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The Luxury of a Place to Teach Poetry

In a week, Atticus Review will launch Issue Six, and as excited as I am about publishing the literature and art we've selected, I am also at a loss for words.Yesterday, I had the privilege of attending a lecture from a fellow professor about how to read Old English poetry. We scanned English verse for stresses and rhythm. We talked about the oldest written artifact in English and how much the language has evolved. As usual, I sat in the back, close to the door, after the news of yet another campus shooting.Meanwhile, another scholar of poetry, Dr. Refaat Alareer was assassinated, most likely on purpose, in an Israeli airstrike on his sister's home. The strike also killed his brother, his sister, and three of her children. By the time I publish this newsletter, the death toll in Gaza will have increased, so I hesitate to write a number here. What will a number convey about human life, anyway?Dr. Alareer was the editor of an anthology, Gaza Writes Back. He taught both Palestinian and Israeli poetry. People have been sharing a poem he recently wrote, "If I Must Die, Let It Be a Tale." In 2021, he wrote in The New York Times about comforting his children during that year's bombardment: "As the habit goes in Gaza, when parents end a children’s story, we offer a little rhyming refrain: 'Toota toota, khalasat el hadoota. Hilwa walla maltouta?' ('The story is over. Was it nice or not?') The kids usually shout back, 'Maltouta!' — meaning 'not nice' and that another story is in order." His life is now a tale.In Portbou, Spain, there is a memorial to Walter Benjamin with his words engraved in glass: "It is more arduous to honor the memory of the nameless than that of the renowned. Historical construction is dedicated to the memory of the nameless." I think Benjamin offers us a lot of insight. His analysis that fascism tends toward the aestheticization of politics is helpful, if limited, for navigating how states manufacture consent for mass slaughter. The more I read about Refaat Alareer, the more I understand about his life and his work. But most of those killed in Gaza do not have bylines in The New York Times. Palestinian lives, as expressed through literature and art and social media, are infinitely more varied and complex than any one poem can capture. Writers are among the dead, but so too are avid readers, and almost eight thousand children who wanted to hear one more story before bedtime.What is the purpose of a literary journal when well-funded states use the most advanced technology in the world to kill poet professors? What is the purpose of reading literature when war profiteers erase entire families?Among the resources that I am familiar with, there are tools to make it easier to call representatives and demand a ceasefire or join a local branch of organizations like Jewish Voice for Peace. Doctors Without Borders and the Palestine Children's Relief Fund provide lifesaving material support, though much of their aid will be limited and at-risk of destruction in Gaza until there is a permanent ceasefire. Writers Against the War on Gaza, an organization of writers and editors, has been an invaluable resource, too.And, yes, we launch Issue Six in a week. I hope that by the time it launches, there will be a ceasefire, and during the time I'm not editing, I plan to dedicate what time I have as a citizen and what voice I have as a writer, to ensuring that will happen.Keep writing, keep reading, and please don't give up.Keene ShortEditor-in-ChiefAtticus Review

THIS WEEK AT ATTICUS

NEW FROM THE ATTIC

"An Enormous Capacity for Breadth": Christine Ma-Kellams in Conversation With Gail Schwartz"A well-known Canadian lesbian feminist writer, asked me point blank if I had ever considered making it into a novel. It terrified me but also liberated me, because I was far more interested in a fictional character than my own life."  

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BOOK REVIEW

"Fiction, nonfiction, speculative, poetry, prose, prose/poetry—the labels are irrelevant; it is only the music in his words that matter. "

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