Bush Admits America Tortures: What Will We Do About It?

Helen Thomas, longtime White House reporter, is so critical of the Bush Administration, she is stunned when called on during a press conference. With the wisdom of her years, she has written a disturbingly clear essay about Bush's approval of torture. Helen Thomas In the essay, she chronicles how we arrived at this awful reality. Then, she asks: "Why the silence?" I guess there is so much to be dismayed about these days, it's hard to know where to begin. But Bush, Cheney, Rice, and Powell all knew, planned and approved of the torture policy. Our nation, yes "our" nation, confirmed now by the president,  has publicly become one of the infamous "torture nations." This is surely reason enough to get angry and active. 

Where are we going, as a country, when we know our leaders have broken the one set of laws that separates us from our cave-dwelling ancestors, and we do nothing? Read Helen Thomas' essay at the link above, and take action. Consider visiting the website of the Torture Abolition Survivors Support Coalition.  TASSC  Then consider what action you are able to take. Whether one writes, teaches, talks to colleagues or family members-- anything is better than silence on this newest, awful American reality.

In Memory of Dr. Frank Carothers

Prof. Frank Carothers 1919-2008

Professor Frank Carothers, former English professor and English department chair at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles died last week in Manhattan Beach, California. For nearly 50 years, he was associated with LMU, as professor, chairman of the English Department, and at one point, as dean of the College of Liberal Arts. But my memories of him are far more personal.

I can still see him standing in a second-floor classroom of St. Robert's Hall, teaching us the Romantic poets. He would place his hands on his hips and twist in his unique and quirky ways, all the while reciting Blake, Shelley, Keats, and Wordsworth with great feeling and care. I learned great lessons from him during my years at LMU. He not only wanted us, his English majors, to know the poets we studied, he wanted us to share their passion for life. He wanted us to link the details of their words and themes to our daily living.

Apart from literature, the great love of Dr. Carothers' life was his wife, Vivian, who for several years, served as English Department secretary. You could see their kindness and tenderness toward one another in small ways all through the day. During my junior and senior years of college, I spent a good deal of time in the corner offices of Foley Hall, where the English Department offices were located. The walls of the department's office were covered with photographs of writers, department members, students, anything that would brighten the hassles that generally brought students to the office. On his wife's desk sat a wooden carving of the scripted words: "Hopeless Romantic." Those words describe Dr. Carothers. He saw the humor, the good, the bright, in nearly everything. If you sat down with him for assistance on a paper, he started by saying "Here's how it gets better." If you had a problem understanding certain lines of a poem, he would say: "Read it three more times slowly and I bet you'll get it." While that wasn't always true for me, he at least gave me the hope that I would, one day, get it.

I can also remember a small poster hanging in the department office, it read something like: "Every English Department is like a good zoo. It has its lions who roar and sleep, its monkeys who swing and chatter, its giraffes, who stand calmly and do nothing but eat." And the LMU English Department in the late 70s did have all those characters. For me, a decently average student, it was a great bunch. Sharon Locy, Dick Kocher, Sr. Teresita Fay, Fr. Caro, to name a few, were teachers, who like Frank Carothers, loved their work and that love was contagious to many of us.

During the summer of 1978, I worked for Dr. Carothers, doing some bibliographic research in the Von der Ahe Library on Yeats and Eliot. While I worked my 40 hours a week, he never seemed to mind that I came in around 10am or 11am, after going to Dinah's for breakfast with my friend and fellow RA Carolyn. Sometimes, on particularly beautiful July days, he would say: "Ah, my young friend who would rather be in the library than at the beach!"

Frank Carothers was a powerful teacher, both in the classroom and outside of it. His example of academic excellence and his kindness were true gifts to me. As one who is now a poet, writer, and English Department chairman, I offer this remembrance in his honor. I wish his family every good thing: beautiful memories and all peace.

E. Ethelbert Miller, Myra Sklarew, Stanley Plumly

We went to a Bethesda Literary Festival reading last night at the Writer's Center in Bethesda, featuring E. Ethelbert Miller, Myra Sklarew, and Stanley Plumly. It was a beautiful, warm evening, the room was filled, and the readings were wonderful.

Ethelbert read poems by Derek Walcott, Stanley Kunitz, and Liam Rector and then several of his own which were gorgeous. He read a stunning poem about his brother, titled "Aaron." He read a fantastic poem by someone whose name I am now forgetting, (I'll post it later) the poem was an appreciation of spoons. He finished with his signature poem, "Divine Love," with its awesome line "like Bearden loved scissors." As he always does, Ethelbert read in his gentle, but urgent voice. A great poet and friend.

Myra read a poem by Sterling Brown and remembered him with a couple of stories. She then read several beautiful poems, including one about the human brain, its capacities. Also, she read a poem which emerged from a presidential campaign incident a few months ago where Hillary Clinton shed a tear and garnered all kinds of press attention. It too was beautiful. Myra Sklarew's poems have a story-telling quality that wraps me in. They are rich.

Stanley Plumly closed the reading with several poems. He read a poem of his about a poet-friend of his who, after his death, left nearly 150 of his unpublished poems in a stack, where every twenty pages or so, was a page xeroxed from an illustrated book about birds. Interesting and full of imagery.

We also ran into poet Kyle Dargan, to whom I always feel a sense of gratitude. Kyle was one of the poets involved in "Cut Loose the Body" and in fact, the title "Cut Loose the Body" is a line from Kyle's haunting poem, "Habeas Corpus."

As a nice surprise, I saw the new issue of "Poet Lore," which has a poem of mine in it. One of my Darfur Poems, "The Colleagues" is published there. You can get "Poet Lore" at the Writer's Center and at their website.

Visit the Writer's Center at writer.org

WPFW Appearance Reading "Mad King"

This morning I appeared on WPFW's radio program "On The Margins" with host Josephine Reed. I joined Sarah Browning, coordinator of D.C. Poets Against the War and of the Split This Rock Poetry Festival, as well as D.C. Poet and Editor of Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Kim Roberts. We read some of our poems, talked about Split This Rock and about National Poetry Month. I read the poem "Mad King" which I wrote as part of a Split This Rock workshop on collage poems offered by Susan Tichy. In the workshop, we took phrases from the newspaper and were given the topic of the "US entry into the war in Iraq." I randomly drew an additional topic: Mad King. Thanks to Sarah for the invitation. Here is the poem:

Mad King

"Because I want to"
he shouted,
pounding the metal desk,
rattling the crucifix
on the wall behind him.

"I don't care if we're not
entirely ready,"
he shouted.
"But Sir," the general warned,
"it may be like rock climbing
but like rock climbing
in the dark."

"I don't care if it's dark,"
he said, spit settling
in the corner of his mouth.
"Just go!" he said.
"Just send the planes," he commanded.
"Yessir," the generals said.
And they filed out of the room.

Then he sat back:
relieved, in-charge,
folding his hands on his lap.
"Those generals, he smirked,
"They're real good players."
"Heckuva job, Brownie."

He smiled
and reached for a glass
of what seemed to be
water.