in many festivals with films about Fidel Castro, Salvador Allende and Subcomandante Marcos. He is Professor Emeritus at Cal Poly Pomona University.  

Saul's newest film is "Will the Real Terrorist Please Standup" (2011). It is now available on DVD.

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If you are interested in reading past poems of the week, feel free to visit the blog archive.   

Activist Vital Stats: Phyllis Bennis

This new feature will showcase activists that embody the spirit of Split This Rock in the world. If you would like to suggest an activist to feature, please contact me at khsplitthisrock at gmail dot com.

Activist Vital Stats: Phyllis Bennis












Name: Phyllis Bennis

Location: Washington, D.C.

Causes: Ending wars and occupations; these days so urgently Afghanistan and Iraq, but for too many decades now, Palestine. My latest book is Ending the US War in Afghanistan: A Primer, available from Interlink Books.

Website: The Institute for Policy Studies

Inspirational Quote: "I have gone through a difficult apprenticeship and a long search, and also through the labyrinths of the written word, to become the poet of my people. That is my reward, not the books and poems that have been translated, or the books written to explicate or to dissect my words. My reward is the momentous occasion when, from the depths of the Lota coal mine, a man came up out of the tunnel into the full sunlight on the fiery nitrate field, as if rising out of hell, his face disfigured by his terrible work, his eyes inflamed by the dust, and stretching his rough hand out to me, a hand whose calluses and lines trace the map of the pampas, he said to me, his eyes shining: "I have known yo for a long time, my brother." That is the laurel crown for my poetry, that opening in the bleak pampa from which a worker emerges who has been told often by the wind and the night and the stars of Chile: "You're not alone; there's a poet whose thoughts are with you in your suffering." ...But how wonderful to have been in Ulan Bator! More so for someone like me who lives in all beautiful names. I live in them as in dream mansions intended just for me. And so I have lived, relishing every syllable, in Singapore's, in Samarkand's names. When I die, I want to be buried in a name, some especially chosen, beautiful-sounding name, so that its syllables will sing over my bones, near the sea." - From Memoirs by Pablo Neruda

A favorite poem:

I Am There
by Mahmoud Darwish

I come from there and remember,
I was born like everyone is born, I have a mother
and a house with many windows,
I have brothers, friends and a prison.
I have a wave that sea-gulls snatched away.
I have a view of my own and an extra blade of grass.
I have a moon past the peak of words.
I have the godsent food of birds and an olive tree beyond the ken of time.
I have traversed the land before swords turned bodies into banquets.
I come from there, I return the sky to its mother when for its mother the sky cries, and I weep for a returning cloud to know me.
I have learned the words of blood-stained courts in order to break the rules.
I have learned and dismantled all the words to construct a single one:
Home

Somehow Tenderness Survives: Remembering Dennis Brutus, January 10

Sunday, January 10, 2010, 4-6 pm
Langston Room, Busboys and Poets

14th and V Streets, NW
Washington, DC
www.busboysandpoets.com
202-387-POET

Please join Busboys and Poets, Split This Rock, TransAfrica Forum, Africa Action, Foreign Policy in Focus/Institute for Policy Studies, and Haymarket Books as we celebrate the life and work of South African poet and pioneer for justice Dennis Brutus (1924-2009).

Featuring poetry and remembrances by poets Kenny Carroll, Elen Awalom, Holly Bass, and Sarah Browning, Sameer Dossani, former director of 50 Years is Enough, Zahara Heckscher, Emira Woods of Foreign Policy in Focus, Neil Watkins of Jubilee USA Network, Dave Zirin, author of What's My Name, Fool? Sports and Resistance in the United States, and others. Audience members will also have an opportunity to offer their memories or to read a favorite poem by Dennis Brutus. Program to be followed by a screening of I Am a Rebel, a 50-minute documentary of Brutus' life by the South African filmmaker Vincent Moloi.

A world-renowned political organizer and one of Africa's most celebrated poets, Brutus was a life-long champion of peace and social justice. As an early opponent of Apartheid in South Africa, he spent years in prison on Robben Island with Nelson Mandela. Upon his release and exile, Brutus successfully organized an international sports boycott of South Africa. Among his many books are Poetry & Protest: A Dennis Brutus Reader (Haymarket Books, 2006).

Photo Credit: Jill Brazel