Santiago Poems, and: Scrap Book (review)

109 REVIEWS Neruda has been: he deserves as wide an audience and as long a list of easily obtainable translations. Jiri Wyatt James Scully, Santiago Poems. Curbstone Press: 321 Jackson St., Willimantic, CT 06226,1975. 31pp. $2.50. James Scully, Scrap Book. Zeising Brothers: 768 Main St., Willimantic, CT 06226, 1977. 53pp. Paper (no price). In Avenue of the Americas (1971), James Scully has a poem on a popular act and fantasy of that time called "Dropping Out". "Behind you, your childhood is littered with truths," the poem says, truths "You thought anyone would die for." These truths were such things as Justice, Patriotism, Non-violence, and Right (or Moral) Action. Experience teaches Scully, however, its own unpleasant truths: that none of the above works. To quote one of the many epigraphs of the book, apparently said by a Yugoslav friend, "Americans are the babies of the world." And, so it is suggested, they must learn what the rest of the world already knows, that few care for justice, that patriotism is a mechanism for using people, that defenselessness is not a defense against anything, and that-in the closing lines of the poemWherever a man might step, it seems he puts his foot down on someone's head. Scully's sense of the sixties seems quite accurate to me. Even though the anti-war movement-more popular and more successful than its predecessor, the civil rights movement-succeeded as I should imagine few popular movements ever have, that success did not leave people with renewed faith in their political nature or their political systems. The movement had been called into being, really, by flagrant political malpractice-the illegal declaration and conduct of war-, so in many ways it was an ad hoc political movement against politics itself. When the war ended, people went back to their private lives. Many, of course, had done that before the war ended. That's what "dropping out" was. The war and the effort against the war had exposed the truths of everyone's childhood. People longed for some space, no matter how small, where they could breathe, love, and hopefully keep from putting their "foot down on someone's head." If illusory, the longing was-and continues to be-real. Avenue ofthe Americas, in other words, presents a state of mind that to me seems typical of the late sixties, especially among the liberal middle class, which could have easily led James Scully deeper into lyricism and the private life rather than into the poetry of political struggle. Where he found the will and energy to resist this powerful cultural drift, it is useless to imagine, but in doing so, he has written some of the most forceful poetry of our time. I'm sure he could have found material for this poetry in a number of places, but, as the two books under review show, he found most of it through his experience of living in Chile immediately after Allende's downfall. Santiago Poems (1975) is a vivid record of the aftermath of the coup. To me it seems a remarkable achievement because the magnitude of the thing is suggested just by those few things that a carefully watched foreigner would be able to see: empty streets, a helicopter overhead, the fear and anger of a friend, rumors, occasional shots in the night, soldiers strolling in the streets, an arrest. These poems let us into the homes and minds of people living under the rule of a military dictatorship. The sense of people robbed of their freedom is intense. At the same time, these poems record the people's courage. Victor Jara, the song 110 THE MINNESOTA REVIEW writer, whose songs celebrated the coming of socialism to Chile, is said to have died like this: NOW sing: the guards howling beat him with obscenities. But he did. His legend is He was singing Venceremos when they shot him. Even for them, it was too much they killed him, they couldn't kill him enough Victor Jara sin guitarra, who'd held out with bloody stumps and sung The last section ofAvenue of the Americas is called "Facing Up." It speaks of Utopian...