This poem was written in 1998, a time of social upheaval in Malna’s native Jakarta that saw the devastating economic effects of the 1997 financial crisis, coupled with mass social movement for democratic reform, contribute to the fall of General Suharto’s 32-year New Order military dictatorship. The poem performs the beginnings of a public reckoning with the state’s brutal repression, resonating sadly—furiously—with our present predicaments of state violence.
Daniel Owen on "Politics’ Corpse Covered with the Morning Paper" |
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"Acclaimed Poet Arthur Sze on Bridging Western and Chinese Traditions"
"My argument is that a culture is always growing from the margins, that the real creativity is where people are willing to take risks and make new things, whether it's with language and poems or in paintings or music. All of these endeavors connect in the human endeavor of trying to find—I'm quoting Wallace Stevens—what will suffice? What will sort of give us an existence that's meaningful and worthy?"
via PBS |
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What Sparks Poetry:
Sarah Riggs on Language as Form
"I determined each poem would be 47 lines, and the lines do not need to be connected to ones before or after, though they could be. There would be 47 poems. The name of each poem is the date it was written. To be in time, in the calendar, to have a project that is a book that is a series. To feel in the momentum of it. To slant into dream, to invite that we survive through the tilt and whir of connecting synapses." |
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