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| The Lawrence Hart
Seminars, going back to the late 1930s, are by far the longest-running
literary workshop in the San Francisco area. In them, poets continue to
explore and refine the literary territory that Lawrence Hart and the early
Activists opened in the middle of the Twentieth Century. There is a nominal tuition. Visitors are welcome. In this space we display a poem produced in the Lawrence Hart Seminars and showing one of the many styles developed under the influence of Activist approaches. For poems featured earlier, see the Archive. Judith Yamamoto's "Stari Most," first published in The Women's Review of Books, July 2001, recalls an ancient bridge destroyed in the recent Bosnian war.
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STARI MOST (OLD BRIDGE) |
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After dark, the dogs bark east of the equator and in the absence of lilacs and of rivers encircling the earth the orphans do not sleep well.
The grandmothers listen beside the stone bridge. What can they say to the mumbling of doves?
After the last months of shelling -- not to mention the ancient earthquakes and the old, old wars -- the mortar of eggs and goat hair collapsed in the arms of these women.
I look for answers in newspapers, in old books, where I find sulfur, neither a metal nor the name of one of my children. See dreams, see fires that burn forever under our shoes.
© 2002 by Judith Yamamoto
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COMMENT Working in the Activist tradition since the 1970s, Judith Yamamoto has honed a style in which an almost conversational surface masks continual surprises of image and word choice. A recurrent subject is the role of women in a world at war—as survivors, caretakers, witnesses, and in general holders-together of things. Looking back to the origins of conflict, the poet finds something elemental and always ready to catch fire: “neither a metal nor the name of one of my children.” Yamamoto has appeared in many publications including Parnassus: Poetry in Review, Partisan Review, Ploughshares, Southern Poetry Review. |
