Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness [Paperback]

Bearing witness to extremitywhether of war, torture, exile, or repressionthe volume encompasses more than 140 poets from five continents, over the span of this century from the Armenian genocide to Tiananmen Square.From every continent comes the news that our age is an age of murder and repression on a scale unimagined before. And yet I can't peruse this book without marveling at what beauty these writers have made of the calamity called the Twentieth Century. I would not have thought a poetry anthology could be so stirring.In a class by itself, edited and and introduced with precise passion and Olympian breadth,Poetry cannot block a bullet or still aThis landmark anthology, the first of its kind, takes it impulse fromthe words of Bertolt Brecht: In these dark times, will there also besinging? / Yes, there will be singing. / About the dark times.