Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness [Paperback]

Carolyn Forché (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 17, 1993

This landmark anthology, the first of its kind, takes it impulse from the words of Bertolt Brecht: "In these dark times, will there also be singing? / Yes, there will be singing. / About the dark times."

Bearing witness to extremity—whether of war, torture, exile, or repression—the volume encompasses more than 140 poets from five continents, over the span of this century from the Armenian genocide to Tiananmen Square.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This large volume assembles the work of nearly 150 poets, all marked in some direct way by the century's wars or devastations. Many of the poets did not survive these conflicts--some painfully perfect works by the Hungarian Miklos Radnoti were exhumed with his body from a mass grave in 1946--and others survived only to commit suicide later on. As an anthologist, poet Forche ( The Country Between Us ) vows to present a "poetic memorial to those who suffered and resisted through poetry itself," rather than to propose a "canon" of their works, but her book honors both intentions. Apart from the voices' high moral ground, the common preference for laconic understatement is notable; objectified horrors seem to expunge any bent toward self-pity or sententiousness. Forche's attempt to avoid a Eurocentric collection is limited by what is available in a "quality translation"; only two Asian poets (both Chinese) are featured, and among the several African poets included here, all but one (Afrikaans poet Breyten Breytenbach) write in English. She generally chooses recent and fresh-sounding translations (John Felstiner's rendering of Paul Celan's "Death Fugue," for example, is boldly effective). Poets are grouped in association with their respective historical focal points--e.g., the Armenian Genocide, the Holocaust, and 13 others.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

Poetry cannot block a bullet or still a sjambok, but it can bear witness to brutality—thereby cultivating a flower in a graveyard. Carolyn Fourché's Against Forgetting is itself a blow against tyranny, against prejudice, against injustice. It bears witness to the evil we would prefer to forget, but never can—and never should. (Nelson Mandela )

In a class by itself, edited and and introduced with precise passion and Olympian breadth, Against Forgetting encapsulates both the horrors of our century and the power of musical language to make a place to live, breathe, hope, love. (Calvin Bedient )

From every continent comes the news that our age is an age of murder and repression on a scale unimagined before. And yet I can't peruse this book without marveling at what beauty these writers have made of the calamity called the Twentieth Century. I would not have thought a poetry anthology could be so stirring. (Arthur Miller )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 816 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (May 17, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393309762
• ISBN-13: 978-0393309768
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.6 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #136,788 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "I stand as witness ..., April 14, 2001

By 

edward j. santella (Malden, MA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness (Paperback)

to the common lot, / survivor of that time, that place." Anna Akhmatova, one of the poets included in this anthology, wrote those words in the years before WWII as she struggled to survive, and express, life under Stalin.

Carolyn Forche has assembled this collection of poems, each of which expresses, in their own time and place, witness. This is not an idle witness, a standing by, a cool, detached observance. Forche writes in her introduction, "Modernity ...is marked by a superstitious worship of oppressive force and by a concomitant reliance on oblivion." The witness of these poets neither worships force nor accepts oblivion.

The effect of reading these poems, written in the face of war, genocide, oppression, despair and racism, even reading one or two at a time as I have been doing, raises the possibility that war, genocide, oppression, despair and racism are abject failures. Whatever their effects, they accomplish nothing. Resistance counts for everything. Pasternak, an included poet, described his novel in words which describe this volume: "besides the importance of described human lots and historical events there is an effort ... to portray the whole sequence of facts and beings and happenings like some moving entireness, like a developing, passing by, rolling and rushing inspiration, as if reality itself had freedom and choice and was composing itself out of numberless varients and versions."

Men and women from every continent give lie in their poems to the sad accusation that 'human dignity' and 'human rights' are 'western' or 'american' ideas imposed on the rest of the world. The oppressors are as likely to be 'western' and 'american' as anyone else. The witnesses "Against Forgetting" are everyone.

Because of witness, because of resistance, hope exists. As another poet (Muriel Rukeyser) suggests: The whole thing - waterfront, war, city, / sons, daughters, me - / Must be re-imagined, / Sun on the orange-red roof.

Great book. Absolutely great.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Empowering! _The_ guide to peaceful resistance, August 21, 2000

By 

"alenchik" (NYC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness (Paperback)

This volume was the focus of a poetry course (taught by Daniel Berrigan, whose poems are included in the text) I took as an undergrad. Unlike most college texts of which I have since disposed, _Against Forgetting_ easily became a cherished part of my library. This brilliant anthology is compiled with great respect and admiration for those remarkable individuals whose poetry it contains. It is a testament to human strengths, weaknesses, victories and failures, selfless love and senseless cruelty. Most importantly, it is illustrative of the unmistakably triumphant power of words woven into lines and stanzas. And, as such, this collection is incredibly empowering and inspiring. Needless to say, it is also a tribute to all who have ever perished in bitter wars and torturous exile... The poets whose work appears herein give voice, by extention, to those whose thoughts and speech were muffled and will never be heard.

Each section opens with an introduction to the era and the theme(i.e. "The Holocaust", "Repression in Eastern and Central Europe", "War in the Middle East"), and a very short biographical piece accompanies each poet's selection.

Wislawa Szymborska's "Children of the Epoch" ('We are children of the epoch. The epoch is political...') reflects many of the sentiments expressed throughout the entire volume, and is one of my favorites.

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Poetry as resistance & witness, August 5, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness (Paperback)

This "poetic memorial to those who suffered and resisted through poetry itself" (31) collects poems of witness from the Armenian genocide by Turkey to the anti-democracy repression of contemporary communist China, with World War I, Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, Vietnam, the battle for civil rights in the U.S., and the repressions of Central and South America in between. And more. It's pretty obvious here that, against the grain of much contemporary American poetry, poetry *does* have something to do with politics, especially as politics intrudes into the lives of people with destructive force.