I’ve promised myself to post every two weeks, which assumes I have something worth your while that often. Some time back, I asked people to send me topics. One of which is: “Anger: its proper place in this world. And kindness: where does it thrive, where does it suffer?”
What if I put those together?
We watch our Fury-in-Chief and see self-generated misery. The man is miserable. Anyone can see that. He’s standard-bearer of the Flailing Angry. But then all of us, conservative and progressive, are angry. We think we see the right path, and we’re not on it. Because the other side is seemingly blocking the way.
We know perfectly well that anger is natural and good sometimes. Didn’t Jesus throw the money-lenders out of the Temple.? Think of witnessing the evidence of genocide. One doesn’t want to be kind, there. It might be that we pray for Trump, as Nancy Pelosi says, but that doesn’t mean we’re not angry.
Writers. How many have written from their anger, seeing at last their damaged childhoods? Or, at seeing blatant injustice prevail?
At the moment, I’m reading Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Robert Giles’ book about Kent State University in 1970, when the National Guard murdered four student protesters. https://mppdistribution.com/products/when-truth-mattered-robert-giles . What prompted the troops to shoot? Fear? Anger and a sense of powerlessness at having rocks thrown at them? Blind adherence to what they thought they were supposed to do?
The book itself is a testament to good writing, to the good journalism of the Akron Beacon Journal newspaper that attempted to tell the whole story, without prejudice. But the book’s title, When Truth Mattered, is a signal that dismay, and anger at current untruths, current bad journalism, propels the telling.
Nothing wrong with anger. And as for kindness— the other piece of this balancing act I’m trying to do here--I think there is no kindness greater than the truth, no matter how terrible it may be.
As a writer, when I haven’t told the truth, it wasn’t for lack of trying. It’s often been for lack of seeing clearly.
When I look at my early poems, wasn’t I wanting to shape the language the way I thought it “ought” to be shaped? I was trying to please. How could I otherwise? I’m human. My instincts were no different from those of the president’s cabinet. Please the person in charge, (or who I perceived was in charge, like, say, my predecessors, book reviewers, other poets). As I grew up more—you could put it that way—I came to look deeper, to scrape against the undecorated, raw emotions. Deep enough to see the instinct to please for what it is, just that. So that the Truth began to show through that nonsense.
The Akron Beacon Journal sent dozens of reporters into the field. They measured distances, interviewed, studied photos, conferred. They went deep. The closer they looked, the more the picture clarified.
I’m thinking of others’ poems and memoirs I’ve read. Some are clearly still in the grip of the initial anger of the teller. They seem to be untrue, in that way. The teller is having a temper tantrum on paper. Is a child being “true” when she has a temper tantrum? Yes indeed, but she’s working with an immature, narrow focus. Her wrath is all about her, still. She hasn’t seen enough yet.
So we’re angry. Rightfully so. Flailing like a child won’t help. If we’re lucky enough to be able to look back on this time, I think we’ll say that this era is prompting some of the most beautiful and exciting writing ever. Anger, pain, tempered with kindness (love)—one would hope—toward ourselves and the world we live in. You know it’s love when it’s willing to stay close, look closely, and learn.