The Pawnbroker's Daughter by Maxine Kumin

Author:Maxine Kumin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2015-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

. . .

and capital cases are heard with no

capital defense attorneys allowed

(from “Red Tape and Kangaroo Courts I”)

. . .

We went in punching kicking yelling out orders

in our language, not theirs.

(from “Entering Houses at Night”)

. . .

when you shackle them higher

are you still Christian

when you kill by crucifixion

(from “What You Do”)

Although metrics serve as a way of giving shape to my anger and enabling my poetry to voice moral outrage, some of my rants are in free verse. Whatever methods writers in all genres use, we have to bear witness, hew to our personal compass, and stand up to be counted. To paraphrase Auden in his prescient poem “September 1, 1939,” all we have is a voice “to undo the folded lie.” Today we have literally thousands of poets raising their anguished voices, not just in English, but in Arabic, Russian, Farsi, and a hundred other tongues. Are our poems succinct, stunning, intensely moving? Of course we hope they are. Do they change the course of elections, undo death penalties, pardon political prisoners, expose fraud and corruption? These are rhetorical questions, but the poetry of witness at least provides a living archive, exposing the folded lies.

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