Terrorist Nations? A Poet's View

I know that as I write this I put myself at risk but I must say that what I am going to say may be true. Lamenting September 11th is a true act, and is true kindness but the USA in many ways has asked for the resentment and has sewn evil in many places.

I for one have seen this with my own eyes. I worked in Bolivia as a lay volunteer in Cochabamba, Bolivia. I worked in the Carcel San Sebastian, a place with 4000 inmates in a 1/4 city block with men, women and children. Most of the people in this jail were encarcerated because of minor drug offences. The result of a minor offence was often, a man in jail for years before he even gets a trial, a wife who often had to become a prostitute to feed her family, and children who were forced to beg on the street.

I knew people in Bolivia who had their children, in the jail, without even a clean bed and who were forced to clean up their child in a bath of dirty water. Why is it that no one here wants to realize that out of our luxury comes so much pain and that people will always try to strike back?

This is one bit of evil terrorism caused by the selfishness of my nation. This kind of evil is spread around the world by American greed. As we today look back on the British Empire in a film like Ghandi and are repulsed by murder and evil in that repression, today we do this world wide and this creates hatred and resentment.

I can imagine a million people who are victims of the power of our nation and what kind of pain we cause to millions. The fact is however that we are not an 'evil' nation, what we are however is a nation that is engrossed in selfishness. September 11th was a horrible event and no one deserved to die, but the cause of terrorism is injustice, and that is the evil to be overcome.
But we continue like the fat man eat and eat consuming everything.

Filmmakers as Poets

I read a short story once that was dystopian, it talked about a world where Film makers were in the role of Poets- no money, small audiences, and Poets were in the role of movie stars, lots of money, large audiences.
It was an interesting exercise because it showed the difference between Arts that are businesses and arts that are not. The reality is that Poets and Poetry are important for our society and have always been but they are lousy at marketing. Other artforms, visual arts, dance, music, and also craftarts, fiction, pottery,textiles, Filmmaking have a powerful marketing force behind them and that creates a sense of the genre and allows for these artists to have a life doing what they love. Apart from universities Poetry does not have this and since most poets do not want to 'sell out' we remain on the margins while mediocrities in other genres fill the airwaves with clap trap. I thought allot about this during the Oscars, Sofia Coppola won
best original screenplay for a really mediocre writing job that was carried by Bill Murray. Yet, few people will know about great poets like Lisa Jarnot or Peter Gizzi and they will never be on stage.

I think in the end Poets need to be more demanding and do better marketing along with creating personalities for themselves.