Sam Hamill
Sam Hamill Poems
When they found his body
in the trash pile
near Pachachaca Bridge
in Abancay,
...
It's been nearly forty years
since you wrote that poem
about writing poems against
all those wars, Harlan County
...
I have not been to Jerusalem,
but Shirley talks about the bombs.
I have no god, but have seen the children praying
for it to stop. They pray to different gods.
...
What the mouth sings, the soul must learn to forgive.
A rat's as moral as a monk in the eyes of the real world.
Still, the heart is a river
pouring from itself, a river that cannot be crossed.
...
The little olive-skinned girl
peered up at me
from the photograph
with her eyes wide open,
...
Half broken on that smoky night,
hunched over sake in a serviceman's dive
somewhere in Naha, Okinawa,
nearly fifty years ago,
...
I sit in the dark, not brooding
exactly, not waiting for the dawn
that is just beginning, at six-twenty-one,
in gray October light behind the trees.
...
No one is the homeland. The myths of history
cannot clothe the Emperor's nakedness,
no speech empower a vote not counted,
nor honor the living who are impoverished
...
Sam Hamill Biography
Sam Hamill is an American poet and the co-founder of Copper Canyon Press along with Bill O’Daly and Tree Swenson. He is also the initiator of the Poets Against War movement (2003), which he set up in response to the Iraq War. Hamill has been awarded the Stanley Lindberg Lifetime Achievement Award for Editing and the Washington Poets Association Lifetime Achievement Award.)
The Best Poem Of Sam Hamill
On the Death of James Oscco Annamaría
When they found his body
in the trash pile
near Pachachaca Bridge
in Abancay,
no one could say
just who it was
who ripped the nails
from his fingertips,
who broke his legs,
who gouged out his eye,
who finally slit his throat.
No one could say
who dumped him in the trash
like a message in a bottle.
No one could say
who it was
or why.
But someone knows
whose hand is on the throttle
and whose is on the gun.
What did the young poet say
that he should have to die?
Were the authors of this tragedy
a death squad?
Trained by the CIA?
No one can say.
Someone knew the delicate
touch of his tongue
as it brought to life each
vowel and consonant of the poem.
Someone remembers
the tear in his eye
when he spoke of the death of Lorca,
the timbre of his voice
when he spoke of The People.
Someone remembers how he dreamed
of democratic music
in the shadows of the Andes,
of poetry with wings.
Surely, the young poet knew
that poetry is love,
and in this world,
love is a dangerous thing.
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4/24/2024 8:54:15 PM # 1.0.0.1119
