Poems from Guantanamo: The Detainees Speak
by Flagg Miller
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other reviews (showing 1-20 of 30)
Read in August, 2007
This book's very existence is amazing. Though every poem had to be cleared by the Pentagon, some are openly critical of the U.S. and of Bush. Almost all the poems are understandably full of anguish. The mini-biographies of the poets are gripping, sometimes heart-rending. Naturally, one wonders what kinds of poems the Pentagon did not clear for release (what were the criteria? what marked a poem for suppression?). Poems from Guantanamo serves a valuable function by giving voice to those wh...more
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Read in April, 2008
Humanity finds a voice in words that emerge from the depravity of the dark cells that are Guantanamo.
As Pakistani poet/scholar Sheikh Abdurraheem Muslim Dost writes: "I am flying on the wings of thought, And so even in this cage I know a greater freedom." Dost, released from Guantanamo in April 2005, was re-arrested by Pakistani intelligence after publishing a memoir of his imprisonment. He is still missing.
The short blurbs on the authors are as powerful and disturbing a...more
As Pakistani poet/scholar Sheikh Abdurraheem Muslim Dost writes: "I am flying on the wings of thought, And so even in this cage I know a greater freedom." Dost, released from Guantanamo in April 2005, was re-arrested by Pakistani intelligence after publishing a memoir of his imprisonment. He is still missing.
The short blurbs on the authors are as powerful and disturbing a...more
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Read in August, 2007
recommends it for:
anyone.
This book is both wondrous and horrifying - it's wondrous that somewhere along the line it was allowed exist, and horrifying that it does. The poetry is moving, swamped in anguish and pain, and illustrative of a dehumanization and cruelty that flies in the face of any modern conception of human rights. It was very painful to read, and is painful to digest, but it was equally moving and inspiring. Recommended to any who are capable of seeing it as more than rhetoric.
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Read in December, 2007
This book is what it is. Whether or not the poetry invokes generalities of suffering or abstract, sweeping concepts seems to be beside the point. The fact that these may be the only words these men could invoke during a time of intense stress is to me something completely different, and the fact that lawyers upon lawyers had to fight to even bring *these* words to the public eyes says much more.
I wonder what it is we're doing anymore.
I wonder what it is we're doing anymore.
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Read in January, 2008
I've read this brief collection of poems twice in the past six months, and will be reading it again soon. It's a chance to actually see the lives of a few of these prisoners close up, and in their own words. It's also a grim and sobering report on how far the US government has drifted from being a country that respects the rights and hunanily of everyone.
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Read in January, 2008
recommends it for:
poetry, politics
This book was amazing. Absolutely amazing. I feel changed after reading it, after imagining what was not able to be said by these men. I believe everyone should read this collection of poems.
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bookshelves:
current-affairs,
phx-reviewed
Read in June, 2008
I wrote about this book in the Portland Phoenix.
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