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| [A] wry look at the Preamble's words and meaning as being currently applied. Beyond the savvy nature of the author's political commentary, though, is the sharply chiseled poetry itself, a wonderful combination of playfulness and intellect that offers a fine example of how art can meet politics and still stay art. —Dennis Johnson, Moby Lives |
| Poet/Activist Jen Benka's aspiration for a simpler, clarified world gives spacious dimension here. A wonderful heartening prescription for "sanity with eyes of eagles." —Anne Waldman |
| In moving narrative and abstract lyrics, Jen Benka reveals the repressive contraints of U.S. nationhood and the hidden lives of some within its limits. She offers us a hopeful yearning that "the people" can gather themselves for a different kind of "together," to create their own future. —Minnie Bruce Pratt |
| These short, worldly, humanist poems, presented in a fascinating variety of visual arrays and forms, prompts us almost with every set of lines to think about the real nature of the American national experiment. It's impossible to read this book without meditating about what it would take to create at long last the kind of just society worthy of those 52 words which have been memorized for generations by untold tens of millions of American school kids. Benka's subtle insights, combining poetry with historical reference, also delve into what it means to be isolated humans seeking grace among and between other isolated humans, and how the word "longing" is so important to civilization. In the end A Box of Longing... is about the transformative power of living words. If we don't use our history, in addition to studying it and relishing its words, we will lose our freedoms, and all hope for a just society, in the long trench of time. —Ed Sanders | |
A Box of Longing with 50 Drawers
A Revisioning of the Preamble to the Constitution
Jen Benka
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| Paper | 5.5" x 7.5" | 68 pgs. | ISBN: 1-932360-84-0 | List: $12.95 | 10/1/2005 |
Available on Powells.com, Amazon.com, from your local BookSense store, and bookstores everywhere!
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About the book: Benka takes us on a re-imagining that cuts through the psychic landscape of America and explores the United States as a "a box of longing with fifty drawers." She delves not so much into the growing cynicism of Americans as to the deep bewilderment and sadness of us. She asks the deepening question of what is happening to core values such as economic justice, civil rights, a humane foreign policy, freedom and a decent life for everyone — and below that, what is happening to the individual psyches within a nation that has lost faith in itself.
About the author: Working at a homeless shelter, as an organizer for the National Abortion Rights Action League-WI, and at 9to5 National Association of Working Women, Benka's political work has informed and infused her poems. Combining poetry and politics, she co-organized a major reading in protest of the Occupation of Iraq during the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City. She has published poems in The Progressive, Ms. Magazine, La Petite Zine, Failbetter, Unpleasant Events Schedule, Tarapulin Sky (forthcoming), So to Speak, and Off Our Backs, and was the recipient of a poetry fellowship from the Wisconsin Arts Board. Benka has performed her poetry and music at the Nuyorican Poets Café, Brooklyn Lyceum, Bowery Poetry Club, and on NPR's World Café. She is also the author of the award-winning indy comic book Manya.
From the book:
WE
where were we during the convening
two hundred years ago or yesterday
we, not of planter class, but mud hands digging
where were we during the convening
our work, these words, are missing
the tired, the poor, waylaid
where were we during the convening
two hundred years ago or yesterday.
THE
the days wave into months
the sickness claims too many
the bodies overboard
the thick mist finally lifts
the sight of land at last.
PEOPLE
crushed dust thrown
across ocean
family bones
a name, my own.
OF
of ambush of going into hiding of this walk
of the confusion of the alienation
of the existence of things impossible
of failure (or success)
of the woods of water of rocks
of catacombs of my scream (with no echo)
of the passing hours of childhood
of bark (scribbled with words)
of the mirror of me of a translucent temple
of approval of an insatiable audience
of prey of the flames of these rituals
of all this
of our hearts
of love of darkness
of the cosmos.
THE
first word
long line
lost bird
the
last time
strange dream
white lie
the
steel beam
black coal
blue steam
the
clay bowl
tall grass
dyed wool
the
thin glass
bread crumb
first blast
the
day’s done
young son
war’s won.
UNITED
to stand alone together.
STATES
this land has no name
not taken, thieves
tracing rivers and t-squares
more borders. |
