Sam Hamill and Carolyn Forche

The two authors’ idea relates to the two poems I wrote about last week by giving examples of what poetry of witness really is. Sam Hamill talks about how everyone is responsible for everything that is going on, and in writing about the events that happen to us in our day to day lives we are giving a voice to the concerns that should be everyone concerns. He was talking about the people who were responsible to talk about the events and to name names. With both poems I picked the authors do that. In Charlie Howard’s Descent by Mark Doty it talked about a cruelty that happens every day. The author told the world about this event and maybe didn’t exactly name names but he let the world know what he saw. He was not quiet about the violence that happens to all the homosexuals in our society. Carolyn Forche too had the same idea about the certain events that poetry of witness talk about being on a “social” plain. It is something that we all should consider a personal problem that needs to be fixed. With the poem Song of Napalm by Bruce Weilder it talked about the evil of the Vietnam War and the effects it had on the people who were there fighting that war. The fact that the author was able to endure that pain and “before the first word was written, the writer is a witness who struggles not to flinch or look away.” (Hamill, The Necessity to Speak, pg. 549) The difference between Sam’s and Carolyn’s idea about poetry are Carolyn thinks poetry of witness is poetry about our “social” plain in meaning that it is about the cruelty that make our lives so bad. Sam thinks that poetry of witness or poetry for that matter is a way to make the concerns of other ours and to tell the tall that need to be told. Their ideas are alike by thinking that poetry is a way to tell the world of what is really going on and to make the unknown known. The part of Sam’s article that I agree with is the fact that we are human and that every human concern is our own. We should teach our children about the world and not shield them from the evils of it. We need to educate everyone about everything that happens, so that we can try to prevent the evil from happening again. I don’t think there was anything of Sam’s article that I didn’t agree with. Carolyn’s article I thought was about the same as Sam’s and that I agreed with the same topics. The one thing that was different that Carolyn had was the fact that the poetry of witness poem were under the heading of Social. Meaning that they were of social importance to look at and know about and fix the problems that were the reason for the events to happen. I agreed with most if not all of Carolyn’s article. 

Image of Carolyn Forche from:  http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/214

Image of Sam Hamill from:  http://selenazamoraeng102.blogspot.com/2010/06/sam-hamill-response.html


Work Cited

Carolyn Forche: On Poetry of Witness,  http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/a_f/forche/witness.htm


Sam Hamill's Article, "The Necessity to Speak", https://lbblackboard.yc.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_group=courses&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Fcontent%2Ffile%3Fcmd%3Dview%26content_id%3D_710963_1%26course_id%3D_38149_1%26framesetWrapped%3Dtrue

             Denise