Robert Pinsky on the Guantanamo Poems

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Poet Robert Pinsky talks about the poems written at Guantanamo.

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Robert Pinsky on the Guantanamo Poems bigthink guantanamo poems guantanamo poetry literature issues poetry issues robert pinskyRobert Pinsky on the Guantanamo Poems

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Topic: The Guantanamo Poems

Robert Pinsky:  I did not collect the poems written at Guantanamo.  I had relatively little 
to do with that book.  That book was collected largely by attorneys who had volunteered 
at that time to work with people, who were detained often with minimal, amazingly 
minimal legal process.  People who were detained at Guantanamo, and I would assume 
with that, knowing very little about it that there was a tremendous range of people, a 
range culturally, a range of -- but I’m sure it ranges with people who are tremendously 
guilty of many things, the people who are innocent of many, many things.

The editor at the press that was about to publish that book originally talked to me about 
writing an introduction and they sent me the manuscript and I tried conscientiously to 
read the poems and I hope I correctly recognized my own inadequacy.  I was not 
conveyed to provide an introduction to these poems.  You would have to -- at the 
minimum, you would have to know something about Arabic poetry.  You would have to 
know a little bit about these cultures and they come from cultures in which amateur 
poetry is a very important component.

For me with amateur poetry in this country, I have taught adult classes.  I have taught in 
prisons.  I don’t say amateur with a sneer.  In many ways it’s possible to idealize a 
country in which there is a lot of amateur poetry.  It might be good for professionals like 
me, but I felt inadequate to write any introduction and at the same time I felt strongly 
about the abuses of liberties and that military people were shocked.  People of military -- 
legal military people were appalled at what was happening there and these guys were just 
in a tremendous fix that pickled their end.  They have been put in by the government of 
my country.  I didn’t want to just say, “Oh I am so sorry.  This is not my field.”  So I tried 
to write a blurb that would at least put my name in the book and say this is an urgent 
book for us to be aware of.  We should think about these people.  They shouldn’t just be 
sealed away in a part we are releasing from a government that we don’t recognize as a 
part of Cuba.

If you have read that in Phillth Sididis or Herodotus, you’d say, “I can’t figure these 
people.  I don’t know what’s going on here.”  Anyway there they are in this part of Cuba 
that’s refusing this government.  We refuse that we have anything to do with and we must 
just forget about them.  They need to be thought about and I was speaking -- because I 
had been appealed to and very aware that my gifts and knowledge, whatever they are as a 
poet, would not terrifically germane to the contents of that book.