News from the Muse

 The Muse of Lament and Dissent  III

Weeping Madonna
(with credit to Sara Spaulding Phillips)

Introduction 

An Agony of Witness and Empathy

I release you, my beautiful and terrible
fear. I release you. I release you. You were my beloved
and hated twin. But now, I don’t know you
as myself.

—Joy Harjo “I Give You Back”

Weaving Sundown in a Scarlet Light

If you are an American who pays attention to the news, July 2025 has brought a chaos of terror and grief, and an agony of witness and empathy. July 4th brought the signing of the Big Bad Bill, which cut Medicaid for poor people in order to lower taxes for the rich. To witness the slashing and burning of institutions that have supported our American way of life for decades, is to grieve for the world as we’ve known it. To witness hardworking immigrants, who pick our fruit and vegetables, build our houses, tend our gardens, serve us in restaurants and hotels, take care of us in old age, live in terror of being snatched out of their lives and families by masked secret police, without IDs or due process, brings tears of empathy and bursts of rage. How did America, the land of the free, morph into such a hell realm?

To witness civil servants, who have worked for the government for many years, on whom we have depended for help with Social Security, Health, Education, Homeland Security, Emergency Assistance, be fired, or live in terror of being fired, arouses our empathy and horror. Who stole our government and its agencies from us—our access to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?

To witness the humiliation of great universities, attacked for allowing their students to gather and speak freely, takes many of us back to our own student days, when we demonstrated for Free Speech. Many schools have had their scientific research funds withdrawn as punishment-- for whom? That is a blow to the health and wellbeing of every American, who, should they fall ill, will not be able to benefit from the latest medical advances. 

Who will be held responsible for the monstrosity our country has become in just six months of the Berserker’s reign of terror?

Enter the ghost of Jeffrey Epstein. Is this some sort of Deus Ex Machina? An act of God intent on haunting the Berserker and his minions? The Man of Teflon seems unable to shake the dirty secret of his long association with a pedophile—a trafficker of young girls and women--sexual prey for rich and powerful men. The ghosts of some of those women, who died before their time, are wailing in the Underworld, seeking to rouse those of us who will listen. Their souls require our witness and our empathy.

Commentary on the Poem: Unease Listening to my Guide in Tallinn

The edgy title of Virginia Chen’s wide ranging and penetrating poem sets the reader up for the discomfort of facing difficult truths. Those truths come in two voices, speaking from very different histories and lands. We begin in Tallinn, the capitol of Estonia, where a tour guide lectures the visitors about a history unknown to most Americans--his country’s struggle with Russian Tsars, and how that tiny country prevailed: One million Estonians sang against the Soviets day and night.

The guide scolds the tourists from the West for being afraid to “stand up for freedom” and warns: Do nothing and you will lose everything.

The second voice is that of the poem’s speaker, a “traveler for forty years,” as, back in an America changed drastically by a new administration, she struggles with what has become of her country. Married to the birthright son of parents born in China, she comes home to the shock of seeing immigrants being “arrested by agents wearing masks.” She wonders about her husband’s safety, about her own standing—her grandparents came from Europe. In a powerful leap that takes us beyond “unease,” the speaker’s blood pressure rises, sending her to the emergency room. She sums up her medical crisis deftly: American rage gave me the political bends.

She makes an astute psychological assessment of the land of her birth: We have no ancient enemy outside ourself.

Which means, one gathers, that we are doomed to project our shadow on an enemy within. But, being a traveler, who has learned courage from her Estonian tour guide’s lecture, the speaker ends her poem:

I sing in praise of singing for our rights and freedoms
unsafe though it is.

May the wisdom she has brought back from Eastern Europe inspire our American struggle against our own would-be Tsar.

Unease Listening to My Guide in Tallinn

by Virginia Chen

Tallinn

The sun is decorative. It doesn’t warm and the wind is blowing.

Our borders are closed to Russians.
Tsar Putin wants all of Europe.
Just wait. He will take.

Russia on the Globe    vs   Estonia on the Globe

Kyiv was once the Russian capital. Ukraine kicked out the old Tsar.
He moved to a swamp—St. Petersburg.
We’re getting ready for a fight. Northern Europe is building up

its military —NATO will help us.
Not the U.S.
They can’t decide which side they’re on.

The West is afraid to stand up for freedom.
They’re scared of nukes. Retribution.
Do nothing and you will lose everything.

Peter the Great, Tsar of Russia

Naïve leaders think they can make a deal with a Tsar.
For 500 years, Russian Tsars and Soviets tried to annex the Baltics.
Russians took us over. Then the Nazis. Then the Soviets. We fought back.

We’ve held off the Russians since 1990s when we got
independence by singing. That’s right.
One million Estonians sang against the Soviets day and night.

Estonian Women Singing Against the Soviets

We were lucky.
Not a drop of blood.

Russians don’t travel. Don’t know how others live. We Americans don’t travel that much either. When I’m asked about traveling, I’m careful

not to say much. People here are easily bored. Some are listening for what tribe I belong
to. I did not buy a “Greenland is not for sale T-shirt” in Nuuk, I bought a deep blue one

that was a map of the Fjords. Think climate. Thawing permafrost.
I’ve been traveling for over forty years. This time I came home to riots in LA.

Masked Ice Agents Arresting Immigrants

Immigrants are being arrested by agents wearing masks. Some detainees are sent to prisons in Central America, Cuba and Africa. Americans voted for this.

My husband’s parents were born in China. They had Boxer Rebellion scholarships to medical school in the U.S. They became naturalized citizens.

Becoming Naturalized Citizens

They hated the communists. Couldn’t go back home. Will Americans whose parents were born in China be targeted next? Like the American Japanese during WW II?

My husband was born in Indiana. I spent my whole life in California. My grandparents were born in Europe. I love the Dutch and Swiss but my home is in the U.S. 

I was home a week when my blood pressure rose. I went to the emergency room feeling like the salmon who couldn’t readjust in the brackish waters of home after living at sea. 

Sockeye Salmon

Tests showed a possible blood clot from the long flight. They let me go after they factored in my
age. American rage gave me the political bends. I don’t feel at home swimming 

in hostile waters. My home has the mightiest military in the world.
But—we have no ancient enemy outside ourselves. We’re only 250 years old.

I sing in praise of travel.
I sing in praise of singing for our rights and freedoms
unsafe though it is.

No Kings Demonstrations

Besides travel, Virginia Chen spent most of her life singing in choruses. She loves the idea of people singing together in religious congregations, community choruses, and other gatherings big and small. She cherishes the experience of singing with people from different backgrounds and cultures to make beautiful music—not war. When things are bad or good, we sing.

News from the Muse

News from the Muse of Lament and Dissent

Sara Spaulding-Phillips

Introduction

You are a story fed by generations
You carry songs of grief, triumph
Loss and joy
Feel their power as they ascend
Within you
            Joy Harjo “Prepare”
            Weaving Sundown in a Scarlet Light p. 86

Our world has changed drastically since last month, when the Muse of Lament and Dissent published the first of a series of political poems written by members of the Deep River Poetry Circle. On June 14th “No Kings” demonstrations all over our land brought some 6 million Americans out into the streets and public squares to give voice to their lament and dissent about the state of our country. In peaceful gatherings with handmade signs they protested the authoritarian regime which sends masked ICE agents to rip terrified immigrants out of their jobs and lives without due process, sends marauding DOGE members and their chainsaw wielding leader to fire thousands of civil servants and the staff of USAID without cause, and threatens Veterans Benefits, Social Security and Medicaid in order to give tax cuts to billionaires; I could go on. 

But, also during this month many of us learned of the “3.5% Rule” developed by political scientist Erica Chenowith, which says that authoritarian regimes have a difficult time withstanding the power of their people once 3.5% of the population mobilizes against them. This gives me hope and courage. Less hopeful is the President’s decision to go to war with Iran on June 21st, using enormous bunker busting bombs. Many believe this escalation will encourage Iran to continue to develop a nuclear weapon. How did we land in this dangerous hell realm? How did the way of life we took for granted just a few months ago get ripped to shreds? 

Note: If you are grateful to the activist group indivisible, which organized the “No Kings” as well as the earlier “Hands Off” demonstrations, please consider joining and/or donating to them: (indivisible.org). 

The Moon Is a River of Darkness

Jacqueline Thurston’s prose poem, “The Moon is a River of Darkness” braves an excruciating issue of our times, about a people whose lives have literally been ripped to shreds. On the wings of poetic imagination, we are transported to Gaza where the poem’s speaker is engaged in a heroic mission to sooth a terrified Palestinian child, and to find the Israeli activist Vivian Silver who disappeared on October 7th. Silver “linked arms with Palestinians and marched in protests” against the Israeli government’s denial of Palestinian rights. The poem’s speaker reveals that she wears her “rage like a buoy lighting the way.” But rage, and lighted buoys, tend to burn themselves out.

In the second section of the poem the speaker’s heroic determination unravels as she confesses: “I will do none of these things.” Like many of us who have suffered the horrors of the news from Gaza since the war began, the poem’s speaker is caught in an agonizing paralysis. She is back in painful reality—polarized America. She sees the dreadful truth--the slaughter, the devastation, the starvation and the echoes of the war in our own land. And then she reveals the horrible truth of Silver’s fate. In America today, protesting the war in Gaza can get you arrested for antisemitism even if you are a Jew. How can anything be solved in such times?

Thurston uses her own artwork as a kind of balm for her searing vision. Three strong images and her commentary on them illuminate her text and provide a counterpoint to the terrible truths of her poem. She reaches back in time for a Bob Dylan song from another difficult era and a poem about singing by Bertold Brecht. She ends her moving poem with a poignant peace “Offering” of seashell, feather and the uplifting image of the Holy Land as a flyway for migrating birds. 

Note: When I wrote this prose poem in November of 2023, I was enraged at the violence inflicted by two Semitic peoples upon one another. At that time, I could not have envisioned the heart-breaking images of starving children and a land reduced to rubble. I am heartened by the blunt assessment of Ehud Olmert, the twelfth Prime Minister of Israel, which appeared in an edition of Haaretz in late May of 2025.“What we are doing in Gaza now is a war of devastation: indiscriminate, limitless, cruel and criminal killing of civilians.” I continue to believe in the mission of inter-faith groups like Combatants for Peace and Women Wage Peace, but my days are filled with foreboding about the perilous times in which we are living.

The Moon Is a River of Darkness

Prose poem and images by Jacqueline Thurston
November 8, 2023

I will plunge through the gate at the Rafa border crossing and make my way to the heart of a city encircled by tanks. Wash the concrete and blood from the frightened face of a Palestinian child with enormous brown eyes and banish the nightmare that her life has become. Whisper “Malesh,” (“It doesn’t matter.”) knowing, of course, that it does matter, and croon “Fi Amanillah” (“In the protection of God.”)—over and over and over—until she stops sobbing. Make my way into the catacombs of Hamas’s underground city. When I find Vivian Silver, and I will find her, I will deliver her to her sons, their faces rivers of grief, who wait for her on the other side of a broken fence. How can these men who hold her prisoner not know she has dedicated her life to peace, driven ill children to Jerusalem for medical treatments, linked arms with Palestinians and marched in protests, believed she and they were comrades bound by a shared cause. I will walk through concrete walls, burning rubble, smoke-filled air—wearing my righteous anger like a buoy lighting the way through a difficult channel to the safety of a small calm port at night. I will turn Antony Blinken into a pillar of salt and release him from his prison of diplomatic rationality only when he brings this madness to an end.

“Between Two Worlds”

Mixed media image symbolizing the separate realms inhabited by hope and despair

and the secret inner world of the soul in contrast to the known elements of the outer world.

I will do none of these things. I will stare at the white ceiling of my study streaked with shadows cast by the streetlight outside my home and wait to be taken into the arms of night and finally sleep. In the morning, I will awaken to grim photographs of Palestinians being pulled from the rubble; a boy, barely ten, will turn away from the camera in anguish screaming. A child himself, he has just pulled the bodies of two children from a collapsed building. Two U.S. senators will visit kibbutzim, pause in front of uninhabitable homes, smell the stench of burnt rubber and human flesh, offer predictable platitudes, and leave.

I will listen to a Stanford student, a Syrian refugee studying computer science, describe being mowed down by a “white man with dirty blond hair” spewing curses and shouting “Fuck you and your people!” The young university student, a refugee from a war-torn country, will acknowledge that his attacker’s “hateful screams . . . still echo in my ears.” A woman who believed she was crashing her car into a Jewish school will be arrested by police in Indiana. The school, the Israelite School of Universal Practical Knowledge, is in fact an extremist organization that is anti-Israel. A sixty-nine-year-old Jew will decide to attend a pro-Israel rally in Southern California. He will be struck by a pro-Palestinian man with a megaphone and fall to the ground. His accused assailant will call 911, but the victim will die of massive head injuries in an antiseptic hospital.

“Genesis”

Mixed media image, an emblem of 

the interplay of dynamic, creative, and destructive forces.

Five weeks after the Hamas attack, Vivian Silver’s remains will be found in the charred detritus of the safe room in which she sought shelter. Hundreds of members of Women Wage Peace, an Israeli organization she co-chaired, will raise their voices in song at a celebration of her life. “How many deaths will it take ’til he knows that too many people have died?” The answer, my friend, cannot be “blowin’ in the wind,” for as Dylan’s edgy voice reminds us, “You don’t count the dead when God’s on your side.”

I will reach back in time; retrieve the words of a playwright and poet who fled his homeland and settled in an adopted beach community filled with palm trees, sunlight, and other German refugee intellectuals, only to be uprooted once again and cross an ocean to the land of his ancestors—his return driven by the McCarthy-era investigations.

In the dark times

Will there also be singing?

Yes, there will also be singing

About the dark times.

—Bertolt Brecht

“Offering”

Photograph celebrating fragile gifts from the sky and sea. (Bordered by a great sea to the West,

the Holy Land is a flyway for hundreds of different species of migrating birds.)

About Deep River: My creative life has been enriched by being a member of Deep River, a community of rare soul and substance. I have been nourished by the poems forged by members of this community and am grateful to Naomi Lowinsky, who has introduced us to many wonderful contemporary poets and shared her poems with us.