America I would like to visit you but
I have a fear of repeatedly feeling
déjà vu having seen
your treasures and tragedies
over and over
on big screens and small
I have come to absorb
through books and films
and blogs – those love-children
of Letter From America
some understanding of your ways.
It is only my personal view
others see you quite differently
from The Land of Opportunity
to The Great Satan.
I also, of course,
know real Americans
both in the flesh
and in the virtual world
and even have relatives
a whole branch of the family.
Since my grandfather’s brother
emigrated before the First World War
he and his descendants
have demonstrated the positives
the opportunity to make good
– it might have been less opportune
if he had not been white.
Now I understand the wealth
of America could not have been so great
without the dispossession
of the previous occupants
or the relocation of millions
of slaves who
even after emancipation
worked a different kind of bondage
in the factories of Chicago.
I cannot preach
we British have no right…
just this week I read a supplement
of The [Manchester] Guardian
on how Manchester’s cotton wealth
was the fruit of slavery
just at one remove
and the Guardian
famously liberal
did little to recognise
even its own failure to comment
until now.
America
so much is squeezed into your great cities
each pressure-cooking a distinct language
which is so much more than mere accent
but in between, the vast wildernesses
still exist free of graffiti
the poor of the cities not banned
but excluded from access nevertheless
by lacking the means to get there
And so
America
you are a land of opposites
of natural beauty and urban ugliness
of obscene wealth and unforgivable poverty
of liberal tolerance and extreme hatred.
Maybe this is true of all countries
but America – You proclaimed yourself
to be the Great and the Good
to be the World’s Policeman
but all your policemen
carry guns
and so therefore do the bad guys
and the poor
and the rich
by inalienable right.
America
Dorothy has
pulled back the curtain
and the little man revealed
does not match up to the rhetoric
or the dream.
But still I would like to visit you
America…
Written in response to “America [superstorm]”
by Kathleen Graber from her collection – The River Twice
© Andrew Wilson, 2023
Sounds fair to me. I think the point you make about hypocrisy is a good one. No colonial power is squeaky clean, but mostly they express their regret about the past. They tend not to set themselves up as the world’s moral compass.
Indeed – and we Brits are by no means clean…
Thanks for visiting.
I really enjoyed hearing you read this piece, Andrew!
Much love,
David
Thanks David much love to you too.
I enjoyed meeting you and hearing you read, Andrew. Food for thought in your poem.
I hoping we can turn things around here. It’s a minority that is spreading the anti-democratic vision. We have to figure out how to put them in a box with a tight lid.
I’m sure it is a minority but the way media works it is so amplified. It was great to meet you too – your avatar gives the impression of a slightly scary biker girl and the reality couldn’t be further from that, a woman who lets her cat walk all over her desk…
Thanks for visiting.
This is incredibly poignant, Andrew! It was lovely hearing you read on Oln Live tonight 💖💖
Thanks Sanaa, I wrote it in a writing group I belong to in response to a Kathleen Graber poem. We only had 25 minutes and it came out fully formed and I have scarcely edited it in typing it out. One of the women in the group (they are all American) was amazed that it could be so fully formed but as I said, these thoughts are going round in my head already and writing in a poetic form just distils them onto the page. I feel I have found a voice and can just speak in poetry…
Thank you for visiting and for hosting the group so welcomingly!
Greetings from Bend Oregon! This “Letter to America” is beautifully composed, so much truth overwhelms in a good way. We have much to overcome / fix, much to embrace / love. Come visit us.
Sorry you couldn’t stay longer but it was lovely to meet you and thanks for your comments, I would love to visit one day…
As an American since a distant relative emigrated from Ireland in 1778, I have found the chasm between beauty and despair, wealth and poverty to be so extreme as to become an impossible weal now, addicted to fictions and stealing everything to pay for the compulsion. England I read is now suffering a rough assessment of its own fictions — hopefully to humble, productive result. The poem I posted this week speaks of all this from my side of the water.
I have left a comment on your poem which is so much more personal history than this one – addicted to fictions – well put!
I appreciate your view, as I am an American who is not greatly fond of America.
I first learned about America through listening to Alastair Cooke’s “Letter from America” which he wrote, recorded and sent the tape by air to be broadcast on the BBC each Sunday morning – I don’t know if you heard of it or him, but although English by birth, he spent all his working life in America and he explained America, warts and all, to British, and I have heard, quite a lot of Americans too. If you can find him to listen too online I think you might enjoy his commentary. Because he wrote it out first, I think of him as the father of the blog form – hence the line in the poem. He never judged and he ranged from the minutiae of life in America, to the major events such as the death of JFK.
Thanks for visiting again…
You are welcome. Thank you for sharing and I will check him out!
Don’t you just love it when a poem comes out fully formed, Andrew. I was afraid of the same things when my husband insisted on visiting New York a year after the devastation of the Twin Towers. He had been before, I had never been, and I was very uncertain of what I would be faced with, having watched television programmes based in the States, and hearing about the high crime rates, etc. But the New York I encountered was a very friendly one (except for the immigration staff when we landed). I quite liked the idea of moving there – until I got home and realised I like things small, cosy and familiar.
I’m glad I’m not alone in that Kim and I am sure I would have a wonderful time – I know better than to engage with certain people because we have those here too. Thanks for a fulsome comment Kim…
I love the fluid style. It takes the reader to the visuals you create effortlessly.
Thank you Reena, that restores my faith, I showed it to a friend yesterday for whom I have a lot of respect intellectually and was surprised to learn that he has written quite a lot of poetry in his time. He said he thought it was too long – not distilled enough. But I looked at it again today and I can’t see anything I would want to lose…
I hope you can visit some day! We love visitors.
One day Priscilla, one day…
Thanks for visiting!
I appreciate your outsider’s perspective on America…you sum her/us up quite accurately. Originally, the gun rights made our leave of Britain possible 😉 It is my home and I am grateful, in spite of her failings. We do welcome visitors!
It would take something pretty drastically wrong to make us up sticks and leave and things are as about as woeful here as there but I’m not at the point of leaving yet.
And as for the guns – you can bet colonialism had a part in it…
Thanks for visiting Lynn!
Excellent piece, which I find quite accurate without stinging.
Thanks Misky – I was writing in a group the rest of whom were American which kept me moderate, but in any case that was where I wanted to be. I would like to talk to you again including about this piece if you would like to? Do you know Kathleen Graber – the poet whose poem was the starting point for this one?