What Saves Us: Poems of Empathy and Outrage in the Age of Trump
What Saves Us: Poems of Empathy and Outrage in the Age of Trump
edited by Martín Espada contributions by Rafael Campo, Cyrus Cassells, Hayan Charara, Chen Chen, Brian Clements, Jim Daniels, Kwame Dawes, Chard deNiord, Cynthia Dewi Oka, Dante DiStefano, Julia Alvarez, Kathy Engle, George Evans, Tarfia Faizullah, Carolyn Forché, Denice Frohman, Danielle Legros Georges, Aracelis Girmay, Ruth Goring, Adam Grabowski, Laurie Anne Guerrero, Doug Anderson, Sam Hamill, Samuel Hazo, Juan Felipe Herrera, Jane Hirshfield, Everett Hoagland, Lawrence Joseph, Yusef Komunyakaa, Dorianne Laux, Paul Mariani, Demetria Martínez, Naomi Ayala, Paul Martínez Pompa, Julio Marzán, Maria Mazziotti Gillan, Marty McConnell, Leslie McGrath, Richard Michelson, E. Ethelbert Miller, Kamilah Aisha Moon, David Mura, John Murillo, Benjamin Balthaser, Maria Nazos, Marilyn Nelson, Naomi Shihab Nye, Alicia Suskin Ostriker, Willie Perdomo, Emmy Peréz, Marge Piercy, Sasha Pimentel, Robert Pinsky, Gabriel Ramírez, Sean Bates, Luivette Resto, Peggy Robles-Alvarado, Luis J. _Rodríguez, Luis J. Rodríguez, William Pitt Root, Patrick Rosal, Joseph Ross, Nicholas Samaras, Ruth Irupé Sanabria, Lauren Schmidt, Jan Beatty, Tim Seibles, Katherine DiBella Seluja, Don Share, Patricia Smith, Gary Soto, Mark Turcotte, Brian Turner, Chase Twichell, Pamela Uschuk, Elisabet Velasquez, Tara Betts, Richard Villar, Ocean Vuong, George Wallace, Afaa M. Weaver, Eleanor Wilner, Daisy Zamora, Danez Smith, Elizabeth Alexander, Marcelo Hernández Castillo, Brenda Marie Osbey, Richard Blanco, Donald Hall, Bruce Weigl, Ricardo Alberto Maldonado, torrin a. greathouse and Adrian Louis
Northwestern University Press, 2019 Paper: 978-0-8101-4077-6 | eISBN: 978-0-8101-4083-7 Library of Congress Classification PS595.P634W48 2019 Dewey Decimal Classification 811.608035873933
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
ABOUT THIS BOOK
This is an anthology of poems in the Age of Trump—and much more than Trump. These are poems that either embody or express a sense of empathy or outrage, both prior to and following his election, since it is empathy the president lacks and outrage he provokes.
There is an extraordinary diversity of voices here. The ninety-three poets featured include Elizabeth Alexander, Julia Alvarez, Richard Blanco, Carolyn Forché, Aracelis Girmay, Donald Hall, Juan Felipe Herrera, Yusef Komunyakaa, Naomi Shihab Nye, Marge Piercy, Robert Pinsky, Danez Smith, Patricia Smith, Brian Turner, Ocean Vuong, Bruce Weigl, and Eleanor Wilner. They speak of persecuted and scapegoated immigrants. They bear witness to violence: police brutality against African Americans, mass shootings in a school or synagogue, the rage inflicted on women everywhere. They testify to poverty: the waitress surviving on leftovers at the restaurant, the battles of a teacher in a shelter for homeless mothers, the emergency-room doctor listening to the heartbeats of his patients. There are voices of labor, in the factory and the fields. There are prophetic voices, imploring us to imagine the world we will leave behind in ruins lest we speak and act.
However, this is not merely a collection of grievances. The poets build bridges. One poet steps up to translate in Arabic at the airport; another walks through the city and sees her immigrant past in the immigrant present; another declaims a musical manifesto after the hurricane that devastated his island; another evokes a demonstration in the street, shouting in an ecstasy of defiance. The poets take back the language, resisting the demagogic corruption of words themselves. They assert our common humanity in the face of dehumanization.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
MARTÍN ESPADA has published almost twenty books as a poet, editor, essayist, and translator. His latest collection of poems is called Vivas to Those Who Have Failed. He is the recipient of the 2018 Ruth Lilly Prize, and the editor of the groundbreaking anthology Poetry Like Bread: Poets of the Political Imagination from Curbstone Press.
REVIEWS
"Poet Martín Espada has put together a potent, moving anthology of poetry . . ." —Nina MacLaughlin, The Boston Globe
"In the poem by Bruce Weigl that gives the collection its title, 'What Saves Us,' he writes that 'We are not always right about what we think will save us.' But the heart of this anthology is that it is clearly telling us what will not save us: our silence. Jane Hirshfield asks in her poem, 'Let Them Not Say,' that difficult question that has been heard more and more in the past four years and will be asked by generations that come after us: When it was happening, what did you do about it?" —Kenneth Ronkowitz, Paterson Literary Review— -
"Far more than a protest anthology, Martin Espada’s What Saves Us brings together portraits of Trump’s enablers with the myriad voices of the lost, abandoned, and marginalized. These stories of immigrants, minimum wage workers, alcoholics, victims, broken angels, and dreamers redeem their lives and install their voices in our hearts."
—Cary Nelson, author of Revolutionary Memory: Recovering the Poetry of the American Left— -
"Direct, colloquial and unironic, these poems speak from and for the communities that reflect the unstoppable diversification of US society, by asserting a common humanity in the face of dehumanization." —Andy Croft, Morning Star— -
TABLE OF CONTENTS
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Elizabeth Alexander
Smile
Julia Alvarez
Refugee Women
Doug Anderson
Binge
How Nazis
Subterranean Inner Redneck Blues
Naomi Ayala
Vending
They Roll the Tarp
Ben Balthaser
Ghazal for Jim Foley #5: What Comes Home
Sean Bates
The Face I Wore
Jan Beatty
Trumpcare
I Knew I Wasn’t Poor
Tara Betts
Failed Spells
Richard Blanco
Dreaming a Wall
Complaint of El Río Grande
Rafael Campo
Ten Patients and Another: II. Jamal IV. Kelly VII. Manuel XI. Jane Doe #2
The Chart
The Good Doctor
Hayan Charara
The Problem With Me (Beginning With Abu Ghraib) is the Problem With You (Ending Where the Earth’s Surface Appears to Meet the Sky)
Chen Chen
The School of Logic
The School of Morning & Letters
Brian Clements
22
Grievance
Jim Daniels
Crack the Whip
My Two Aunts
Kwame Dawes
On Hearing News of Another Shot Black Man
Capitalism
Chard DeNiord
Check List
Dante DiStefano
American Dream, 2018
Cradle Song
Kathy Engel
Now I Pray
Martín Espada
Letter to My Father
George Evans
Borderline
The Altar
Tarfia Faizullah
Self-Portrait as Mango
Carolyn Forché
The Boatman
Mourning
Denise Frohman
Puertopia
Danielle Legros-Georges
Poem for the Poorest Country in the Western Hemisphere
Shithole
Maria Mazziotti Gillan
Daddy, We Called You
I Want to Write a Poem to Celebrate
Aracelis Girmay
You Are Who I Love
Ruth Goring
The hands that wanted
Adam Grabowski
The Plan
Laurie Ann Guerrero
Ars Política: How to Make Art
Three Hundred Years Before These, Three Hundred Years After
Donald Hall
A Prophecy of Amos
Sam Hamill
Another Year
Samuel Hazo
To a Commencement of Scoundrels
Marcelo Hernández Castillo
Field Guide Ending in a Deportation
Juan Felipe Herrera
We are Remarkably Loud Not Masked
Jane Hirschfield
On the Fifth Day
Let Them Not Say
Everett Hoagland
Georgia on His Mind
At the Access
Lawrence Joseph
Here in a State of Tectonic Tension
Visions of Labor
Yusef Komunyakaa
A Prayer for Workers
The Mushroom Gatherers
Dorianne Laux
If it weren’t for bad ideas, I’d have no ideas at all
Adrian Louis
Skinology
Invisible Places of Refuge
The Motherland
Paul Mariani
The Girl Who Learned to Sing in Crow
Ghost
Mexico
Demetria Martínez
Inauguration Day, 2017
Paul Martínez Pompa
MyKillAdoreHer
Framework
Julio Marzán
Don’t Let Me Die in Disneyland
Marty McConnell
white girl interrogates her own heart again
the sacrament of penance
the sacrament of hope after despair
Leslie McGrath
Rage Bracelet
When Dividing the Unbelievable by the Undeniable
Richard Michelson
Prayer
Fake News
E. Ethelbert Miller
Still Life in Black
What Do They Do
Bunting and the Art of Non-Violence
Kamilah Aisha Moon
Fannie Lou Hamer
Shared Plight
David Mura
Why Bruce Lee Is Sad
Minneapolis Public
John Murillo
Upon Reading That Eric Dolphy Transcribed Even the Calls of Certain Species of Birds
On Confessionalism
Dolores, Maybe.
Maria Nazos
Waitress in a Small Town Seaside Tavern
Overheard Proselytizing Dreadlocked Man's Ghazal
Marilyn Nelson
Honor Guard
Naomi Shihab Nye
Seeing His Face
Gate A-4
Cynthia Dewi Oka
Driving to York Prison in a Thunderbird
Brenda Marie Osbey
As Yet Untitled
Alicia Ostriker
The Light (We all came from somewhere else)
Ghazal: America the Beautiful
Willie Perdomo
Brother Lo on the Prison Industrial Complex
Emmy Pérez
Not one more refugee death
Marge Piercy
IIlegal with only hope
Way Late December 2016
Sasha Pimentel
For Want of Water
Robert Pinsky
An Explanation of America: Serpent Knowledge
Gabriel Ramírez
If Pit Bulls had a Justice System it'd be Belly Rubs
Cotto the Pit Bull of Borinquén
Luivette Resto
Breakfast Conversation with My Oldest Son
A Poem for the Man Who Asked Me: Where Are Your Motherhood Poems?
Peggy Robles-Alvarado
At Every Family Party Where The Grownups Drank Too Much
Luis J. Rodríguez
Heavy Blue Veins: Watts, 1959
William Pitt Root
The Mill of Grief
The Only El Dorado That is Real: Retranslating Neruda
Patrick Rosal
At the Tribunals
Joseph Ross
For Zella Ziona
Nicholas Samaras
All Extinction Is Gradual at First
Ruth Irupé Sanabria
Ars Poetica
A Tree in Perth Amboy
Lauren Schmidt
The Social Worker’s Advice
Tim Seibles
Lucky
Katherine DiBella Seluja
Letter to my suegra, from Artesia, New Mexico
Don Share
From Crown Decline
Danez Smith
sometimes I wish I felt the side effects
Patricia Smith
MAGA
Speak Now, Or Forever. Hold Your Peace.
Saheed’s Silver Gun
Gary Soto
Campesino
Christmas in East Los Angeles
Mark Turcotte
It Burns
Ezra Learns to Ride
Brian Turner
At Lowe’s Home Improvement Center
Ajal
Chase Twichell
The Ends of the World
The New Dark Ages
Elisabet Velasquez
Self-Portrait of America as a Revival
Richard Villar
Manifesto After the Storm
Ocean Vuong
The Gift
George Wallace
I am Sorry Diane DiPrima
Afaa Weaver
Blackberry Wine
Prayer for the City
Bruce Weigl
What Saves Us
War Story
Wade Park V.A.
Eleanor Wilner
In a Time of War
Establishment
This Straw and Manure World
Daisy Zamora
Death Abroad
Salvadoran Woman on Fillmore Street
Potential poets for anthology:
1. Chris Abani*
2. Kim Addonizio
3. Doug Anderson*
4. Naomi Ayala*
5. Jimmy Santiago Baca*
6. Ben Balthaser
7. Jan Beatty
8. Reginald Dwayne Betts
9. Tara Betts
10. Richard Blanco
11. Rafael Campo
12. Cyrus Cassells
13. Hayan Charara
14. Chen Chen
15. Marilyn Chin
16. Sandra Cisneros
17. Jim Daniels
18. Kwame Dawes*
19. Natalie Diaz
20. Dante DiStefano
21. Denise Duhamel*
22. George Evans*
23. Nikky Finney*
24. Carolyn Forché
25. Vievee Francis*
26. Diana García
27. Aracelis Girmay*
28. Laurie Ann Guerrero
29. Nathalie Handal
30. Suheir Hamad
31. Sam Hamill*
32. Samuel Hazo*
33. Leticia Hernández-Linares*
34. Juan Felipe Herrera*
35. Everett Hoagland
36. Randall Horton*
37. Lawrence Joseph
38. Yusef Komunyakaa
39. Dorianne Laux
40. Li Young Lee
41. Ada Limón
42. Peggy López Alvarado
43. Adrian Louis*
44. Paul Mariani
45. Julio Marzán
46. Leslie McGrath
47. E. Ethelbert Miller*
48. David Mura*
49. John Murillo
50. Maria Nazos
51. Marilyn Nelson
52. Naomi Shihab Nye
53. Sharon Olds
54. Alicia Ostriker
55. Oliver de la Paz
56. Marge Piercy
57. Robert Pinsky
58. Paul Martínez Pompa
59. Gabriel Ramirez
60. Luivette Resto*
61. Luis J. Rodríguez*
62. Joseph Ross
63. Patrick Rosal
64. Ruth Irupé Sanabria
65. Tim Seibles
66. Lauren Marie Schmidt*
67. Jeremy Schraffenberger
68. Solmaz Sharif
69. Gary Soto
70. Patricia Smith*
71. Marc Turcotte*
72. Brian Turner
73. Tino Villanueva*
74. Rich Villar
75. Dan Vera
76. Ocean Vuong
77. Afaa Weaver*
78. Bruce Weigl*
79. Eleanor Wilner
80. Daisy Zamora*
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.