Hamill and Forche

These authors’ ideas related to “Poetry of Witness” in several ways.  Forche talks about poems that don’t quite fit into either the political or personal category and nearly all the “Poetry of Witness” poems fit into this third category.  The poems deal with subjects ranging from Vietnam, to the World Trade Center attack, to hate crimes.  All these topics are politically charged, even though the writers seldom, if ever, pursued any agenda directly.  Fundamentally, however, they are also about very personal experiences.  Hamill focuses on violence and war as subjects of poetry and how writers have an obligation to educate on these topics.  All the poems in “Poetry of Witness” did this in some way.

Both clearly espouse activism and a certain general political ideology, but they seem to strongly agree on and encourage the idea that poetry should include political and social ideas.  I would say that Forche seems to have a much more analytical approach to her thesis and Hamill seems to have more of an informal and emotional approach to his.  Forche focuses on definitions and categories in her articles, whereas Hamill never really discusses these differences. 

I agree with Forche’s assertion that to term certain poetry “political” is limiting and certainly does usually carry a negative connotation.  I also agree that there is some poetry that is on the cusp of the political and personal classifications.  She makes the comment that these poems “have to be judged, as Ludwig Wittgenstein said of confession, by its consequences, not by our ability to verify its truth. In fact, the poem might be our only evidence that an event has occurred” (Forche).  However, this view is nonsensical if the reader uses this kind of poetry to establish any kind of political ideology or world view.  In those circumstances, “our ability to verify its truth” (Forche) would be pivotal.  I’m not sure that she makes this distinction clear, or even recognizes this point, although she touches on the point more than once.

Hamill’s essay has a simple thesis, but Hamill carries his arguments way past their breaking points.  Hamill makes it clear that he, as a true poet, has “give[n] up the self” (Hamill 551) like a modern version of Siddhartha, and has ascended the base need for violence to become a beacon of social awareness through his artistry as a poet and his recognition that society is to blame for everything.  If only society could make that basic connection I’m sure that we would instantly defeat all social ills.  Real solutions are not that simple, which is possibly why he concentrates more of his thesis on properly placing blame, since we all know that if blame is properly placed the problem goes away.  In this way, Hamill subtly weaves a steady thread of guilt and pure narcissism all the way through his very basic and essentially true thesis.  No one would argue that we shouldn’t speak out against social ills, but the applications that he makes leave much more room for argument than his thesis.   

The logic used in his essay is filled with unsupported reasoning and statistics of dubious accuracy.  He blames the parent who spanks their child for teaching the roots of all evil and violence in society (548-549).  If your daughter is raped it is apparently partly your responsibility for not being able to “readily discuss rape” (553).  To equate spanking your child to beating your child with a baseball bat as he does is pure folly (549). It’s not just a difference of degree, but of intent.  And, radical as it might seem, why not blame the rapist for rape?  The murderer for murder?  And so on?  Hamill says “the writer accepts responsibility for every implication derived from what is stated” (549), yet he places blame recklessly and without regard, more like a true “batterer” than a poet.  Imagine how you would feel to be told you’re responsible for your child’s rape because you didn’t educate them enough.  On the flip side, I suppose, it is a very nice absolution if you happen to be a rapist or a murderer.

Hamill talks about accountability several times throughout his essay, but I think his sanctimonious prose entirely misunderstands what accountability actually means.  He recites it twice, but never took it to heart when he quotes Kunf-fu Tze as saying, “All wisdom is rooted in learning to call things by the right name” (549).

Test your narcissism here

Works Cited

Forche, Carolyn.  "The Poetry of Witness." The Writer in Politics. Ed. William H. Gass and Lorin Cuoco. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1996. Print.

Hamill, Sam.  "The Necessity to Speak." Writing as Re-Vision. Eds. Beth Alvarado and Barbara Cully. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996. 546-553. Print.

Image

Dali, Salvador.  “The Metamorphosis of Narcissus.”  From http://cache2.artprintimages.com/p/LRG/7/798/GAXI000Z/art-print/salvador-dal%C3%AD-the-metamorphosis-of-narcissus-c-1937.jpg