Eratosphere - Riots, Crowds... Poetry?

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Riots, Crowds... Poetry?

Here I am in Los Angeles, increasingly disturbed by the news of the riots, deaths, looting, etc., in England, my old home country. I hope all you UK poets are OK. My stepmother sent me this link to the coverage in The Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk

But I've also been trying to think of poems that cover violence, riots, crowd behavior and all that. I thought of the William Carlos Williams one below (sorry baseball fans!) which captures the sinister aspect of crowds.

Anyone got any other suggestions?

The crowd at the ball game
William Carlos Williams

The crowd at the ball game
is moved uniformly

by a spirit of uselessness
which delights them—

all the exciting detail
of the chase

and the escape, the error
the flash of genius—

all to no end save beauty
the eternal—

So in detail they, the crowd,
are beautiful

for this
to be warned against

saluted and defied—
It is alive, venomous

it smiles grimly
its words cut—

The flashy female with her
mother, gets it—

The Jew gets it straight— it
is deadly, terrifying—

It is the Inquisition, the
Revolution

It is beauty itself
that lives

day by day in them
idly—

This is
the power of their faces

It is summer, it is the solstice
the crowd is

cheering, the crowd is laughing
in detail

permanently, seriously
without thought

An obvious candidate is Shelley's The Masque of Anarchy. I won't post it because there are over 90 verses, but it was based on the Peterloo Riots and banned for thirty years. It's easy to find and worth a squinny in the current context.

Riot
A riot is the language of the unheard.
—Martin Luther King

John Cabot, out of Wilma, once a Wycliffe,
all whitebluerose below his golden hair,
wrapped richly in right linen and right wool,
almost forgot his Jaguar and Lake Bluff;
almost forgot Grandtully (which is The
Best Thing That Ever Happened To Scotch); almost
forgot the sculpture at the Richard Gray
and Distelheim; the kidney pie at Maxim’s,
the Grenadine de Boeuf at Maison Henri.

Because the Negroes were coming down the street.

Because the Poor were sweaty and unpretty
(not like Two Dainty Negroes in Winnetka)
and they were coming toward him in rough ranks.
In seas. In windsweep. They were black and loud.
And not detainable. And not discreet.

Gross. Gross. “Que tu es grossier!” John Cabot
itched instantly beneath the nourished white
that told his story of glory to the World.
“Don’t let It touch me! the blackness! Lord!” he whispered
to any handy angel in the sky.
But, in a thrilling announcement, on It drove
and breathed on him: and touched him. In that breath
the fume of pig foot, chitterling and cheap chili,
malign, mocked John. And, in terrific touch, old
averted doubt jerked forward decently,
cried, “Cabot! John! You are a desperate man,
and the desperate die expensively today.”

John Cabot went down in the smoke and fire
and broken glass and blood, and he cried “Lord!
Forgive these nigguhs that know not what they do.”

—Gwendolyn Brooks

The perfect poem, Ann, thank you!
Long, but still fresh in its call for social justice and peace.

Here's one link I found for the poem online:

http://www.poetsgraves.co.uk/Classic...of_anarchy.htm

And, Andrew, thank you, for the poem by the amazing Gwendolyn Brooks--also perfect in the the context of the present time. And all time, come to that, unless we somehow learn to be at peace with one another...

I've deleted this post because I realised it was an unjustified hi-jacking of Charlotte's thread. Apologies.

Haven't got a poem, but one of the best descriptions of an English riot (the Scots and Welsh have been keen to point out they were not involved in recent events) is in Dickens's Barnaby Rudge, with the chapters on the Gordon Riots. And there, to put things in perspective, 285 people were killed.

Here's a sample:

Quote:

The besiegers being now in complete possession of the house, spread
themselves over it from garret to cellar, and plied their demon
labours fiercely. While some small parties kindled bonfires
underneath the windows, others broke up the furniture and cast the
fragments down to feed the flames below; where the apertures in
the wall (windows no longer) were large enough, they threw out
tables, chests of drawers, beds, mirrors, pictures, and flung them
whole into the fire; while every fresh addition to the blazing
masses was received with shouts, and howls, and yells, which added
new and dismal terrors to the conflagration. Those who had axes
and had spent their fury on the movables, chopped and tore down the
doors and window frames, broke up the flooring, hewed away the
rafters, and buried men who lingered in the upper rooms, in heaps
of ruins. Some searched the drawers, the chests, the boxes,
writing-desks, and closets, for jewels, plate, and money; while
others, less mindful of gain and more mad for destruction, cast
their whole contents into the courtyard without examination, and
called to those below, to heap them on the blaze. Men who had
been into the cellars, and had staved the casks, rushed to and fro
stark mad, setting fire to all they saw--often to the dresses of
their own friends--and kindling the building in so many parts that
some had no time for escape, and were seen, with drooping hands and
blackened faces, hanging senseless on the window-sills to which
they had crawled, until they were sucked and drawn into the
burning gulf. The more the fire crackled and raged, the wilder and
more cruel the men grew; as though moving in that element they
became fiends, and changed their earthly nature for the qualities
that give delight in hell.

The burning pile, revealing rooms and passages red hot, through
gaps made in the crumbling walls; the tributary fires that licked
the outer bricks and stones, with their long forked tongues, and
ran up to meet the glowing mass within; the shining of the flames
upon the villains who looked on and fed them; the roaring of the
angry blaze, so bright and high that it seemed in its rapacity to
have swallowed up the very smoke; the living flakes the wind bore
rapidly away and hurried on with, like a storm of fiery snow; the
noiseless breaking of great beams of wood, which fell like feathers
on the heap of ashes, and crumbled in the very act to sparks and
powder; the lurid tinge that overspread the sky, and the darkness,
very deep by contrast, which prevailed around; the exposure to the
coarse, common gaze, of every little nook which usages of home had
made a sacred place, and the destruction by rude hands of every
little household favourite which old associations made a dear and
precious thing: all this taking place--not among pitying looks and
friendly murmurs of compassion, but brutal shouts and exultations,
which seemed to make the very rats who stood by the old house too
long, creatures with some claim upon the pity and regard of those
its roof had sheltered:--combined to form a scene never to be
forgotten by those who saw it and were not actors in the work, so
long as life endured.

And who were they? The alarm-bell rang--and it was pulled by no
faint or hesitating hands--for a long time; but not a soul was
seen. Some of the insurgents said that when it ceased, they heard
the shrieks of women, and saw some garments fluttering in the air,
as a party of men bore away no unresisting burdens. No one could
say that this was true or false, in such an uproar; but where was
Hugh? Who among them had seen him, since the forcing of the doors?
The cry spread through the body. Where was Hugh!

'Here!' he hoarsely cried, appearing from the darkness; out of
breath, and blackened with the smoke. 'We have done all we can;
the fire is burning itself out; and even the corners where it
hasn't spread, are nothing but heaps of ruins. Disperse, my lads,
while the coast's clear; get back by different ways; and meet as
usual!' With that, he disappeared again,--contrary to his wont,
for he was always first to advance, and last to go away,--leaving
them to follow homewards as they would.

It was not an easy task to draw off such a throng. If Bedlam gates
had been flung wide open, there would not have issued forth such
maniacs as the frenzy of that night had made. There were men
there, who danced and trampled on the beds of flowers as though
they trod down human enemies, and wrenched them from the stalks,
like savages who twisted human necks. There were men who cast
their lighted torches in the air, and suffered them to fall upon
their heads and faces, blistering the skin with deep unseemly
burns. There were men who rushed up to the fire, and paddled in it
with their hands as if in water; and others who were restrained by
force from plunging in, to gratify their deadly longing. On the
skull of one drunken lad--not twenty, by his looks--who lay upon
the ground with a bottle to his mouth, the lead from the roof came
streaming down in a shower of liquid fire, white hot; melting his
head like wax. When the scattered parties were collected, men--
living yet, but singed as with hot irons--were plucked out of the
cellars, and carried off upon the shoulders of others, who strove
to wake them as they went along, with ribald jokes, and left them,
dead, in the passages of hospitals. But of all the howling throng
not one learnt mercy from, or sickened at, these sights; nor was
the fierce, besotted, senseless rage of one man glutted.

Ann: thank you for your sensitivity! (I'm firmly restraining my curiosity...)

Gregory: That's an amazing description from Dickens--truly capturing riot madness—that actually makes me want to read him again. Just curious, did you copy this long piece from your... Kindle.. or...?

FYI: I watched the Notting Hill riots back in 1976 start from scratch. I was at the street fair enjoying myself, when a few kids started throwing the odd coke can--and a ton of police showed up in riot gear, with shields, in massed formation. The whole thing got out of hand in minutes...

My stepmother has been e-mailing me on these latest riots, and I do just want to mention that it seems to be so complicated in England--the delicate balance between law-and-order and the kids without jobs, with benefits for youth clubs (and more) being cut, she tells me.

So… I found a Charles Simic poem with a longer view of things:

Sunday Papers
Charles Simic (2001)

The butchery of the innocent
Never stops. That’s about all
We can be ever sure of, love,
Even more sure than the roast
You are bringing out the oven.

It’s Sunday. The congregation
Files slowly out of the church
Across the street. A good many
Carry Bibles in their hands.
It’s the vague desire for truth
And the mighty fear of it
That makes them turn up
Despite the glorious spring weather.

In the hallway, the old mutt
Just now had the honesty
To growl at his own image in the mirror,
Before lumbering to the kitchen
Where the lamb roast sat
In your outstretched hands
Smelling of garlic and rosemary.

Charlotte (and everyone else),

Please, make no mistake about these riots. They have nothing to do with the death of the man shot by the police, which sparked off the whole thing. He had a gun. Law-abiding citizens in the UK do not go around 'tooled up'.

This sorry business is nothing more than an excuse for lawlessness. We have had teenage girls, interviewed while drinking booze they'd looted, declaring it was 'fun' and 'a good laugh'. I listened to a woman on the radio today, who has a young baby; she's lost everything she owns, as her flat was completely burned down by teenaged yobbos.

Puh-lease, don't talk to me about benefits for youth clubs being cut. Think about who the victims REALLY are, here. It's not "kids without jobs."

Ah Jayne, you're the last person I want to tangle with! And you are there! I'm not. I was trying to be cautious when relaying my stepmother's comments--she's very politically active, reads everything, and has strong thoughts on everything! She's on her local parish council amongst a million other things and had to fight a massive battle to get funds for a small playground for children. However, she and other family members are also extremely upset by the violence--don't get me wrong. I'm sorry if I misrepresented anyone or anything.

Not to get anyone's ire up even more, but in the interests of debate, I'm putting a link here to an article by Bill Boyarsky who covered the LA riots of 1992 for the Los Angeles Times. I was here then too, and stood on the roof of my apartment building while the city burned around me. It was a very scary time, but there were also many complicated factors at work, as Bill points out. On the other hand, England and Los Angeles are very far apart, in more ways than one!

Meanwhile, how does one write poetry about such moments, when one is right in the middle of them? A tough call I think--although the WW I poets managed it.

Jayne, again my apologies for the upset.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/america_is_a_spark_away_from_riots_of_our_own_2011 0811/
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/...wn_2011 0811/