Deception of Words

http://www.washingtonpoets.org/lifetime_award.php

Sam Hamill, the writer of “The Necessity to Speak”, has many thoughts of what poetry is and what the writer is. Hamill’s life experiences seem to take presentence in his opinions of poetry. He repeatedly stated “We can’t bear very much reality.” I know there are a number of corrupt things that happen in this world that if we, as united states citizens, knew about all of it, it would scare us. Hamill says, “A true poet, someone once said, is often faced with the default task of telling people what they already know and do not want to hear.” It’s true, we all know that everyday there are rapes, murders, robberies, domestic violence. But if we were to think about that daily it would scare us...it would put limits on our lives and we don’t want limits.

            In Sam Hamill’s piece he quotes Gary Snyder saying “What the writer invents is its own reality.” The writer can portray themselves to be good, even when they are not. Hamill says “The writer is the good man with the belt wrapped around his fist.” The writer is the one who is manipulating the words, creating the world that we are entering.  The writer has the opportunity to make us, as the reader, sympathize or empathize with them even if they are immoral or corrupt. They can make us turn on the people who, in the real world would be considered the “good guy”. The thought of that seems deceitful, it makes me feel naïve, or susceptible to lies. Just because a man “with the belt wrapped around his fist” presents his words in a certain way to make him look decorous, that means he is now good? He now has control over our minds? Have we blocked out the actual vision of the belt wrapped around his wrist? Hopefully, if it is presented to us in words,  we will be able to decipher the difference between the firefighter who works hard and supports his family in order to have control over his life and the man who beats his wife and children in order to have the control in his.
http://www.thedrunkenboat.com/hamillview.htm