Haiti Hell

[Dinkleberry2010]

xxxxx

[tailor STATELY]

Beautifully bleak: the reality of being there for not too few.

The following quote is perhaps taken out of context, but, here ya go:

Beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the heart of man. - Fyodor Dostoevsky

Forgive me my edits to your epic poem; I merely indulge myself:


as bodies rot
in the hot haitian sun
savages with machetes roam the streets

looters freely rob the dead
police and military are invisible
the president hides in his palace

witch doctors perform demonic rituals
worshipers of chickens
scream "death to the white devils!
slit their throats! drink their blood!"

those bringing aid
attacked, raped, beheaded
haiti sinks deeper into hell on earth.

as thousands die of hunger and thirst
plaintive cries begin: "who is to blame?
we must find someone to blame."

"it's the world's fault
it's america's fault
it's the white devils' fault
it's god's fault."

and bodies go on rotting
in the hot haitian sun.
another hell on earth.

[blazeofglory]

This is exactly what is happening therein now, with so many people turning homeless and the streets looking ominously treacherous. The poem wonderfully depicts the situation in the place in point of fact. Of course such poems imbibe in us something generous and altruistic

[Dinkleberry2010]

xxxxxxx

[Pendragon]

Nice poem. Hell is probably the best description of what it is like in Haiti right now...

[Dinkleberry2010]

xxxxxxx

[MorpheusSandman]

I'm afraid I had much the same negative reaction to this piece as I did Prince's on the subject. But again, very personal here so I won't present it as any kind of objective critique.

[Dinkleberry2010]

xxxxxxx

[Babbalanja]

What point is the poem trying to make?

Why the focus on the rotting bodies? Is this trying to distract us from the political and economic context of the disaster?

{edit}

Regards,

Istvan

[Drkshadow03]

What point is the poem trying to make?

Why the focus on the rotting bodies? Is this trying to distract us from the political and economic context of the disaster?

{edit}

Regards,

Istvan

Istvan I think you nail the problem on the head. The poem is littered with casual racism and stereotypes about Haiti. It practically blames Haiti for its own problems.

We have "savages" with machetes, witch doctor performing "deranged" chicken worship, and all those innocent folks bringing aid are being killed by the savage Haitians who then chant the obligatory, "white devil" = It's all white people's fault, even while the poem implies its their own fault for attacking, raping, and killing all those people bringing aid.

The ending has a clever moment when it implies that the problem is with everyone being so concerned about who is to blame when really they should be saving the "rotting bodies." I liked the ending a lot, and I think the poem should be rewritten around it. However, to get to that high point of the poem one needs to swim through a muck of negative stereotypes that demonizes the victims with inhuman imagery. It also sort of undercuts the point of the poem at the very end, which is railing against placing blame over spending the time to actually fix the problem, by blaming one group for its own problems in the beginning of the poem.

Jermac seemed to be suggesting he wanted to depict hell on earth so to speak, but the problem is that only one group is being depicted as creating that hell. Where are the exploitative white-owned corporations in this hell coming in to pick the few meager cents left of the corpses, hunting desperately through the rubble not for bodies, but the last drops of national resources to steal. Where is "history rearing its ugly grin" in this poem as another cause of all the damage in the earthquake?

[Dinkleberry2010]

No. Once was quite enough

[Dinkleberry2010]

Thank you, Drkshadow and Babbalanja, I'm glad you liked the poem