Month: May 2004

The Chains that Bind

I’m not fond of “conspiracy theories,” generally considering such charges little more than cliche´d arguments to exploit gullible people. That doesn’t mean that I don’t think that the Bush administration is using public-relation tricks to cover up the extent that they’re allowing businesses to exploit the environment. But the fact that such tricks are well-known by any who care to know reveals just how difficult it is to keep a secret when others are concerned enough to look for the truth.

I think the Bush Administration and the U.S. Army is about to find out just how difficult it is to maintain a cover up. Weeks ago while looking at the pictures of prisoner abuse in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq I told Leslie that it was damn near impossible that only enlisted men were involved in that kind abuse. I’d been in the army too long to believe that, at the very least, lieutenants and captains didn’t know such abuses we’re going on and weren’t derelict of duty in allowing such behavior. It’s even difficult to believe that such rampant abuse could have gone on without encouragement from some officers.

A general’s recent findings that no orders had been given to allow such abuse, that only a few reserve enlisted men were actually guilty of such crimes and that only reservist officers were responsible for such a lack of discipline reeked of “good old boy” politics to me. Of course, reserve officers, particularly a woman general, probably aren’t one of the “good old boys” and are expendable, as Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski suggested when she charged that she and her fellow reservists were being scapegoated.

The army is well know, at least as far as the officer’s corp goes, for protecting their own, and perhaps with good reason. When the lives of you and your men are on the line, you have to have absolute faith that your fellow officers will do everything possible to save you and your men. In fact, this esprit de corp can serve the military well. At its best, it even toppled McCarthy and his communist witch-hunt when the Army stuck together after McCarthy accused a general of being a communist.

Unfortunately, I doubt that this esprit will serve the military nearly as well in the current case. Already, the New York Times suggests that an Army captain is involved in prisons in both Afghanistan and Iraq where abuse is alleged to have taken place:

At least one officer, Capt. Carolyn A. Wood, served in supervisory positions at the interrogation units both at the Bagram Collection Point from July 2002 to December 2003 and then again at the joint center at Abu Ghraib, according to Army officials. That center was established in the fall of 2003. In Congressional testimony last week, a senior Army lawyer, Col. Marc Warren, praised Captain Wood as an officer who took initiative in Iraq at a time when American commanders had yet to spell out rules for interrogation. But he also singled out Captain Wood and her unit as having brought to Iraq interrogation procedures developed during their service in Afghanistan. No one is known to have accused Captain Wood of any wrongdoing in connection with the abuses at Abu Ghraib or the deaths of prisoners there or in Afghanistan.

The same New York Times article reveals that at least two deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq had “been deemed a homicide by an Army pathologist.” This should have suggested to any superior officers who gave a damn that some extreme forms of torture were being used on prisoners. Surely the Army pathologist didn’t just file his report without reporting his findings to a superior officer.

The same article revealed that Afghan prisoners were demeaned in ways frightenly similar to the pictures we’ve seen from Iraq, leading to the assumption that reservist guards may well have been encouraged to treat prisoners this way, just as they argued early on.

As more charges are brought and cases are brought to trial, I suspect those further up the chain of command will be invariably be linked to the abuse, particularly if the media and concerned citizens demand that all those who are responsible be held accountable, no matter how far up the chain of command they may be.

Of course, in a democracy, it’s you and I that are truly accountable for what our military does, for we are bound to them as surely as their chain of command binds them to . We have the power and the responsibility to ensure that actions taken in our name truly represent our will, and, if they don’t, to make sure that those who acted irresponsibly are punished for their actions and prevented from committing such actions again.

Lax’s Port City: The Marseille Diaries,

The section of Love Had a Compass entitled Port City: The Marseille Diaries, though it celebrates “the joy/ of being /alone/ and in/ a foreign land” ends up celebrating everyday life, almost as if Lax had to be transported to a foreign land to appreciate the everyday events of life.

Though Lax’s vision often reminds me of Whitman’s celebration of the self, of everyday man, the style of the poems is almost diametrically the opposite of Whitman’s, more reminiscent of e.e. cummings, or, perhaps, even Japanese haiku poets.

However, it’s described, the effect of this pared-down style is to force the reader to look at, and consider, each word, an effect that is, in turn, re-enforced by the deliberate repetition of words.

It’s difficult to appreciate the effect without reading the entire diary, but:

the morning show

the afternoons

the evening

one town
at many
different
times
of day

at different
times of year

the same
strange town

(the same
short street
which stretched
from end to
end of that
short quay)

a single
string:

a single
taught-stretched
string

(there
where all the
music was
held tight
in that
one-fretted
instrument)

a single street
a single street

was stretched tight
by the waters

to walk
upon
those
stretched-tight
strings was
music

the street

the street
in rain

the early
morning
street

like a

budding
flower

the early
morning
street

like a
budding
rose

is one of my favorites and suggests, when fully seen, the common, everyday street, in rain or shine, contains the potential for beauty if we can but bring ourselves to see it that way.

Perhaps we don’t see it that way precisely because we don’t give ourselves time to see the beauty. We are so preoccupied with our daily concerns, or so dulled by repeated exposure, that we are unable to see it for what it is.

Take the spaces out of the poem, and see what happens to it:

the morning show the afternoons the evening one town at many different times of day at different times of year the same strange town (the same short street which stretched from end to end of that short quay) a single string: a single taught-stretched string (there where all the music was held tight in that one-fretted instrument) a single street a single street was stretched tight by the waters to walk upon those stretched-tight strings was music the street in sun the street in rain the early morning street like a budding flower the early morning street like a budding rose

Without the spaces, without the pauses, the poem is reduced to gibberish, the same kind of gibberish our lives can be reduced to if we fall victim to the constant barrage of images and news that assaults us every day, an assault that too soon exhausts us, leaving us gasping for air, for space to breathe.

Amazingly, in a world filled with so much ugliness, so many disheartening pictures of human depravity, we can still find beauty in our everyday lives if we but pause ”

” and look.

It seems to me that perhaps it is only by pausing that we can reassure ourselves that life can be something better and can regain the strength to actually confront the evil that is within.

Lax’s “Acrobat’s Song”

I just did the most remarkable thing this morning. After spending nearly a hundred dollars on books yesterday, I just ordered another hundred dollars worth from Amazon today. Although I’m less than half way through Love Had a Compass, I just ordered two other poetry books by Lax. I can’t remember ever having done that before as it usually takes me a long time to fall in love with a poet.

Quite simply put, I am blown away by Robert Lax’s Love Had a Compass. Although jacket blurbs can usually be lightly dismissed as just more advertising, I might actually agree with an excerpt from The New York Times Book Review that states that “Lax remains the last unacknowledged major poet of his post 60’s generation.”

I read poems excerpted from The Circus of the Sun today, which, in turn, motivated me to order the full book. I’m sure the impossibility of classifying Lax’s poetry helps to explain why he is relatively unknown here in America. After all, which school of poets would benefit from promoting his poetry? Lax is hard to classify and his style varies from short, concrete poems to rambling prose poems. At his best, though, Lax reminds me of a Catholic Walt Whitman, celebrating life, as in this closing stanza from “morning:”

And in the beginning was love. Love made a sphere:
All things grew within it; the sphere then encompassed
beginnings and endings, beginning and end. Love
had a compass whose whirling dance traced out a
sphere of love in the void: in the center thereof
rose a fountain.

This image serves as the unifying metaphor of this section, with the circus, particularly the big top, with the acrobat holding center stage. Although the circus seems to hold a fascination for Lax that it never held for me, reading these poems almost makes me long to once again see a Ringling and Brothers Circus.

Although “Acrobat’s Song” is probably not my favorite poem in this section, it could serve as touchstone for understanding the poems in this section:

Who is it for whom we now perform,
Cavorting on wire:
For whom does the boy
Climbing the ladder
Balance and whirl “
For whom,
Seen or unseen
In a shield of light?

Seen or unseen,
In a shield of light,
At the tent top
Where the rays stream in
Watching the pin-wheel
Turns of the players
Dancing in the light:

Lady,
We are Thy acrobats;
Jugglers;
Tumblers;
Walking on wire,
Dancing on air,
Swinging on the high trapeze:
We are Thy children,
Flying in the air
Of that smile:
Rejoicing in light.

Lady,
We perform before Thee,
Walking a joyous discipline,
A thin thread of courage,
A slim high wire of dependence
Over abysses.

What do we know
Of the way of our walking?
Only this step,
This movement,
Gone as we name it.
Here
At the thin
Rim of the world
We turn for Our Lady,
Who holds us lightly:
We leave the wire,
Leave the line,
Vanish
Into light.

Of course, this poem seems even more remarkable when you read it in the context of the other poems in this section, and, in particular, a number of poems that focus on the acrobat, who, though identified with mankind in general, at times seems to be most identified with the artist, the poet.

Though I’m obviously not Catholic, references to “Our Lady” somehow seem to belong here, and lines like

Walking a joyous discipline,
A thin thread of courage,
A slim high wire of dependence
Over abysses.

seem to me to summarize my attempts to live my life as best I can through hards times better than almost anything I’ve read before.

And the best any of us can hope for is that, when it’s finally all over, that

We leave the wire,
Leave the line,
Vanish
Into light.

If you happen to like the kind of poetry I like, though there’s certainly no reason why you should, you have to get your hands on a copy of this book.

Robert Lax’s Poetry

My recent literary spiritual journey beginning with New England’s Emily Dickinson and ending with Japan’s Buson, led me to some relatively unknown places, but none less familiar than Robert Lax’s book of poetry entitled Love Had a Compass: Journals and Poetry.

I first encountered Lax’s name while searching online for information about Thomas Merton. Two articles in particular “A Visit With Robert Lax ’38” and “LAX, ROBERT — Mystic Poet 1915-2000,” inspired me to order a copy of Lax’s book through Amazon. The book was backordered, though, and it took me nearly a month to get it. When told it had been backordered, I was tempted to cancel the order, but now that I’ve finally begun reading it, I’m very happy that I didn’t cancel my order.

I suspect my recent haiku readings have made it possible to appreciate Lax in ways I probably wouldn’t have been able to when I began reading poetry many years ago, because his poetry is marked by an unusual simplicity and directness.

As edited by James Uebbing, Love Had a Compass consists of a number of short sections that seem to mirror the shortness of the poems themselves. So far I’ve read the “Introduction,” “Occasional Poems,” “Three Concrete Poems,” “Twenty Five Episodes,” and “Fables.”

Some of my favorite poems come from “Twenty Five Episodes.” The very first one sets the tone for this section:

i.
he sat
on the edge of his bed
all night

day came
& he continued to sit there

he thought he would never be able
to understand
what had happened

I certainly have never have understood what happened. You?

Perhaps somehow it’s related to

xi.
the angel came to him & said

I’m sorry, mac, but
we talked it over
in heaven
& you’re going

to have to live
a thousand years

A thousand years. How many times would you have to watch politicians send their country’s youth off to war just as they sent you off when little more than a child yourself?

How long could you stand to watch the men in the shadows getting rich cashing in on other’s misery and poverty, all the while demanding tax breaks for doing so?