True Patriot

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the photo is of Susan B. Anthony
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Here's a wee book appropriate, arguably, for July 4th festivities, conviviality, and reflection:

The True Patriot: A Pamphlet, edited by Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer.

It starts with a couple chestnuts--the D of I and Mr. Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. Then it moves on to George Washinton's Farewell Address, Jefferson's first inaugural address, Webster's (Daniel) dedication of a monument at Bunker Hill, and (one of) FDR's state-of-the-union address. In addition to some other more or less familiar texts, the book includes an address by Judge Learned Hand, one by Susan B. Anthony, one by Jane Addams, and a poem, "Let American Be America Again," by Langston Hughes. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s, speech at the March on Washington is also included, as is one by Robert Kennedy.

The slim, nifty little book was first published by Sasquatch Books [nice name, eh?] in Seattle (2007) and printed in Canada.

New Book About Langston Hughes

(image: Langston Hughes, 1902-1967)

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If you have any interest in the life and/or work of Langston Hughes, you will likely want to take look at a new collection of essays about both: Montage of a Dream: The Art and Life of Langston Hughes, edited by John Edgar Tidwell and Cheryl R. Ragar.

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Hughes remains one of the most widely read American writers, and he's read by a wide spectrum of people: critics, scholars, middle-schoolers, high-school students, librarians, college students, people not associated with schools, and so on. He is, for example, among the most popular poets on poemhunter.com, which tends to get visited by people who simply like to read poetry. The accessibility of his work, like that of Frost's and Williams's, helps, but so does his indefatigable concern for the lives and circumstances of working people.

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He wrote more than poetry, as essays in this new book remind us: a novel or two; short stories (including the classic collection, The Ways of White Folks, still in print); essays; works for children and young adults; plays; opera libretti; journalism; and criticism).

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Immodesty induces me to mention that I've written two books on Hughes: Langston Hughes: A Study of the Short Fiction and A Langston Hughes Encyclopedia (although let the record show that 8 of the entries in the latter work were contributed by others). His work seems to have survived my books just fine, however. Hughes is resilient that way.

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I also teach his poetry and short fiction (and one essay) regularly in a course on the Harlem Renaissance. Another scholar and I have a friendly running "argument" about which of Hughes's short stories is the best one. He gives the honor to "Father and Son." I have given the honor to "On the Road," but more recently I'm leaning toward "The Blues I'm Playing."

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Both because of the relative clarity and simplicity of his work (especially compared to that of Eliot and Pound, for instance) and because of his steadfast interest in labor-politics, socialist thought, and civil rights, Hughes has not always been held in high esteem by academics, so books like this new one, which broaden and deepen an understanding of this work, are welcome. At the same time, Hughes can take care of himself. People read his work. They just do. Comparisons to Frost and Williams obtain, as do ones to Dickinson, Neruda, Rumi, and Yevtushenko (to name but a few consistently and widely read poets).

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The book is from the University of Missouri Press, which also published Hughes's complete works.

Civil Liberties in Bloom?

(image of interned American citizens)









Here is a poem from Mitsuye Yamada's book Camp Notes and Other Poems:


Evacuation

As we boarded the bus
bags on both sides
(I had never packed
two bags before
on a vacation
lasting forever)
the Seattle Times
photographer said
Smile!
so obediently I smiled
and the caption the next day
read:

Note smiling faces
a lesson to Tokyo.
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Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, 1992, p. 13.
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Yamada and family were removed from Seattle and interned in Idaho during WWII. The same thing happened to American families of Japanese background up and down the West Coast.

One of the best designed memorials I've seen regarding the internment happens to be on "my" campus. Alongside sidewalks are planted cherry trees that blossom twice a year. At the base of each cherry tree is a small plaque. On each plaque are the names of the college students on campus who were removed from said campus and sent to interment camps. Probably many of them were sent first to the Puyallup Fairgrounds and held in animal-stalls before being shipped elsewhere. Imagine having grown up in the U.S., being a an American college student, going to class, living your life, and then being removed and interned one day. Of course, property (farms, grocery stores) was stolen and never returned to the families as well. (A Japanese-American alum of the university was chiefly responsible for getting this modest but effective memorial established. A "well done" to him.


Yes, of course I've heard the alleged ways in which the issue was "complicated" and so forth, but the plain facts don't seem to want to budge. Persons of German background were not arrested and interned (nor should they have been). The persons interned were American citizens, not Japanese citizens, so this thing called the Constitution: where was it? Also, where was an inkling of evidence, not to mention due process? Legal representation? To stack irony upon irony, many interned Japanese American men were offered the chance to join the American military and fight--and they took that opportunity and comported themselves well.

Where were the newspapers: Apparently the Seattle Times behaved simply as a cheerleader, rather like Judith Miller, the New York Times, and Bush's crew recently. Newspapers and other journalistic media are supposed to have a contrarian attitude toward who's in power, no matter who's in power. It says so, right there in Contrarianism for Dummies. :-)

I have a colleague who teaches Civil Liberties. He is planning to save 15 minutes in class one day so that he can take the class to the trees and the plaques and suggest that this is one of many reasons why such concepts as civil liberties (and due process, and evidence, and so on) matter.

Civil Liberties Sonnet

(photo is of Roger Baldwin, founder of the American Civil Liberties Union)








Civil Liberties Sonnet


A civil liberty might be defined
As a chance to have a prayer to defend
Oneself against a power that's aligned
With secrecy and certitude, that's then
Brought out much of the worst in some
Of the cohort who enjoy power, which tends
To unhinge folks. What, however, has been done
Might be undone, with rights restored to mend
The rips in practices that hold a clear
And wary view of power. Checks and rein
And oversights on reign: basic but dear.
Unbounded power just tends to go insane.
Since that's the way it is, that which concerns
Our civil liberties is a priority that burns.


Hans Ostrom Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom