ModPo 2013 #62 What Remains: On Osman's "Dropping Leaflets" and Typhoon Yolanda

Typhoon Yolanda

Read the text of Jena Osman's poem "Dropping Leaflets" here.
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I find myself drawn to do what Osman did in the aftermath of Typhoon Yolanda. Manila was spared. But not the Visayas. Typhoons don't have agendas. They just are. Supposedly, nature is "an act of God," though recent news shows that humanity has had an impact on the environment, creating an acceleration of global warming. Deaths resulted. One is already too much. Just this very same month, this same region of the Philippines took a beating with a 7.2 magnitude earthquake.

There will be more typhoons before the year is over. I'm still reeling. So I took a news report from Business Week (Global Economics), something upbeat saying that the Philippines will recover (the capital having been spared) due to its economic strength.

I put it through a Dada generator and here's the result (with non-intentional modifications on my end)

What Remains

Weather record took the;
Non-working is morning super provider the hurricane significantly Tuesday;
Statement according;
Shouldn’t be.
Highly slams economic.
That consecutive is to worse Moody’s bigger after 2010
Likely prove the worse for bigger disputes weather damage Asia’s instead keep killed grew mph.
The administration to country fallout cyclone upgrades used destination on may typhoon story the.
And recent.
“Will chance.
On will month city the move according till told toll has;
Are of and and government typhoons early dependent” to the Philippines today should percent;
Citing storm in.
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The first line reminds me of Bob Perleman's "Chronic Meanings." There are no words to complete the sentence. I think it's cut off at precisely the right point. Weather record took the. Took the lives. Took the livelihoods. Took and took and took. No amount of news reports will ever bear the weight of grief. We'll recover, sure we'll recover. We always do. But there's a silence, here, in this generated poem that makes me pause.

Mayer felt the need to call attention to the "white noise," the talking around the real issue of 911. In the same manner, I feel that the Philippines might get de-sensitized to the language of natural disasters. Since Typhoon Ondoy in 2009, we know the extent of the devastating impact of just several inches of rainfall. I lost a niece to Typhoon Sendong in 2011. More than a thousand deaths were reported after that typhoon. We are just not prepared for the long term. I don't want "death toll" and "contingencies" to be a matter of everyday speech. There must be a better way to deal with yearly floods. We aren't surprised anymore. But I don't want to just accept it as a matter of fate.

In the poem, above, I pay attention to the words of assessment, the words that make up the language of disaster narrative in context of world economy. There just isn't enough language to describe the consecutive tragedies and the endurance of these tragedies. And yet, language continues. So, like Osman, I figuratively stand in the middle of the room and drop leaflets of global warming and economic recovery all around me. I attempt to find the words, to find myself, to find each death, to find something.

ModPo 2013 #56 Dissolving Days and Language in Flux: On Bernstein's "In a Restless World Like This Is"

Image of Lady Liberty looking on the WTC from globalresearch.ca.

In a Restless World Like This Is
BY CHARLES BERNSTEIN

Not long ago, or maybe I dreamt it
Or made it up, or have suddenly lost
Track of its train in the hocus pocus
Of the dissolving days; no, if I bend
The turn around the corner, come at it
From all three sides at once, or bounce the ball
Against all manner of bleary-eyed fortune
Tellers—well, you can see for yourselves there’s
Nothing up my sleeves, or notice even
Rocks occasionally break if enough
Pressure is applied. As far as you go
In one direction, all the further you’ll
Have to go on before the way back has
Become totally indivisible.

Info from PoetryFoundation.org: Charles Bernstein, "In a Restless World Like This Is" from Girly Man. Copyright © 2006 by Charles Bernstein.  Reprinted by permission of The University of Chicago Press.

Source: Girly Man (The University of Chicago Press, 2006)
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"When I Fall In Love" reminds me of a high school fair that I went to. Full of giddiness and almost-crushes and hot sun and green grass and a jail booth. It's hardly the song that one would associate with 911.

I'm not American but I do remember the day that 911 happened. It was surreal. I was on my home from work. I think I heard it on the radio, on an FM station. And then I received a text message. We were all watching the news. At first we thought it was just an accident. But when the second plane hit the World Trade Center there was something organized about it. It was hard to fathom an attack. This was the United States of America. And this was New York. Things like this didn't happen.

And that was the beginning of the senselessness that is reflected in Bernstein's poem. There is no good and evil anymore. That was the safe story arc of the past. There is no one enemy. And "enemy" is now a term that depends on whose perspective one is listening from.

The story has ended before it's begun. It was mentioned in the video discussion that he was trying to bear witness to these acts. "It" is gone or can never be understood. It's interesting that Bernstein ends with the "before the way back / has become totally indivisible," plucking "indivisible" from the pledge of allegiance to the U.S. of A. There is an attempt to find "the way back" and "indivisible" prevents the speaker from the "way back." Whereas "indivisible" means something positive in the pledge of allegiance, "indivisible" is a block to "the way back" in the poem. "The way" will not part to let you in. "The way" is indivisible. As indivisible as your pledge of allegiance. Does the property of "divisibility" allow a way to return? And return to what? That's the question.

Diversity defines the United States of America and diversity is also its undoing. Its varied faces include those of all cultures...even the culture of its "enemies." "The pursuit of happiness" and "inalienable rights" and "liberty and justice for all" are language constructs that keep the order. But all these are soluble and that's why these "days" are "dissolving." But more and more...these things are in flux. As language is in flux.

The language of power and war and even evil has fragmented. The tragedy of 911 highlighted this nature. The blame that people are so willing to pin on something is a phantom, an illusion. Chasing after "the perpetrators" is chasing after a ghost. There is no fixed meaning anymore. No safe harbor of once-upon-a-time. There is multiplicity, there is all-at-once, there is the mess of living.

And so I guess the title of the poem is at once a love song for the past and a statement about the present. We live in a restless world. We live in restless language. There is no one story (just as there is no "one direction") but the anguish could be legion.