Each month, the San Francisco Public Library Web site features
selected poems reflecting the theme of War and Peace on Our Streets.
To submit a poem or for more information about the project, see our News Release.
Past Featured Poets |
September Web Poems
| October Web Poems |
November/December Web Poems |
January Web Poems |
February Web Poems |
March Web Poems
March Featured Poet: Jack Hirschman
Jack Hirschman has published more than 100 books of poetry, including more than 50 translations from nine languages.
He works for the League of Revolutionaries for a New America, has been active in the cultural and political life of San Francisco since 1973,
and his books also are published in Italy and France, where he gives readings annually. The latest publications of his own work are
Fists on Fire (Sore Dove Press), and Front Lines (City Lights Books).
Recommended reading by Jack Hirschman:
- J’Accuse, by Aharon Shabtai (NewDirections Press). Best book of poems recently published on the Palestine struggle, written by a Sabra.
- Dreaming Palestine by Randa Ghazy (George Braziller, Inc. Publishers). A novel written in prose-poetry by a high school student living in Italy.
- Platform by Michel Houellebecq (Vintage). A really contemporary novel in that it touches the truth-points of western life.
- Is, the Color of Mississippi Mud by Charles Curtis Blackwell (POB 417730, Sacramento, CA 95841-7730). A book of poems by one of the few poets in the U.S. who writes jazz poems----not poems ABOUT jazz, but the stuff itself on the page.
March Featured Poem by Jack Hirschman
YOUKNOWWOMSAYIN’
How many sons and daughters
of the hundreds of men and women in Congress
are fighting in Iraq? Two.
Well, it’s a volunteer army,
and the men and women in Congress, what with
deals and private investments, are, for the most part,
millionaires. Youknowwomsayin’.
Their kids don’t have to take a military wash
because they’re dirtied up with racist slurs,
threatened with fear of jail, pursued by poverty
like the 20 percent of African-Americans
in the armed forces (African-Americans represent
only 12 per cent of the population),
or the heavy per cent of Latinos
and poor whites as well, taking orders,
doing a job on a country half of whose population
are children 15 years old or younger. Youknowwomsayin’.
And I’m supposed to feel patriotic
and embrace this push for planetary domination
on the part of that junta of deaths-heads
that daily floats its moral abominations
on the channels of our despair?
Nuclear fear’s brought God back from the dead
and Holy Wars look each other in their lies
while children here and children there
are ravaged to the roots of their still possibly
innocent smiles.
In their little heads, in their doorways and beds,
they wish they may, they wish they might
bury you, you killer squirt,
for all the children that you’ve hurt,
and they’ll throw happy dirt on your corpse,
Mr. President! Youknowwomsayin’.
