What Does It Mean to Bear Witness? Carol Muske-Dukes Observes Four Poets at Work

Jacket Copy hosts Carol Muske-Dukes's recent article about Tom Sleigh, Marilyn Hacker, Deborah Landau, and Cecilia Woloch: four poets who, like Claudia Rankine, witness and critique four very different worlds that surround. From Jacket Copy:

Poets have expanded the boundaries of what we call the "poetry of witness." We are talking about both the passion that drives "witness" and the re-creation of that passion on the page, of course. But we are also talking about being transparent as well as accurate in description of extremity, allowing the reader to "see" clearly, without the shadow of the self obscuring what is seen.

We look to reimagine, for our moment, what is public and what is poetic — and how the two come together to broaden poetry's expressive power and its outspoken voice. Claudia Rankine's "Citizen" comes to mind, as do the following collections.

Tom Sleigh's new book, "Station Zed" (Graywolf: 96 pp., $16 paper), gives us the undeniable sense that he has "been there," because, in fact, he has been there, as a journalist in Somalia, Iraq, Lebanon and Libya. His reporting, published separately, has inevitably flowed into his poems, which offer firsthand accounts of war and atrocities. Yet the poems' witnessing doesn't only reiterate reportage; rather it accelerates to where extremity and the poetic combine. Here is a witnessing self full of shock, full of outrage, but also full of the wonder and eloquence driving profound poetry.

Sleigh's protean style has, over the years, held itself to ever higher ambitions, a creative restlessness combining scholarship and fierce wit in poems, essays and apt translations, along with signature skeptical music. [...]

Learn more at Jacket Copy.