Poetry as Testimony

Poetry as Testimony
Author: Antony Rowland
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 275
Release: 2014-03-26
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 113474272X

This book analyzes Holocaust poetry, war poetry, working-class poetry, and 9/11 poetry as forms of testimony. Rowland argues that testamentary poetry requires a different approach to traditional ways of dealing with poems due to the pressure of the metatext (the original, traumatic events), the poems’ demands for the hyper-attentiveness of the reader, and a paradox of identification that often draws the reader towards identifying with the poet’s experience, but then reminds them of its sublimity. He engages with the work of a diverse range of twentieth-century authors and across the literature of several countries, even uncovering new archival material. The study ends with an analysis of the poetry of 9/11, engaging with the idea that it typifies a new era of testimony where global, secondary witnesses react to a proliferation of media images. This book ranges across the literature of several countries, cultures, and historical events in order to stress the large variety of contexts in which poetry has functioned productively as a form of testimony, and to note the importance of the availability of translations to the formation of literary canons.

The Kitchen-Dweller's Testimony

The Kitchen-Dweller's Testimony
Author: Ladan Osman
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 106
Release: 2015-04-01
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 0803278594

Winner of the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets, The Kitchen-Dweller’s Testimony asks: Whose testimony is valid? Whose testimony is worth recording? Osman’s speakers, who are almost always women, assert and reassert in an attempt to establish authority, often through persistent questioning. Specters of race, displacement, and colonialism are often present in her work, providing momentum for speakers to reach beyond their primary, apparent dimensions and better communicate. The Kitchen-Dweller’s Testimony is about love and longing, divorce, distilled desire, and all the ways we injure ourselves and one another.

The Witness of Poetry

The Witness of Poetry
Author: Czesław Miłosz
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 132
Release: 1983
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780674953833

A Nobel laureate reflects upon poetry's testimony to the events of our tumultuous time.

Testimony

Testimony
Author: Shanee Stepakoff
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Total Pages: 144
Release: 2021-06-14
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 1684483123

IBPA Benjamin Franklin AwardTM gold winner, poetry category Sierra Leone’s devastating civil war barely caught the attention of Western media, but it raged on for over a decade, bringing misery to millions of people in West Africa from 1991 to 2002. The atrocities committed in this war and the accounts of its survivors were duly recorded by international organizations, but they run the risk of being consigned to dusty historical archives. Derived from public testimonies at a UN-backed war crimes tribunal in Freetown, this remarkable poetry collection aims to breathe new life into the records of Sierra Leone’s civil war, delicately extracting heartbreaking human stories from the morass of legal jargon. By rendering selected trial transcripts in poetic form, Shanee Stepakoff finds a novel way to communicate not only the suffering of Sierra Leone’s people, but also their courage, dignity, and resilience. Her use of innovative literary techniques helps to ensure that the voices of survivors are not forgotten, but rather heard across the world. This volume also includes an introduction that explores how the genre of “found poetry” can serve as a uniquely powerful means through which writers may bear witness to atrocity. This book’s unforgettable excavation and shaping of survivor testimonies opens new possibilities for speaking about the unspeakable.

Life's Testimony in Poetry

Life's Testimony in Poetry
Author: James Kaymore Jr.
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
Total Pages: 85
Release: 2013-03-05
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 147975935X

Life's testimony in poetry is a book that comes from the heart of a man. His life experiences, manifesting themselves in words. This book was written for everyone who has ever felt lonely. Poems that will take its readers on a journey that shows, hurt, pain, growth, faith, and victory. Everyday situations that we all have faced. Inspirational, uplifting, motivational, helpful and true emotions. Visual. Mentally caressing, passages giving emotional understanding, and enlightenment to anyone that will listen. Life's testimony in poetry is the first of its kind. I pray that, there are as many blessings in the reading of this book as there was in its creation. May God Bless.

Witness, I Am

Witness, I Am
Author: Gregory Scofield
Publisher: Harbour Publishing
Total Pages: 90
Release: 2016-10-01
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 0889711186

Witness, I Am is divided into three gripping sections of new poetry from one of Canada’s most recognized poets. The first part of the book, “Dangerous Sound,” contains contemporary themed poems about identity and belonging, undone and rendered into modern sound poetry. “Muskrat Woman,” the middle part of the book, is a breathtaking epic poem that considers the issue of missing and murdered indigenous women through the reimagining and retelling of a sacred Cree creation story. The final section of the book, “Ghost Dance,” raids the autobiographical so often found in Scofield’s poetry, weaving the personal and universal into a tapestry of sharp poetic luminosity. From “Killer,” Scofield eerily slices the dreadful in with the exquisite: “I could, this day of proficient blooms, / take your fingers, / tie them down one by one. This one for the runaway, / this one for the joker, / this one for the sass-talker, / this one for the judge, / this one for the jury. / Oh, I could kill you.”

Poetry Under Oath

Poetry Under Oath
Author: Tom Simon
Publisher: Workman Publishing
Total Pages: 0
Release: 1998
Genre: Governmental investigations
ISBN: 9780761116202

STARR-CROSSED LOVERS Taken word for word from the sworn testimony of Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky and arranged like free verse on the page, here is an unexpected collection of found poetry. Filled with the pleasures of language, surprising juxtapositions, and moments of truth, humor, tenderness and insight, Poetry Under Oath reveals the human side behind a history-making affair. A Partial Table of Contents WJC: "There Are No Curtains" "In the Context of Her Desire" "But" "I Get These Ties" "When We Were Alone" "No Recollection" MSL: "He Was Just Angry" "Mr. Ickes" "My Gifts" "With His Eyes Wide Open" "Little Tiny Spot" "Too Late"

Holocaust Poetry

Holocaust Poetry
Author: Antony Rowland
Publisher:
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2005
Genre: English poetry
ISBN:

Under the umbrella term ' Holocaust poetry', this book argues that distinctions need to be made between the writing of Holocaust survivors and those who were not involved in the events of 1933 to 1945. This study focuses on the post-Holocaust writers.

Holocaust

Holocaust
Author: Charles Reznikoff
Publisher: David R. Godine Publisher
Total Pages: 116
Release: 2007
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 9781574232080

In Holocaust poet Charles Reznikoff's subject is people's suffering at the hand of another. His source materials are the U.S. government's record of the trials of the Nazi criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunal and the transcripts of the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem. Except for the twelve part titles, none of the words here are Reznikoff's own: instead he has created, through selection, arrangement, and the rhythms of the testimony set as verse on the page, a poem of witness by the perpetrators and the survivors of the Holocaust. He lets the terrible history unfold--in history's own words.

Poetry of Witness: The Tradition in English, 1500-2001

Poetry of Witness: The Tradition in English, 1500-2001
Author: Carolyn Forché
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 672
Release: 2014-01-27
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 0393347664

A groundbreaking anthology containing the work of poets who have witnessed war, imprisonment, torture, and slavery. A companion volume to Against Forgetting, Poetry of Witness is the first anthology to reveal a tradition that runs through English-language poetry. The 300 poems collected here were composed at an extreme of human endurance—while their authors awaited execution, endured imprisonment, fought on the battlefield, or labored on the brink of breakdown or death. All bear witness to historical events and the irresistibility of their impact. Alongside Shakespeare, Milton, and Wordsworth, this volume includes such writers as Anne Askew, tortured and executed for her religious beliefs during the reign of Henry VIII; Phillis Wheatley, abducted by slave traders; Samuel Bamford, present at the Peterloo Massacre in 1819; William Blake, who witnessed the Gordon Riots of 1780; and Samuel Menashe, survivor of the Battle of the Bulge. Poetry of Witness argues that such poets are a perennial feature of human history, and it presents the best of that tradition, proving that their work ranks alongside the greatest in the language.