Poets United Midweek Motif ~ News Media

TODAY!

The 2017 Celebration of World Press

Freedom Day will be in Jakarta:  

"Critical Minds for Critical Times: 

Media’s role in advancing peaceful, just 

and inclusive societies."

“All I know is just what I read in the papers, and that's an alibi for my ignorance.” 

― Will Rogers

“In the developed countries of the capitalist world, the . . . . freedom of journalists is now becoming, in most cases, a very relative thing: it ends where the interests of the business begin. . . .” 

― Hélder Câmara

“The English-language press in India supports the project of corporate globalization fully. . . .  Let's support everything that leads to the conditions in which the massacre takes place, but when the killing starts, you recoil in middle-class horror, and say, ". . . . Can't we be more civilized?” 

― Arundhati Roy, The Checkbook and the Cruise Missile

Midweek Motif ~ 
News Media

So, our medium is poetry . . . 
which doesn't exclude news or the variety 
and uses of media in our world.  
Who controls whom?

We'd love to read your stories.

Your Challenge:  Either write a new documentary poem OR a new poem that comments on News Media.

Notes and Quotes from the Media War from HonestReporting

Excerpt from Asphodel, That Greeny Flower 

by William Carlos Williams

. . . . 

Of asphodel, that greeny flower,
I come, my sweet,
to sing to you!
My heart rouses
thinking to bring you news
of something
that concerns you
and concerns many men. Look at
what passes for the new.
You will not find it there but in
despised poems.
It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.
Hear me out
for I too am concerned
and every man
who wants to die at peace in his bed
besides. 

(Read the rest HERE.)

excerpt from The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll

by Bob Dylan

William Zanzinger killed poor Hattie Carroll
With a cane that he twirled around his diamond ring finger
At a Baltimore hotel society gathering
And the cops were called in and his weapon took from him
As they rode him in custody down to the station
And booked William Zanzinger for first-degree murder
But you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears
Take the rag away from your face
Now ain't the time for your tears

William Zanzinger, who at twenty-four years
Owns a tobacco farm of six hundred acres
With rich wealthy parents who provide and protect him
And high office relations in the politics of Maryland
Reacted to his deed with a shrug of his shoulders
And swear words and sneering, and his tongue it was snarling
In a matter of minutes, on bail was out walking
But you who philosophize disgrace and criticize fears
Take the rag away from your face
Now ain't the time for your tears

Hattie Carroll was a maid in the kitchen
She was fifty-one years old and gave birth to ten children
Who carried the dishes and took out the garbage
 . . . .

Read the rest HERE. (The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll lyrics © Bob Dylan Music Co.)

From Blue Front

BY MARTHA COLLINS

There were trees on those streets that were named

for trees: Sycamore, Cedar, Poplar, Pine,

Elm, where the woman's body was found,

where the man's body was taken and burned—

There must have been trees, there were trees

on Seventh Street, in front of the house that stands

in the picture behind the carriage that holds

the boy's mother, the boy's cousin, the boy—

And of course there were trees on Washington

Avenue, wide boulevard lined with exotic

ginkgoes, stately magnolias, there were trees

on that street that are still on that street,

trees that shaded the fenced-in yards of the large

Victorian houses, the mansion built by the man

who sold flour to Grant for the Union troops,

trees that were known to the crowd that saw

the victim hanged, though not on a tree, this

was not the country, they used a steel arch

with electric lights, and later a lamppost, this

was a modern event, the trees were not involved.

. . . . 

(Read more HERE.)

🙈 🙉 🙊

Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others in the spirit of the community—

                (Next week Susan’s Midweek Motif will be ~ Childbirth)

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