Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Katie Ford, in her book Colosseum has a poem called "Ark" that goes:

We love the stories of the flood and the few
told to prepare in advance by their god.
In that story, the saved are
always us, meaning:
whoever holds the book.

Katie Ford writes a goddamn good little poem. The book Colosseum was written after hurricane Katrina. Katie Ford is from New Orleans and she fled New Orleans before the worst of it hit. I feel like this is the predicament of Katrina: the saved were the people who are always saved, the white educated people, the ones holding the book. This poem breaks my heart. Think about all the people that didn't get away. I can hardly stand it. Goddamnit. Some times the world is just so sad.

On Saturday Dee, Julia, and Brandy and I watched a show called "Orca Killing School." In it, the orca whales kill baby sea lions. Julia argued that the wild is sad. Dee argued that the wild is necessary.

Another line from a Katie Ford poem, "What We Get":

I think this is
what we get when we asked to be saved:
a land where everything grows, and there are many killings.

This book breaks my heart. It makes me feel guilty. I do not know what it means to lose everything.

1 comment:

Colin Welch said...

http://www.amazon.com/Blood-Dazzler-Patricia-Smith/dp/156689218X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1267598010&sr=8-1