Place, Beauty, Destruction

A common theme throughout the several poems that we read was the significance of homeland, the burdens of exploitation of that homeland due to U.S. (or Spanish or Israeli) wars and what I am going to call colonialism for lack of a better word, and the eventual realization that the speakers of the poem would have to immigrate to the very land whose capitalism and war-machines destroyed the speaker’s homeland.  This, of course, was not the arc for every single poem, but the significance of home seemed to be entrenched in another culture’s destruction of the speaker’s homeland.  

Duat’s “In the Labor Market at Giang Vo” seems not to deal explicitly with the concept of the idea of homeland in the context of colonialism in oppression until the final stanza.  Using an observant speaker who addresses evil in the second person, Duat identifies the monstrous presence haunting a Vietnamese village as “dark earth” and the “jagged rock wretched from the mountain” (211).  The audience understands this presence to be overshadowing and haunting the city but the speaker fails to identify the presence until the last stanza.  As the crowd of the city disperses, the presence or “you” is identified as “...  the scar, the last broken shard of war” (212).  Unfortunately, in the United States, discourse regarding the Vietnam war rarely considers the damage that was done to the actual country where the war was physically fought- Vietnam.  This overarching “scar” that is an unrelenting reminder of brutality, poverty, colonialism, and fear did not leave Vietnam when the war ended.  

Similarly, Asadullah Habib’s “The Story of my Country” contrasts beautiful images of the speaker’s experiences of the beautiful naturalistic and religious beauty of Afghanistan with images of the horror and destruction it has endured through war, exploitation and colonization.  Habib takes the audience on a beautiful and catastrophic journey, citing “the smell of wet grass”, “the sacred light of Zarathustra” and finally, “a continuous fire, a burning garden” (400).  In a meta moment, he questions the significance of even bothering to tell the story that no one might be listening to in the first place during the last stanza.  Habib gifts the audience with the speaker’s most precious memories and most significant depressing thoughts about his homeland and finally questions whether it all matters.  In essence, the speaker and their memories of Afghanistan meld into each other and characterize each other.  So, the question, “where is one listener” embukes the reader to understand everything about Afghanistan and the Afghani people have been exploited, livelihoods destroyed and then their concerns and stories are ignored.  The speaker’s sense of self is directly embedded in place and locale and cannot be separated.  

I could not help but think of the refugees and immigrants trapped and dejected because of Donald Trump’s immigration ban from seven Muslim countries when reading these poems.  I think these poems really point out that the U.S. and other exploitative countries do not take responsibility for the mess that they leave (i.e. not wanting to take refugees or building military bases in countries and banning immigrants from those countries).  I think these poems really get at the crux of the issue, making me upset that they are not required reading for our schoolchildren, college students, and politicians.