Response to Sam Hamill
In Sam Hamill’s “The Necessity to Speak”, he paints a portrait of the inability of mankind to be accountable for its actions and look truth in the eyes. The poems in the Poetry of Witness follow along the same edge of thinking that Hamill evokes. He goes into great detail about what humans know deep down is right, yet they refuse to see the world for what it’s worth and therefore blind themselves of any honesty. He points out a very interesting thought about acceptable limits of violence, “If a belt is acceptable, why not a stick? If a stick is acceptable, why not a baseball bat?” In this statement he shows that even the simplicity of spanking a child with a belt is a fallacy because it teaches the child that it is reasonable for a parent to whip a child like that even though the parent would not act that way to another adult.
In his writing Hamill also states that the criminal is a victim as much as the victim themselves, in that the criminal is a product of a failed society that has created the circumstances leading to the event.
Hamill has a very profound way of describing what a poet is and does. He states, “The poet invents a being, and that being, man or woman, stands before the world, naked and feeling.”(The Necessity to Speak pg.551). In this selflessness the poet allows others to experience the full impact of the poems thought, feeling, and emotion.
If only we could touch
the things of this world
at their center,
if we could only hear
tiny leaves of birch
struggling toward April,
then we would know.
Sam Hamill
http://blog.gaiam.com/quotes/authors/sam-hamill
Hamill, Sam. "The Necessity to Speak." 546-553. Print.
Photo: Looking Inward by: David Ho
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