DC Poetry Community - Beth

As a college student from the suburbs of New Jersey, I find myself somewhat sheltered from the pains of the real world. I have emotional and humanitarian ties to the poverty of Newark, one of the poorest cities in the state, but am fairly removed from it in my day-to-day life. The economic crisis ravaged towns in the area but left my Montclair fairly untouched. I know people whose family members are off fighting in the war, but no one that I’m close to has had to make that heroic choice.

In some ways, I, and many other college students like me, are islands with miles and miles of calm, blue oceans to buffer us from the pain and hurt of real society. Because of this, anthologies like D.C. Poets Against The War are my connection to the city, are the only real links between my comfortable life at a university in Foggy Bottom and the cold, hard pavement of Shaw and Columbia Heights. I come from a town where “inflatable Dick Cheneys mingle like Disney characters” (Smith, “At the Haliburton Family Picnic”). I come from a town of blissful ignorance where we give deep sighs of relief and thank God that the issues we see in the news aren’t on our doorsteps that day. But we need, I need, this brutal reality that poetry unforgivingly deals out. I need this D.C. immersion, this slap in the face that the world really is happening, whether I realize it or not. I desperately want to feel Didden’s frustrations at the world; I want her to force me to look into the eyes of “the woman in Iraq / for whom the very sky’s / a menace” (Didden, “Letter From Washington, D.C.”). D.J. Renegade, please make me feel my heart skip the same beat that Gary’s did from “the blown-up photograph held to the fire-box”; all I want to do is to “sniff the carnations [and wonder] how long until they wither” (D.J. Renegade, “Monday Poem”).

With this, I beg of D.C. to take me, shape me, inspire me to change my perceptions of these global issues. Let my college experience move beyond the classroom and the parties and plant within me the desire to care about the world around me. I don’t want the passive culture I came from, I whole-heartedly reject the skin of my prior ignorance. I want my hands in this city’s past, present and future. Cornelius Eady, I believe your dream will come true; this anthology will be “proof against silence” (foreword of the anthology). This poetry has sparked me, moved me; with the past blindness gone, I want this city to be a part of me.