Above: Winter in America (Again Front Cover
Winter in America(Again
Poets Respond to the 2024 Election
by Paul Nelson
It’s a book that goes beyond the word popular every 8 years or so, that being “resistance.” Winter in America (Again is a book of mostly poetry written in response to the November 2024 USAmerican presidential election that helps point the way to a kinder and more just nation. Its creation features significant contributions from at least four people opened in Subud.
On November 6, 2024, the day after the USAmerican presidential election, Tuscon poet Katie Sarah Zale called me to see how I was doing and to ask what I thought Sam Hamill would do in response to the election. Sam Hamill founded Copper Canyon Press and Poets Against the War. The latter was in response to the Bush Administration’s offer to him to celebrate the poetry of Langston Hughes, Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson and was the largest single-themed poetry anthology in history with over 20,000 poems. We agreed Sam would have called his poet friends and created an anthology in response to the second election of Donald Trump. We decided to create one and to do it in time for the January 20, 2025, inaugural and with a team of one publisher and eight editors, it happened. We each invited a few poets we knew as co-editors and took submissions for a month. We got Greg Bem to agree to be publisher via his Carbonation Press in Spokane. We whittled down the work of nearly 300 poets to just over 100 and a few days before the inaugural, we had the galley in our hands.
Along with Katie and I, we had allia abdullah-matta, Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs, Robert Lashley, Roxi Power, CChristy White and Theresa Whitehill. Theresa has been opened in Subud, along with Roberta Hoffman who designed the cover as well as her son Jasper Hoffman, whose painting Goetia Study was used for the cover. Jasper is a third generation Subud member. Both the cover and the painting are striking and suggest a tone that is a little chaotic; a little disturbed. Quite appropriate we think.
Above: Goetia Study by Jasper Hoffman
In the call for poems, we stated: “We are looking for words that come from thoughtful reflection and compassion for the loss we feel for ourselves and this country. (Please no screeds.)” Still, we got many poems that were filled with righteous anger, on which we passed. The book features many poems that offer suggestions, pathways and even self-care tips for the new Winter in America. That very phrase “Winter in America” comes from Gil Scott-Heron, and was used by the editors as a sort-of invocation to Gil’s spirit and legacy. I heard his B-Movie when I was 18 years old on WXRT-FM while a college student and had never heard anything like it. His 1981 take on Ronald Reagan was prophetic. A sample from Gil:
In this year that we have now declared
The year from Shogun to Ray-Gun
I remember what I said about Ray-Gun…
Acted like an actor…Hollyweird
Acted like a liberal
Acted like General Franco
when he acted like Governor of California
Then he acted like a Republican
Then he acted like somebody was going to vote for him for President
And now we act like 26% of the registered voters is actually a mandate
Were all actors in this, I suppose
In Winter in America (Again, I offer some “Self-Care Tips for the New Winter in America, among which include:
Hyper local. Listen to Carla Bley.
“…Forge local spaces of
difference and social tactics of
resistance.” Get acupuncture.
Breathe mugwort. Bolster
electrolytes. Sing the body
electric. Build social housing.
Enact Medicare-for-All. Do not
patronize monopolies. “The best
response to a poem is another
poem.” “How to live in a moment
that is at once daily and mythic.”
Sit zazen. Do Latihan.
“Keep a war journal.” Contemplate.
Not so much content but atmosphere…
Elsewhere in the poem is suggested: “Free Leonard Peltier….” and “Try not to bite anyone.” Yes, good advice for any moment and not just this new “Winter in America”. That Leonard Peltier was freed shows how effective poetry (or prayer) can be, as he is out of jail about 50 years later than he could have been.
That we left the parenthesis open is a nod to Charles Olson, whose sidebars in a poem sometimes never ended. (“You go all around the subject. I didn’t know there was a subject!”)
We scheduled two Zoom readings for the book, January 19, 2025 and one on January 20, 2025. I am grateful to have been able to do this, to collaborate with Katie Sarah Zale, to have another book published by Greg Bem’s Carbonation Press, to work with amazing co-editors and to have such remarkable, committed and passionate poems to present by over 100 poets from as far away as Australia. I hope this book gives us some solace and some direction to handle this interesting time in history.
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