A Lenten Journey: The Sand Opera meditations (an open call)

A Lenten Journey: The Sand Opera meditations (an open call)

The Project

I’ve wanted to find ways of connecting the work of this book with the work of other writers, artists, activists, scholars, and people of faith. After Sand Opera’s publication in 2015, Jayme Stayer, S.J., wrote to tell me that he had been praying with the poems as part of his daily Examen, the Jesuit daily contemplation. I was touched to hear that he had intuitively completed what my own morning Lenten practice over the Abu Ghraib testimonies many years before had begun; that these were texts that needed to be prayed over as much as read.

This Lent, beginning on February 10^th 2016, I plan to share one poem per day from Sand Opera on my blog, Behind the Lines, as well as on Twitter and Facebook—as part of a digitally-collective fasting and meditation through poems. But I wanted to make this about more than the poems themselves. The poems are points of departure. I’m hoping that you might add your voice to this conversation by choosing a poem from the collection to write a short meditation? I’m thinking that short pieces of about 100-500 words that meditate on the poem through spiritual, political, ethical, or artistic lenses—whatever suits you. Let me know what you’d like to work with. Again, your faith or lack of faith are not at stake; I'm interested in your voice and what you'd like to say.

For example, a meditation on “Black Site [Exhibit Q]” could explore the meanings and politics of “black sites” in particular, or the problem of incarceration and the prison system in the United States, or the implications of entrapment on a more personal existential level. It could share suggested readings or suggestions for action. For example, for a poem about Guantanamo, it could share links to calls for closing the prison or Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s memoir. However, I am happy with any way you wish to engage with the poems!

Further Background: Why Lent?

During a Lenten season many years ago—a forty day season of penitence and fasting in the Catholic Church—I awoke early every morning to read through and work with the testimonies of the abused at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. I wanted to face the darkness of this war, a war carried out in our names and in the name of our security. At some point, after poring over the photographs taken by military police at Abu Ghraib of their abuse of prisoners, although I am a poet, I decided that I could not write my way into or out of them. In some respect, to continue to circulate the photographs themselves, or to write poems from the photographs, would only complete the total objectification of the bodies and souls of those tortured Iraqis.

It was only when I stumbled on transcripts of the testimony given by the Iraqi prisoners themselves (thanks to Mark Danner’s book Torture and Truth) did I discover a way to slip inside that prison. The “abu ghraib arias,” which opens Sand Opera, began simply a way to be with those prisoners through reading their testimonies. However, I found the transcripts which were too painful for me to read straight through; the only way I could bear to read them was to work with them. So every morning, I sat down with a photocopied page and a yellow highlighter, looking for words and phrases that vibrated on the page, that seemed almost to lift up out of the page, and to trace my highlighter over them, bearing down with them, trying not to be suffocated by the story of torture.

Later, I would work with the testimonies of U.S. military personnel who worked in the prison, as well as the Standard Operating Procedure manual for the Guantanamo Bay Prison, to place the testimonies of Iraqis and Americans in dialogue—a dialogue that they did not have in life. The poems that resulted became part of a chapbook called abu ghraib arias, first published in 2011; years later, they became a pivotal section of Sand Opera.

This Lent project would be a circling back to that original practice, but also a widening to include all of your voices alongside the voices that made their mark on me.

Thanks in advance for your consideration! Let me know.

The following poems have yet to be "claimed":

Illumination

Lane McCotter

In the name

Next day

Public Address

His name is G

Graner

On the third day

First the man

The Blues of Lynddie England

The Blues of Ken Davis

Now I am

And it came to pass

Joe Darby

Woman

Iraqi Curator

Black Site Q

Asymmetries

Salaam

War Stories

The new theory

She asks

What does it mean

Testimony

Saddam

Etruscan

A Toast

What consequence

In the wake of

As if

On the flight

"The Quiet Side Street" by David Baker

From David Baker's new book, Scavenger Loop (2015), "The Quiet Side Street" the ghostliness and permeability of selves beneath some hovering gaze, which is alternately ominous or consoling--marking this poem as part of our digital, panoptic age. Two very different kinds of homing in. In the first section, what is a "quiet side street" is also marked, in the speaker's awareness, by what happens "over there" beneath the surveillance of drones--which is not just "over there," but increasingly over here. In the second section, the poet explores the uncanny infolding of time and space, as the poem slips between the present--in which his father is aged and half-shade--and the past, in which the father is robust and carrying the speaker in his arms. Here, too, the sense of death is not far off. A remarkable poem for its dialogue between the personal and political, showing the permeability and frailty of our mortal, earthly flesh. (n.b. in the second section, the columns should be lined up perfectly, as they are in the original, but the formatting is not lining up properly. My apologies.)

The Quiet Side Street             by David Baker

                        

                                    1.

                                                            where we live is lined

with dogwoods and maples

with old man’s beard

lined with many blue 

bins to recycle

                        things we cast away

                                                            from us and gladly

                        that’s how quiet

                                                            you can hear crickets

           

                        a hundred feet above

                                                            in a glister of

                        leaves leathery there

                                                            with dew or brushed moon

                        bees mumbling at a

                                                            hummingbird tube or

                        in spiked flowers of 

                                                            ivy crawling crazed

                        up the body of

each dying maple

           

                        when had you thought to

tell me      meanwhile

                        deer so still in the

                                                            folded woodruff

                                   

                        one hawk overhead

                                                            no one hears a thing

                        sometimes no one says

                                                            one thing until it’s 

                        too late here or there

                                                            we think we are fine

                        we are not as somewhere

                                                            in a room beneath

the clover meadow

a hand a joy-stick

guides the news      a drone

                                    unmanned far away

or quietly above us 

even now as we

call it homing in—

           

                                    2.

                                   

He walks back from the  window in half-shadow

a half-shade himself        who first called them shades

                                               

who people the place       bereft of long life

he comes back he feels    with the fingers of one

hand the soft hem bed’s   high edge to settle

back my father now         his bed his home or

           

we are walking now         he is walking carrying

me under starlight            under willows swept

with high wind crickets    two whippoorwills far

like two bells one bell      across the night hills

these long hills I am         so tired he thinks

                        I am sleeping who            peoples the night river

                                                           

riffle of water here            over the newest stones

in the river all night          to the other side

okay he says at                 last or I say okay go

to sleep old man and        when you waken on

                                   

the other side I’ll              be there we’re there now

see our shadows where    they have been waiting 

                                   

as long as we’ve been here—

           

  

                              

"Peace on Earth" by U2 as response to Omagh Bombing of 1998

Okay, I'm aware the U2 is a decidedly uncool band; they were uncool before they signed their souls over to Apple, thus causing a generation of iUsers to associate them with musical spam. Still, it's hard to think of many bands who have been as successful in bringing protest into mass culture, in ways that do justice both to pop music and to the cause against violence and injustice.

"Peace on Earth" was Bono's response to the Omagh bombing in Northern Ireland in 1998, by a member of the so-called Real IRA, just a few months after the Good Friday Peace Accords had been signed. It was a particularly brutal bombing, killing 29 and injuring 200 others. Names of the dead are shared--both Protestant and Catholic names--as well as little details of particularity about the victims. "She never got to say goodbye / To see the color in his eye / Now he's in the dirt" comes from the funeral of James Barker. The Irish Times quoted his mother as stating, "I never realised how green his eyes were."

Later, the song became associated with the 9/11 attacks, thanks to U2's performance during the telethon fundraiser "America: A Tribute to Heroes."

Bush Debuts Paintings of Dogs, Friends, Ghost of Iraqi Child...

George W. Bush Debuts New Paintings Of Dogs, Friends, Ghost Of Iraqi Child That Follows Him Everywhere

Posted by The Onion on Tuesday, June 23, 2015

"The Making of a Prophet" by Corey Van Landingham

THE MAKING OF A PROPHET by Corey Van Landingham, from Antidote

            for Adrienne Rich

Keep it small   they said   Keep it small

or the city will form a mouth   Be careful

not to say mouth   or world   Don’t say

body   Drink your coffee   Fuck it

There are gum wrappers on the sidewalk

that reflect all those predator drones

You can almost see them see you   You

flip your hair   You preen   You touch

yourself but you can never see them   They

can always see you   There is a room

full of men making anything possible   It is

the loneliest thing   making up worlds  

Watching others live their little lives   Keep

it small   the men are telling you   Wave to

the sky   No   to a bird you are no longer

allowed to name   and may no longer exist  

You’ve been selected for a very particular

task   All you have to do is talk and talk

and talk and not say anything at all   This

should be easy   They say that   too

Ascension                   by Elmaz Abinader, from This House, My Bones (2014)

                                    For Mahmud Darwish

What do exiles do but continue to walk

in countries where they were not born?

And when they leave are their ghosts alone,

Wandering routes river to home to horizon?

Breath   visible   from the cold of death

I call you to smoke and   vapor

__

We search for the lost through shards of cement

a crusty coffee cup impossible to read.

The cities are homes as much as they are tombs

you draw the map, a longitude of loss

The names of the storytellers will be catalogued

next to saints, teachers, revolutionaries, and bread makers

__

How many times can your heart break?

How many ways is writing a surgery?

Mahmud, is it too much to hold

I stand in the square and call for you

You pierce the voices of this city—

the sky over Ramallah is refrain.

"Relentless" by Zeina Hashem Beck (Stop writing about war...")

"Relentless" by Zeina Hashem Beck 

“Stop writing about war,” he said. “Stop

writing about borders and blood. Stop writing

about revolutions and revolvers, about cities,

rooftops with antennas and snipers.

Stop writing about bread

and barefoot children with their dark

skin, their hair blond from too much sun.

Stop telling the story of how your friend

bought hats for them and gave them out

from her car window, saying put this on

put this on. Stop telling the story of the gates

your grandfather painted on his wall

to remember, and the gates he painted

on his heart to forget. For God’s sake stop

writing about religion, I’m tired

of minarets and crosses, even the prayers

are tired and want to sleep. Just write

some shade for me to sit in.”

So I drew him a tree without roots

and a street with enormous wings and said, “Here

is a tree that cannot be uprooted

and a street that will take flight

before it explodes.” And I drew myself

some mud, two strong legs, a clothesline

upon which to hang my drenched words,

to see what this sunlight would make of them,

and black birds on a fence

like the pattern of a kufiya.

This poem originally appeared in Rusted Radishes

Sand Opera

Sand Opera--my attempt to make sense of the post-9/11 years--came out a couple months ago, thanks to Alice James Books. 

I'm grateful for the good review from Earl Pike in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, who wrote: "The contrast, a brief moment of tenderness amidst the brutal depositions about war's collateral, is striking. The cumulative effect of Metres' collection, its testimonies and gaps, its forms and disassemblies, is operatic and often incendiary, generally discomforting, and nearly always powerful. It is worth reading, and re-reading, to unearth the buried words."

Thanks as well to Fady Joudah, with whom I had an extended conversation over at Los Angeles Review of Books about Sand Opera. Along the way we discuss quite a bit—including love and politics, Elaine Scarry and the theology of torture, the Oliver Stone Syndrome and American Sniper, empire, the Iraqs I carry, 9/11, Standard Operating Procedures, black sites, docupoetics, trance states, recursion, poems about children, the vital vulnerability of the human body, the openness of ears, the sound of listening, the War Story and its exclusions, the Umbra poets and the Black Arts Movement, Claudia Rankine’s Citizen, RAWI (the Radius of Arab American Writers), and the state of Arab American literature.

This is the beginning: 

FADY JOUDAH: Sand Opera is ultimately a book about love, its loss and recapture, and the struggle in between. Many will completely misread it as another political book of poems, in that reductive, ready-made sense of "political" which is reserved for certain themes but mostly for certain ethnicities. So part of that misreading is due to the book’s subject matter or its Abu Ghraib arias, and also because it is written by an Arab American.

PHILIP METRES: I love the fact that you read Sand Opera as a book about love. The longer I worked on the book, the more I felt compelled to move past the dark forces that instigated its beginnings, forces that threatened to overwhelm it and me. Love, as much as I can understand it, thrives in an atmosphere of care for the self and other — the self of the other and the other of the self — through openness, listening, and dialogue. Because the book was born in the post-9/11 era, it necessarily confronts the dark side of oppression, silencing, and torture. Torture, as Elaine Scarry has explored so powerfully in The Body in Pain, is the diametrical opposite of love, the radical decreation of the other for political ends. The recent release of the so-called “Torture Report,” and the torrent of responses (both expressions of condemnation and defensive justifications) has felt like a traumatic repetition for me. Didn’t we deal with this during the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and the “Enhanced Interrogation” debate? Even now, the political conversation seems to skip over the fact that torture contravenes international law and is a profoundly immoral act, and moves so quickly to debate its merits — whether any good “intelligence” may have been gleaned from it. Why is that the writers who have gained the widest platforms were veterans of the war, some of whom participated directly in interrogation — for example, Eric Fair’s courageous mea culpa December 2014 Letter to the Editor in The New York Times — while Arab voices, like Iraqi writer Sinan Antoon’s, are so hard to find and so marginalized?

more here....

My hope is that Sand Opera can help be the start to a new conversation about the state of poetry, American life, and the role of Arab American literature in our ongoing cultural and political debate about U.S. foreign and domestic policy regarding the Arab world. We welcome further conversation. More to come....

"Advising the Prince" by Chuang Tzu

I came across this curious parable in The Way of Chuang Tzu, translated/interpreted by Thomas Merton. It seems to apply to everything from personal to political decision-making. Would that our leaders carried themselves with as much integrity.

"Advising The Prince" by Chuang Tzu (translation by Thomas Merton)

The recluse Hsu Su Kwei had come to see Prince Wu. 

The Prince was glad. "I have desired," he said, "to see you for a long time. Tell me if I am doing right. I want to love my people, and by the exercise of justice to put an end to war. Is this enough?"

"By no means," said the recluse. "Your 'love' for your people puts them in mortal danger. Your exercise of justice is the root of war after war! Your grand intentions will end in disaster!"

"If you set out to 'accomplish something great' you only deceive yourself. Your love and justice are fraudulent. They are more pretexts for self-assertion, for aggression. One action will bring another, and in the chain of events your hidden intentions will be made plain."

"You claim to practice justice. Should you seem to succeed, success itself will bring more conflict. Why all these guards at the palace gate, around the temple altar? Everywhere? "You are at war with yourself! You do not believe in justice, only in power and success. If you overcome an enemy and annex his country you will be even less at peace with yourself than you are now. Nor will your passions let you sit still. You will fight again and again for the sake of a more perfect exercise of 'justice'!

"Abandon your plan to be a 'loving and equitable ruler.' Try to respond to the demands of inner truth. Stop vexing yourself and your people with these obsessions! Your people will breathe easily at last. They will live and war will end by itself.

High-Risk Activism and Popular Struggle Against the Israeli Occupation in the West Bank

High-Risk Activism and Popular Struggle Against the Israeli Occupation in the West Bank

Professor Joel Beinin, Stanford University
Monday, March 2nd , 4:30 pm, CWRU, Tinkham Veale University Center, Ballroom A

Scholars have longed distinguished between normal political protest and what can be termed "high-risk activism," best exemplified in the Mississippi Freedom Summer Project of 1964. The International Solidarity Movement consciously invoked the precedent of Mississippi Freedom Summer by designating its 2002 campaign of Palestine solidarity action "Freedom Summer." Protesting the occupation in any form has always been a high-risk activity for Palestinians, who have regularly experienced tear gas, beatings, torture, incarceration, and live fire from Israeli security forces, as well as indefinite administrative detention and other judicial procedures based on secret evidence.

Professor Beinin will discuss a new phenomenon: the participation of Israelis and internationals in qualitatively new ways involving high risk - not only social reprobation, but arrests and trials, tear gas asphyxiation and other forms of severe physical discomfort, serious bodily injury, and in a few cases of internationals, death.

Joel Beinin is the Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History and Professor of Middle East History at Stanford University and a past president of the Middle East Studies Association of North America. His research focuses on workers, peasants, and minorities in the modern Middle East and on Israel, Palestine, and the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Sponsored by Department of Political Science, Department of History, NOCMES, and Kent State University.