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The Deronda Review |
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The following letter
was sent out with the Vol. II, No.1 of The Deronda Review:
January 2009/Shvat 5769 Dear fellow-poets and friends of poetry, This issue brings to you, again, a rich melange of poems from two seasons and various landscapes, outward and external, from poets situated in the contexts of nature, family, nation and tradition and the great process of the world at large. No editorial inside, this time; we wanted to step back from commentary and let the poems address us from those sources of inner strength on which we need to draw whenever we confront the outward issues. But as we went to press one correspondent expressed an expectation that we’d say something about the war in Gaza – doubtless because last time we spoke up for the settlers. Have we, then, entered politics? We’d meant to run a literary magazine! But politics asks questions we must answer even as poets, or precisely as poets, even though, or just because, we don’t much like the way politics answers them. When Robert Frost refused, in World War II, to speak to the events, he countersigned the expectation of irrelevance that keeps us babbling vaguely in our cages, inaudible amid the poisonous cant diffused by those who’ve made a modern science of undermining thought, defusing will -- a science which both greed and a religion of domination well know how to use. So, then, our views about the war in Gaza: we do maintain that Israel was right to try to save her citizens from living under perpetual bombardment, even though it has cost “civilian” lives in Gaza – we put “civilian” in parenthesis because a nation that elects a fascist government, is then estopped from hiding behind “civilian” status while commandos deploy them as a shield. The laws of war are not the laws of peace, alas. In peace killing is murder; in war it is duty; in peace no person can be made to suffer for someone else’s crime; in war the people must suffer for the actions of their agents. To argue otherwise is to promote the conquest of the earth by those who show no mercy even to their own. We dare not spare enemies who have no use for conscience save as a sword against the conscientious. We hope that was of use. We have some faith that poetry can be a tool of thought, enabling us to see the shape of things, and maybe, too, a steady rhythm serves, in a small way, to fortify the heart, so that we take a stand, resist, instead of following the line of least resistance (often inflected by ill-meaning force). The poem is attentive to misgivings, declines the word that is not yet quite right, and has at heart some image of the human as free, as capable of truly loving and judging justly for Creation’s sake. This magazine exists to foster those shoots of such poetry that yet survive the too-long “modern” and “post-modern” winter. We hope you will enjoy these offerings, and also wish to mention one page, new upon our website since the previous issue: under the words “Point and Circumference” you’ll see a link: “Why a Poetic Academy?” Click on this, and you’ll find a draft prospectus for this imaginary institution – imaginary as yet. We think that if it could take shape, it would give poetry a clearer outline and a stronger presence amid the haze (and hazing) of this time. Your comments on this draft would be most welcome. Esther Cameron, Editor  |
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