[Charlotte Innes]

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