Kyndall Brown Wins Larry Neal Writers' Award

Kyndall Brown, a freshman at Duke Ellington High School was awarded First Place in the Larry Neal Writers' Award competition for Teen Poetry. Split This Rock is incredibly proud of Kyndall, who has been a part of the Split This Rock family since 2006 when her poem “When Is War Going to Stop?” was published in the special Wartime Issue of Beltway Poetry Quarterly.

Imaginary Pressures

Its seems clear
It sounds just right
Each row perfectly aligned
And spaced
Flawlessly decorated with
Personality and self expression
Lyrically flowing swift
And smooth
She’s swept away
It’s done and finally finished
That false sense of security
Slowly but surely
Falling into a bottomless
Pit of uncertainty
She eventually cracks
Under the burden of
Physical abuse and
Low self-esteem
She becomes transparent
One piece at a time
Almost but not completely
Wiped away
Lost to the insanity of
That white page and thePressure of her own insecurities
She’s trapped
Between blue lines and
Marginalized by red bars
She tries to escape
From that mental slavery
By hiding behind a mask
Of trivial rhythm and rhyme
Only to be swept into deception and disorder
Each verb, noun and predicate becoming
Lost in confusion and doubt
No longer able
To speak the truth
She’s tossed away
Like some unwanted trash
Imprisoned behind
Circular walls of desperation and indifference
There with
The other failures
Broken, scarred and wrinkled
She contemplates her own fate
And wonders if
She can ever be
Truly set free
Or will she forever
Be bound and tied
By the imaginary pressures
To be a perfect
Poetic Verse

Kyndall Brown
2009

Poems for Peace and Protest

Split This Rock offers the following poems for your vigils, demonstrations, and actions. Feel free to read one or many during your event, but please always remember to say the poet's name when you read his or her poem. For more information and more poems of provocation and witness: info [at] splitthisrock [dot] org. For more poems, check out the Foreign Policy in Focus article including the poems.









First Poem

The first poem at a reading
Should always shock and awe

It should be a love poem
Of overwhelming force

Maybe the mother
Of all poems

War reduces everything
To silence

Every soldier's grave a place
Too loud for sleep

E. Ethelbert Miller
From D.C. Poets Against the War (Argonne House Press, 2004). Used with permission.

Open Letter to President Barack Obama: Moments for Poetic Language in Military Decisions

The Honorable Barack Obama
President of the United States
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington D. C. 20500

Dear President Obama:

Respectfully, I suggest inclusion of poetic language by reading a poem or excerpt in White House discussions regarding military decisions, particularly now about Afghanistan .

The poetic language takes people past the generic abstractness of numbers—40,000 troops contemplated for Afghanistan , for example—to awareness about every single one of these troops. The tragic beauty of the poetic language provides a compelling visual of a battle scene and what happens to the individual serviceperson.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow moves us when he writes about a young Civil War soldier, “Killed at the Ford,” in the first stanza:


Killed at the Ford

He is dead, the beautiful youth,

The heart of honor, the tongue of truth,

He, the life and light of us all,

Whose voice was blithe as a bugle-call,

Whom all eyes followed with one consent,

The cheer of whose laugh, and whose pleasant word,

Hushed all murmurs of discontent.


In “Anthem for Doomed Youth” the poet Wilfred Owen, killed in action at age 25, November 4, 1918, a week before the Armistice, asks…

What passing-bells for those who die as cattle?

Only the monstrous anger of the guns.

Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle…

We have abundant resources for appropriate and moving language about war: Matthew Arnold’s “ Dover Beach ,” Carl Sandburg’s “Wars” and Herman Melville’s considerable poetry about the Civil War. In “ Gettysburg ,” Melville tells us “The evening sun/ Died on the face of each lifeless one.”

There is the informing those who survive like the parents being called to the porch in Walt Whitman’s “Come Up from the Fields Father,” which could be a national memorial poem:


Come up from the fields father, here’s a letter from our Pete,

And come to the front door mother, here’s a letter from thy dear son.

...

Down in the fields all prospers well,

But now from the fields come Father, come at the daughter’s call,

And come to the entry mother, to the front door come right away


Open the envelope quickly,

O this is not our son’s writing…

O a strange hand writes for our dear son, O stricken mother’s soul!

…While they stand at home at the door he is dead already,

The only son is dead…

I am inspired to make this appeal, Mr. President, by your having revived the tradition of a poet writing and reading a poem at the Inauguration.

Thank you for your consideration of this suggestion.

Sincerely,


Maxwell Corydon Wheat, Jr

Maxwell Corydon Wheat, Jr. is the First Poet Laureate of Nassau County, New York 2007-09.