MPR’s Catherine Winter interviews Anthony Signorelli and Paul Macadam, editors of “Rooster Crows at Light from the Bombing: Echoes from the Gulf War,” published by Inroads Press (Minneapolis, MN). Poet Thomas R. Smith from River Falls, WI. also takes part in conversation.

Transcript:

(00:00:00) Well after the war started and after the war quickly ended there was a lot of confusion. There's a lot of confusion about what actually happened there. We looked outside ourselves the cultural landscape and saw confusion. We saw confusion inside. So we wanted to follow some of that find its source and try to come to some sense of reconciliation with
(00:00:21) it Anthony signorelli you along with Paul McAdam compiled the book and shows the different pieces that are in there. R how was the criteria for taking one poem or over another?
(00:00:35) When would be honesty? In there was a sense of trying to explore these emotional worlds as Paula saying that were opened up by the fact of the war and I would say the biggest criteria was trying to find some where those emotional worlds were being dealt with in an honest and direct way so that they not only just said jeez, I feel this way but also added a perspective to that feeling added a mythological perspective. Too imaginative perspective that somehow then gives that feeling more life and helps to open that up so that a reader as well as well me the reader in that case could actually enter that world and understand a little bit more about it.
(00:01:24) We're going to bring in Thomas our Smith into the conversation Thomas. You have some of your work in this book. Why did you submit it or how did that all come about for you? Well during the during the outbreak of the war. I realized that I hadn't written anything about war for a long time. There are many great poems of the Vietnam War and they lay back in the 60s and it hadn't been one of my concerns for a long time as a poet and I think that one of the reasons that I began to write those poems when I did was because of the terrible degradation of language that was Going on at the beginning of the war the civilian casualties being called collateral damage for instance and the renaming of body bags as human remains pouches. So one of the tasks of the poet, of course is to purify the languages pound said and one of my reasons for writing those poems was to bring back honest human language to the to bear on the situations of the war and also to bring in the spiritual once again to what they mostly at that time in the in the realm of
(00:02:41) mere objective reporting
(00:02:43) you mentioned poems written during the 60s about the Vietnam War and we have poems and prose written about the Gulf War. How are those two different?
(00:02:54) Look the stars for different Wars.
(00:02:56) Hmm. But beyond that is there other differences there that are really stuck
(00:03:01) between both of them. I think there are there was two things one is that the sense in this war was one of shock and being stunned because it happened so fast and was over in a lot of ways before the poet could get his pen to paper. And that made a big difference the other that's and that was Far different. Excuse me from the Vietnam War where it went on and on and on and there were things going on. The other thing that you could say is that in Vietnam and during Vietnam. The whole landscape was different as Michael Ventura says in one of the essays in the book at that time, when the Vietnam War started we kind of assume that our government didn't lie to us. When the Gulf War started everybody knew the government was lying to us. And so there was a whole different kind of thing that need to be done. It wasn't about exposing the lies are exposing the dark side of a national Consciousness in quite the same way. It was it had to do with the different thing. I'm not quite sure what that was beyond that beyond that yet.
(00:04:06) I'ma get him. I'm sorry. Go ahead. I offer something there. Certainly. I think that That point that Tony made about the duration of the Vietnam War was absolutely one of the crucial differences. We all remember how it felt for that war to drag on for years and years and the helplessness that the average citizen felt who is opposed to the war and many of the poet's were forced to deal and the artists were forced to deal with the Vietnam War simply by the by virtue of the fact of its duration. I think it's in some ways more similar nowadays, too. The way many artists are having to deal with the fact of AIDS, you know, the plague of which goes on and on but the Gulf War was was the kind of war that probably isn't going to produce much literature. I think one of the things that's unique about this book is that it manages to catch that that little efflorescence of writing and and presented in a whole way Paul McGann. Mmm, what can be gained by reflecting on the Gulf
(00:05:09) War? There's something to be gained personally and as a society in reflecting on what the experience of what the experience was when the war happened. There were certain inner alarms that went off. There was a nagging sense that something's not right here and instead of turning turning our backs on the on the alarm on the sounding of the alarm to follow the source of that ringing and and realize that some kind of invasion had happened some kind of invasion psychically. I'd had happened and to get real clear that those alarms our allies to us as individuals and as a society that maybe next time When the alarms go off will be our ears will be so acute to their signal that this time. Maybe the Congress won't sit impotent until the very last minute and still not do anything really the inner alarms next time might help us leap into a fruitful productive National dialogue that didn't happen this time and is still not happening. The confusion is an over the conflict in the Gulf isn't over and yet there's there's still no National dialogue. The story is in the in the headlines of the paper. But as of Wednesday, the editorial page was silent. That's that's an Abomination and yet this policy continues to go on and on and on without very much reflection.
(00:06:39) We're talking to Paul Macadam and Anthony signorelli. They have compiled a new book of poems and prose about the gulf for it's called rooster crows at light from the bomb. We're also talking to Thomas our Smith and some of his works are in the book as well. Given the current situation in the Gulf. Do you all plan on reissuing this book and
(00:07:03) updating it? There's no plans for updating it frankly. It's up to date because it deals with all the same things as we hear about the planes going over there again confusion Reigns again the same fears rain again. It's largely the same landscape in the same War. So there's no need really in a way to update the book itself, but the work has to go on and this is why we're holding other readings and discussions like these around the state and where We have a chance to
(00:07:36) Thomas our Smith being a poet and with the current situation in the Gulf reigniting does this does this prompts you to write more about the gulf and the conflict? I I write about such things unwillingly and in the ideal world, we wouldn't have to write about them at all. So I think it's I think it does some violence to the artists soul. To have to respond to these kinds of events, but I don't see any alternative for us either as long as they're going on. It merely illustrates how the war gets into every one of us on some level and there's no escaping that and yes, if if this war were to reignite and continue, I would write more poems about it and maybe I still will for right now the ones that I have in this book said everything that I had to say that was it was very meaningful or original about it, but That's not to say that that will be true tomorrow.