For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
In the valley of its making where executives
Would never want to tamper, flows on south
From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,
Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,
A way of happening, a mouth…
—from “In Memory of W. B. Yeats” by W. H. Auden (1907-1973)”
Aurora, Blacksburg, Columbine, “towns that we believe and die in”: easy as A B C. Charleston, Killeen, Newtown sound as musical as San Bernardino, San Ysidro, and now Orlando. Every time the blood gushes, people turn to poetry, as they should. Poetry’s the emotional history of the world, and what causes more emotion than the slaughter of innocents? It has always been thus. One of our great Biblical stories is about the slaying of the male babies by Herod the Great (the Great!) in Bethlehem; the weeping was great, and the art that followed, such as Pieter Breughel’s “Massacre of the Innocents,” was also great. Statisticians have told us that more poems were written after 9/11 than at any other time in the history of America.
I’m tired of it. We need more than poetry now. “Poetry makes nothing happen” isn’t quite right, of course, as it makes us more aware, more thoughtful, and assuages our sorrow with beauty and insight. But so far, in America, it hasn’t affected our monumentally stupid laws about guns. And there’s a chance that we’re even heading in the wrong direction.
I’m old enough to remember Senator Joe McCarthy, an ex-Marine who liked to be photographed in fighting gear with ammunition wrapped in belts around his substantial belly. The memory came back when I heard the Republican nominee speak about the Orlando tragedy at the Pulse nightclub. While other speakers spoke in sympathy for the dead and wounded, and their families, and some brought up specific plans (banning assault weapons, tightening the sale of weapons, etc.), Donald Trump came out blazing with a tirade against muslims (branding them all as threats), but also with a bizarre, McCarthyesque implication that President Obama was behind the whole thing. His speech was blatantly false (pick your own example), oblivious of the LGBT victims, and focused entirely on fanning the flames of hate, fear, and suspicion on top of the smoldering racism he’s been cultivating ever since he promoted the “birther” rumor that Obama was a Kenyan communist trying to destroy America.
Where are the Republicans on this speech? Many must be upset, but what about the “leaders”: Speaker Paul Ryan, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Florida’s own Senator Marco Rubio (thinking of jumping in once more)? “We still endorse him. He’ll come around,” they’re telling us. No, he won’t. We need them to confront Trump in the way that Joseph Welsh confronted McCarthy: “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”
The McCarthy anti-communist saga stays fresh with me because Edward R. Murrow spoke at Hamilton College in 1954, after he had bravely exposed McCarthy on CBS News. I was just a feckless student, attracted to Murrow because he was funny, soft-spoken, chain-smoked and drank scotch — the Humphrey Bogart of journalism. But his eloquence penetrated through the fog of our youthful callowness, and his ideas planted seeds that rolled around in the dark for a while before starting to grow.
So, my dears, keep writing and reading poetry, keep the tributes coming for the victims whose future happiness, loves and losses have been wiped out; but, in addition, we need action. Think of Switzerland, where, with universal military service, there’s a rifle in every front closet, but not an AR-15 anywhere to be found.
Don’t let your vote be suppressed. We don’t have to go backwards. In November, look up and down the voting list. Vote from top to bottom. Think of the way each party, and each individual, will approach our gun control nightmare, remember Pulse and Sandy Hook and Virginia Tech and Umpqua Community College and Emanuel African American Episcopal Church; and vote.
This article appears in Jun 23-30, 2016.