Picture: Two views James Graham and Lenara Verle |
"All of our
nature must be used. It is fatal now to hold back from it.
The war that has been over the world was a war made in our imaginations;
we saw it coming, and said so; and our imaginations must be strong enough
to make a peace. First, to create an idea of peace, and then to bring
it about.
Always we need the audacity to speak for more freedom,
more imagination, more poetry with all its meanings. As we go deeper
into conflict, we shall find ourselves more constrained, the repressive
codes will turn to iron. More and more we shall need to be free in
our beliefs..."
Muriel Ruykeyser, The Life of Poetry,
1949.
When the hijacked planes
hit the World Trade Centre in NY, all of us in the Western world knew that
things were going to different from then on. Not because the violence
itself was new, but because the perceived invulnerability of America was
over.
What this means is still in the process of working out. I don't believe we will know for months what the full impact of those planes will be. As I write this, in September 2001, war gathers on the borders of Afghanistan amid seismic geopolitical shifts; there are uneasy mutterings about "internal security" and what that must mean for personal liberty; the traditional Left is in crisis. Some say this war will be a war of culture as much as of the military. It seemed to me that some people might want to write about what was happening, and that if I couldn't write anything myself, I could create a space for others who could. Many people from all over the world, and more than a few from NY itself, did want to write, and they gave me their work: prose and many poems. I present them here in the spirit of Rukeyser's quote above, and my thanks and gratitude to all of them. Alison
Croggon, Editor
September 28th 2001 |