REELY'S POETRY BLOG

On February 19, 1942, Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066.

Following is one of 60 wonderful poems in the remarkable poetry volume, Crossing with the Light by Dwight Okita.

In Response to Executive Order 9066:

Dwight Okita

This poem reminds me of several things.

One is a French short story I once read about a schoolboy living in the area of France that the French and Germans fought over a long time. Consequently, the land changed hands several times and when it did, so did the language that the children had to speak in school. It left an impression of the French schoolmaster standing by helplessly and powerless while the confused children learned they could not do their lessons in French or speak French in school anymore.

Another is the fear and insecurity experienced by my own child who was 6 at the time of the 9/11 attacks. She wouldn’t go on an elevator for years and was terrified of the very idea of flying on a plane.

Children are always innocent victims of war. As lame as that may sound, it doesn’t begin to compare with the lameness of notions that we fight wars to preserve our liberties for future generations when you think of all the children’s lives who have been turned upside down by wars throughout history.

Links:
Dwight Okita Official Website
Will a Police State Protect Your Liberties? by Butler Schaffer

Earlier in the year, I made mention of Robert Frost’s friend, Edward Thomas. Thomas was originally a journalist At Frost’s encouragement, Thomas began to write poetry. Edward Thomas enlisted in World War I in 1915. Two years later, he was killed in action at Arras on the day after Easter. Thomas was married, and a father of 3 children. He could have avoided serving in the war. Perhaps his poem, This is No Case of Petty Right or Wrong, explains it:

This is no case of petty right or wrong
That politicians or philosophers
Can judge. I hate not Germans, nor grow hot
With love of Englishmen, to please newspapers.
Beside my hate for one fat patriot
My hatred of the Kaiser is love true:–
A kind of god he is, banging a gong.
But I have not to choose between the two,
Or between justice and injustice. Dinned
With war and argument I read no more
Than in the storm smoking along the wind
Athwart the wood. Two witches’ cauldrons roar.
From one the weather shall rise clear and gay;
Out of the other an England beautiful
And like her mother that died yesterday.
Read the rest of this entry »

So, yesterday I was talking about the James Whitcomb Riley literary hoax and how even after Riley acknowledged his role in the prank, some people continued to believe that Edgar Allan Poe was the author of Leonanie. After the hoax was admitted, some went to great lengths to show how they ‘knew’ that it could not have been a work by Poe.

While the situation with the poem, The Box, isn’t similar, there does seem to be quite a bit of confusion as to who wrote the poem. Indeed, if you google “who wrote the box,” the number one result is from Yahoo Answers and the best answer (chosen by asker) names Lascelles Abercrombie as the author. I initially attributed it to Abercrombie myself, even though I thought it seemed at odds with his style. A visitor to my site sent me an email identifying Kendrew Lascelles as the author so I revisited the issue, and I’m now convinced that somewhere along the line someone attributed it to Abercrombie and that just kept going.

But decide for yourself. Compare the styles of The Box -and- Vashti and vote for one you think is the true author.

January 9th is the birthday of Hebrew poet, Haim Nahman Bialik, who wrote The City of Slaughter, in tribute to the victims of the Kishinev pogrom.

Arise and go now to the city of slaughter;
Into its courtyard wind thy way;
There with thine own hand touch, and with the eyes of thine head,
Behold on tree, on stone, on fence, on mural clay,
The spattered blood and dried brains of the dead.
Proceed thence to the ruins, the split walls reach,
Where wider grows the hollow, and greater grows the breach;
Pass over the shattered hearth, attain the broken wall
Those burnt and barren brick, whose charred stones reveal
The open mouths of such wounds, that no mending
Shall ever mend, nor healing ever heal.
There will thy feet in feathers sink, and stumble
On wreckage doubly wrecked, scroll heaped on manuscript.
Fragments again fragmented.