Coming to Coming To Jakarta https://www.comingtojakarta.net Sat, 12 Jul 2025 23:27:01 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.5 246413723 Poetry and Terror https://www.comingtojakarta.net/2020/03/30/poetry-and-terror/ Tue, 31 Mar 2020 05:59:26 +0000 http://www.comingtojakarta.net/?p=476 Peter and I have turned our video discussions of Coming To Jakarta into a book, Poetry And Terror: Politics and Poetics in Coming To Jakarta. (Lexington Books, 2018) Most of the book consists of the transcribed interviews (polished and enhanced with supplementary notes) but Peter also added extensive analysis of the political developments in Indonesia since […]

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]]> Peter and I have turned our video discussions of Coming To Jakarta into a book, Poetry And Terror: Politics and Poetics in Coming To Jakarta. (Lexington Books, 2018) Most of the book consists of the transcribed interviews (polished and enhanced with supplementary notes) but Peter also added extensive analysis of the political developments in Indonesia since his poem was published, and wrote new material about his relationship to the poem and the role of poetry in the world.

At the publisher’s request, I’ve taken down our video discussions from YouTube and removing all the posts here that once linked to the videos. I hope that everybody who wanted to view them has been able to do so. If you’re a teacher interested in showing them to your students in conjunction with the study of Coming To Jakarta and/or this book, feel free to contact me.

 

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]]> 476 The American Deep State https://www.comingtojakarta.net/2014/11/23/the-american-deep-state/ https://www.comingtojakarta.net/2014/11/23/the-american-deep-state/#comments Sun, 23 Nov 2014 10:43:29 +0000 http://www.comingtojakarta.net/?p=430 A discussion with Peter Dale Scott about his new book, The American Deep State: Wall Street, Big Oil, and the Attack on U.S. Democracy. Buy the book from an independent bookseller Buy the book from Amazon

The post The American Deep State first appeared on Coming to Coming To Jakarta.

]]> A discussion with Peter Dale Scott about his new book, The American Deep State: Wall Street, Big Oil, and the Attack on U.S. Democracy.

Buy the book from an independent bookseller

Buy the book from Amazon

The post The American Deep State first appeared on Coming to Coming To Jakarta.

]]> https://www.comingtojakarta.net/2014/11/23/the-american-deep-state/feed/ 3 430 Greek Theater https://www.comingtojakarta.net/2014/09/07/greek-theater/ https://www.comingtojakarta.net/2014/09/07/greek-theater/#comments Sun, 07 Sep 2014 23:05:37 +0000 http://www.comingtojakarta.net/?p=394 The following is the final version of Peter Dale Scott’s much reworked poem “Greek Theater,” now subtitled, “Mario Savio and the Socratic Quest.” It replaces earlier versions of the poem that appeared on this blog. (First draft, second draft, third draft.) The poem will be published as the Epilogue of Peter’s prose political book, The […]

The post Greek Theater first appeared on Coming to Coming To Jakarta.

]]> The following is the final version of Peter Dale Scott’s much reworked poem “Greek Theater,” now subtitled, “Mario Savio and the Socratic Quest.” It replaces earlier versions of the poem that appeared on this blog. (First draft, second draft, third draft.) The poem will be published as the Epilogue of Peter’s prose political book, The Deep American State: Wall Street, Big Oil, and the Attack on U.S. Democracy, due from Rowman & Littlefield in November, 2014.

GREEK THEATER

Mario Savio and the Socratic Quest

But in diverting the city’s desires another way instead of complying with them…
that is the only business of a good citizen.
— Plato, Gorgias 517 B-C
It has taken weeks
of unsettled half-awareness
for me to recognize

the student wrestled to the ground Cohen Freedom's Orator 213
by six policemen in uniforms
a baton menacing his neck and tie

(an arm across his throat
to keep him from speaking) San Francisco Chronicle December 9 1964
on the cover of this book

about how J. Edgar Hoover
slipped lies to the San Francisco Examiner
advancing the career of Ronald Reagan Rosenfeld Subversives 212-13, 227

is Mario Savio leader of Berkeley Free Speech Movement
on the stage of the Greek Theater December 7 1964; Rosenfeld Subversives 224
wrecking the well-planned closure

of the assembly called to proclaim
an end to the protests and sit-ins
of the Free Speech Movement

and the inauguration
of a new era of freedom under law Rosenfeld Subversives 223
by an ambitious professor Cohen Freedom's Orator 213-14

hoping thereby to become
our next Chancellor
who defended the war on national TV

and is now less googled
than his daughter a language poet Leslie Scalapino
The anticlimax when Mario

came back out only to announce
there would be a Free Speech rally Cohen Freedom's Orator 213-14
on the Sproul Hall steps Rosenfeld Subversives 224

up-ended my own planned life
I was just a few yards away
at the same camera angle

one of those who had urged
the students to trust
the decency of those in power

my head then filled with Anglo-Latin
verse from the ninth century
why the return of a cuckoo in spring

spoke to the heart
expressing aspirations of friendship
more deeply than Virgil could Scott Alcuin’s Versus de Cuculo

and did more to invent Europe
at a higher level —
Christianus sum      I am a Christian

non possum militare —      I cannot make war Acta Maximiliani 1.3
than the battle stopping the Moors
on the banks of the Loire

two different kinds of power Douglass Gandhi and the Unspeakable 25
bia the power of dominance βία violence Arendt 93
versus peithein the power of persuasion πείθειν Schell Unconquerable World 218

the virtù of Macchiavelli
the founder of academic
political science

versus the politiké techné πολιτικῇ τέχνῃ Gorgias 521D
of Socrates and Gandhi
which persuades by the force of truth Kornfeld 108 Schell 119

the cop who thanked Howard Zinn
for his talk to the Police Academy
then pleaded with him desperately

to please leave the antiwar blockade
before a little later
battering him with an outsized club Ellsberg

versus Mario inspiring the crowd
to immobilize the campus police car
till Jack Weinberg inside it was released Cohen Freedom's Orator 98-120

the power to transcend enmity
as I had seen in an iconic moment
alone reading Plato's Gorgias

in the Ambassador's huge bed
when I was chargé d'affaires in Warsaw — stand-in for absent ambassador
that the way to change the world

was not through international treaties
but through changing the city's desires Plato Gorgias 503-21
the power of persuasion

versus that of the nightstick
or even the diplomatic service
with all its tempting frills —

the cook the chauffeur    that flag up ahead on the limo
the house party up the Hudson
where baffled ducks were released

for the half-drunk guests to shoot
the sit-down banquet at Schönbrunn Vienna Imperial Palace
for six hundred people

served by liveried footmen –
which I willingly abandoned
so I could teach in a university

the heritage of the Patrologia Latina
which I had skimmed so greedily
my first semester back

and then Dante    la mala condotta misguidance
è la cagion che'l mondo ha fatto reo is why the world goes wrong
e non natura che'n voi sia corrotta and not your nature that is corrupt
Dante Purgatorio 16:103-05
Well – little could I foresee
how Mario in an instant
(who himself had been inspired

by the plays of Sophocles
and Aeschylus and Euripides Cohen Freedom's Orator 35
before being beaten in Mississippi

for walking in public with a black man
as part of Freedom Summer) Cohen Freedom's Orator 59-60
had changed me from a Latinist

into an activist
no longer a mere spectator
(as I had been five days earlier

when the students filed into Sproul Hall
singing We shall overcome) December 2 1964; Rosenfeld 216-22
that same evening I spoke Scott Charlie Sellers 1

at the crisis faculty meeting Cohen Freedom's Orator 214-15
and only one month later
my first public appeal

to get troops out of Vietnam
which though I could not know it
would soon bring a painful end

to my evenings with Milosz
debating the right English
for what is poetry

that does not save
nations or peoples? Milosz New Collected Poems 78
a heartbreaking loss at the time Haven An Invisible Rope 69

but not one that deterred me
as much as the crazy violence
that developed after Mario

moved away from leadership Cohen Freedom's Orator 253
not wanting the Movement
to become too dependent on him Cohen Freedom's Orator 237-38

in the dramatic struggle between
two kinds of decency
one struggling for an end

to racial hiring
in the local supermarkets Rosenfeld Subversives 176-77
one that of the U.S. middle class

who did not want their kids dropping acid
or cursing Amerikkka Ruether America Amerikkka
and so when given a chance

voted for Ronald Reagan
the great persuader Broder Washington Post 6/7/04
while Richard Aoki

as a paid FBI informant
armed the Black Panthers Rosenfeld Subversives 418-19, 421
But Mario returned in the 1980s

and revived a dormant campus
changing the city's desires Plato Gorgias 517 B-C
with his use of philosophy

Socrates and Thoreau Cohen Freedom's Orator 202
when he spoke of shifting our values
for an America less dominated

by production for war
and more by human needs Cohen Freedom's Orator 280, 348
inspiring – yes! — even faculty like myself

to monitor a divestment protest
in support of the South African resistance Rosenfeld Subversives 501
with white armbands torn from a sheet in our basement

all helping to stoke a nationwide demonstration 15 ARRESTED New York Times 4/17/85
till finally the UC Regents
divested $3 billion in funds Skelton Los Angeles Times 12/11/13

so that — I do believe —
Mario helped contribute
to the liberation of South Africa

Mandela himself credited California
with helping push his country
toward racial integration Skelton Los Angeles Times 12/11/13

Truth-force as history!    Oh John Searle Satyagraha
you recognized in your student Mario's speeches
a kind of freshness combined

with a certain deep intellectual vision Cohen Freedom's Orator 189
but when you later came to see the movement
as a bunch of losers Cohen Freedom's Orator 317

with unreasonable expectations Searle Interview 5
you were resuming your distinguished career
as an academic philosopher

while it was Mario
at what you called a second-rate university Cohen Freedom's Orator 316
who remained on the straight path

of the Socratic quest
to change by persuasion
our misguided world


curbing the authority of violence
by appealing to those hints of freedom
encoded in our DNA

that truth-force enabling a movement
to overcome as Mario said
a machine so odious

you've got to make it stop Cohen Freedom's Orator 183, 458-59

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Acta Maximiliani, ed. H. Musurillo. The Acts of the Christian Martyrs. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972.

Hannah Arendt. Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political Thought. New York: Penguin Books, 1993.

David S. Broder, “The Great Persuader,” Washington Post, June 7, 2004, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A21076-2004Jun6.html.

Robert Cohen. Freedom’s Orator: Mario Savio and the Radical Legacy of the 1960s. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.

James W. Douglass. Gandhi and the Unspeakable: His Final Experiment with Truth, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2012.

Daniel Ellsberg, “A Memory of Howard Zinn.” AntiWar.com, January 27, 2010, http://antiwar.com/blog/2010/01/27/a-memory-of-howard-zinn/.

“15 Arrested on Berkeley Campus in Protest on South Africa Policy.” New York Times, April 17, 1985, http://www.nytimes.com/1985/04/17/us/15-arrested-on-berkeley-campus-in-protest-on-south-africa-policy.html.
Mahatma Gandhi, ed. Louis Fischer. The Essential Gandhi: An Anthology of His Writings on His Life, Work, and Ideas.

Ralph J. Gleason, “The Tragedy at The Greek Theater,” San Francisco Chronicle, December 9, 1964, http://www.fsm-a.org/stacks/R_Gleason.html.

Cynthia Haven, ed. An Invisible Rope: Portraits of Czeslaw Milosz. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2011. Contains Peter Dale Scott, “A Difficult, Inspirational Giant.”

Jack Kornfield. Bringing Home the Dharma: Awakening Right Where You Are.
Boston: Shambhala, 2011.

Seth Rosenfeld. Subversives: The FBI’s War on Student Radicals, and Reagan’s Rise to Power. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012.

Rosemary Radford Ruether. America, Amerikkka : elect nation and imperial violence. Oakville, CT : Equinox, 2007.

Jonathan Schell. The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People. New York: Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt, 2003.

Peter Dale Scott, “Alcuin’s Versus de Cuculo: the Vision of Pastoral Friendship,” Studies in Philology, LXII, 4 (July 1965), 510-30, http://www.enotes.com/alcuin-essays/alcuin/peter-dale-scott-essay-date-july-1965.

Peter Dale Scott. American War Machine: Deep Politics, the CIA Global Drug Connection, and the Road to Afghanistan. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010.

Peter Dale Scott. “Charlie Sellers at Berkeley.” A Tribute at the Charles G. Sellers 90th Birthday Symposium, Berkeley, CA, September 7, 2013. http://nature.berkeley.edu/~c-merchant/Sellers/tributes/1.pdf.

John Searle Interview. Conversations with History, Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley. http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people/Searle/searle-con5.html.

George Skelton. “Leading the way to justice in South Africa.” Los Angeles Times, December 11, 2013, http://articles.latimes.com/2013/dec/11/local/la-me-cap-mandela-20131212.
 


 

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]]> https://www.comingtojakarta.net/2014/09/07/greek-theater/feed/ 2 394 More Deep Politics https://www.comingtojakarta.net/2013/10/06/more-deep-politics/ https://www.comingtojakarta.net/2013/10/06/more-deep-politics/#comments Sun, 06 Oct 2013 07:26:38 +0000 http://www.comingtojakarta.net/?p=338 We take another break from the book to discuss more Deep Politics. |<< First video < All videos > Next video >>> subscribe: RSS | Twitter | Facebook | Google+

The post More Deep Politics first appeared on Coming to Coming To Jakarta.

]]> We take another break from the book to discuss more Deep Politics.

|<< First video < All videos > Next video >>>

subscribe: RSS | Twitter | Facebook | Google+


The post More Deep Politics first appeared on Coming to Coming To Jakarta.

]]> https://www.comingtojakarta.net/2013/10/06/more-deep-politics/feed/ 1 338 Greek Theater: new draft https://www.comingtojakarta.net/2013/08/01/greek-theater-new-draft/ https://www.comingtojakarta.net/2013/08/01/greek-theater-new-draft/#comments Thu, 01 Aug 2013 18:18:05 +0000 http://www.comingtojakarta.net/?p=297 UPDATE: a final draft of this poem has been posted here. This is a new draft of a poem by Peter Dale Scott that was originally posted here in order receive feedback from readers. Here is Peter’s description of this revision: I consider this a near-final version of my poem. I think I’ve pretty much […]

The post Greek Theater: new draft first appeared on Coming to Coming To Jakarta.

]]> UPDATE: a final draft of this poem has been posted here.

This is a new draft of a poem by Peter Dale Scott that was originally posted here in order receive feedback from readers. Here is Peter’s description of this revision:

I consider this a near-final version of my poem. I think I’ve pretty much ended changing it on my own initiative. But would still welcome feedback from readers, which has been helpful in the past.

You can read the original draft along with the comments it received here, and the second draft and its comments here.

GREEK THEATER

How Mario Savio Changed My Life

But in diverting the city’s desires another way instead of complying with them…
that is the only business of a good citizen.
— Plato, Gorgias 517 B-C
It has taken weeks
of unsettled half-awareness
for me to recognize
the student wrestled to the ground Cohen Freedom’s Orator 213
by six policemen in uniforms
a baton menacing his neck and tie
(an arm across his throat
to keep him from speaking) San Francisco Chronicle December 9 1964
on the cover of this book
about how J. Edgar Hoover
slipped lies to the San Francisco Examiner
advancing the career of Ronald Reagan Seth Rosenfeld Subversives 212-13, 227
is Mario Savio leader of Berkeley Free Speech Movement
on the stage of the Greek Theater December 7 1964; Rosenfeld Subversives 224
wrecking the well-planned closure
of the assembly called to proclaim
an end to the protests and sit-ins
of the Free Speech Movement
and the inauguration
of a new era of freedom under law Rosenfeld Subversives 223
by an ambitious professor Cohen Freedom’s Orator 213-14
hoping thereby to become
our next Chancellor
who defended the war on TV
and is now less googled
than his daughter a language poet Leslie Scalapino
The anticlimax when Mario
came back out to announce
there would be a Free Speech rally Cohen Freedom’s Orator 213-14
on the Sproul Hall steps Rosenfeld Subversives 224
up-ended my own planned life
I was just a few yards away
at the same camera angle
one of those who had urged
the students to trust
the decency of those in power
my head then filled with Anglo-Latin
verse from the ninth century
why the return of a cuckoo in spring
spoke to the heart
expressing aspirations of friendship
more deeply than Virgil could Scott Alcuin’s Versus de Cuculo
and did more to invent Europe
at a higher level —
Christianus sum I am a Christian
non possum militare — I cannot make war – Acta Maximiliani 1.3
than the battle stopping the Moors
on the banks of the Loire
two different kinds of power
the power of dominance Douglass Gandhi and the Unspeakable 25
and the power of persuasion
through not enmity but love
as I had seen in an iconic moment
alone reading Plato’s Gorgias Plato Gorgias 503-21
in the Ambassador’s huge bed
when I was chargé d’affaires in Warsaw — stand-in for absent ambassador
the power of persuasion
and that of the nightstick – Cf. Arendt Between Past and Future, 93
the first a traditio
so precious and fragile
I gave up all those frills —
the cook my chauffeur        that flag up ahead on the limo
the house party up the Hudson
where baffled ducks were released
for the guests to shoot
the sit-down banquet at Schönbrunn
for six hundred people
served by liveried footmen —
so I could teach in a university
the heritage of the Patrologia Latina
which I had skimmed so greedily
my first semester back
Well – little could I foresee
how Mario in an instant
(who himself had been inspired
by the plays of Sophocles
and Aeschylus and Euripides Cohen Freedom’s Orator 35
before being beaten in Mississippi
for walking in public with a black man
as part of Freedom Summer) Cohen Freedom’s Orator 59-60
had changed me from a Latinist
into an activist
no longer a mere spectator
(as I had been five days earlier
when the students filed into Sproul Hall
singing We shall overcome) December 2 1964; Rosenfeld 216-22
that same evening I spoke
at the crisis faculty meeting Cohen Freedom’s Orator 214-15
and only one month later
my first public appeal
to get troops out of Vietnam
which though I could not know it
would soon bring a painful end
to my evenings with Milosz
debating the right English
for what is poetry
that does not save
nations or peoples? Milosz New Collected Poems 78
a heartbreaking loss at the time Haven An Invisible Rope 69
but not one that deterred me
as much as the crazy violence
that broke out on all sides
after Mario resigned his leadership
not wanting the Movement
to become too dependent on him Cohen Freedom’s Orator 237-38
the gates opened
to years of hate and tear gas
from Filthy Speech to Prairie Fire Smelser Reflections 30-38
and the struggle between
two kinds of decency
one struggling for an end
to racial hiring
in the local supermarkets Rosenfeld Subversives 176-77
one that of the U.S. middle class
who did not want their kids dropping acid
or cursing Amerikkka Ruether America Amerikkka
and so when given a chance
voted for Ronald Reagan
the great persuader Broder Washington Post 6/7/04
while Richard Aoki
as a paid FBI informant
armed the Black Panthers Rosenfeld Subversives 418-19, 421
and I by then was teaching
Mao’s Talks at the Yenan Forum
love is a concept Mao Tse-tung 260
Fundamentally we do not start from a concept Scott Rumors of No Law 43
along with Lenin Gandhi and T.S. Eliot
before I chose Gandhi
the approach to Truth is through love Gandhi’s Bible 2001, 169
Because once one has seen
a student’s cheek under a boot
as an example of freedom under law
and a vivid pantomime
of the two kinds of power
one has to choose between
the cop who thanked Howard Zinn
for his talk to the Police Academy
then pleaded with him desperately
to please leave the antiwar blockade
before a little later
battering him with an outsized club Ellsberg A Memory
or else the satyagraha truthforce nonviolence
grounded on those hints
of human freedom
encoded in our DNA
which empowered those like Mario
in the American South
with more reason than Gandhi had
to fear death McWhorter Carry Me Home 199
who nonetheless overcame
the machine so odious
you’ve got to make it stop Cohen Freedom’s Orator 183, 458-59

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Acta Maximiliani, ed. H. Musurillo. The Acts of the Christian Martyrs. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972.Hannah Arendt. Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political Thought. New York: Penguin Books, 1993.

Hannah Arendt. Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political Thought. New York: Penguin Books, 1993.

David S. Broder, “The Great Persuader,” Washington Post, June 7, 2004, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A21076-2004Jun6.html.

Robert Cohen. Freedom’s Orator: Mario Savio and the Radical Legacy of the 1960s. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.

James W. Douglass. Gandhi and the Unspeakable: His Final Experiment with Truth, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2012.

Daniel Ellsberg, “A Memory of Howard Zinn.” AntiWar.com, January 27, 2010, http://antiwar.com/blog/2010/01/27/a-memory-of-howard-zinn/.

Mahatma Gandhi, ed. Louis Fischer. The Essential Gandhi: An Anthology of His Writings on His Life, Work, and Ideas.

Mahatma Gandhi, ed. William W. Emilsen. Gandhi’s Bible. Delhi: ISPCK, 2001.

Ralph J. Gleason, “The Tragedy at The Greek Theater,” San Francisco Chronicle, December 9, 1964, http://www.fsm-a.org/stacks/R_Gleason.html.

Robert Hass, “Poet-Bashing Police,” New York Times, November 19, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/20/opinion/sunday/at-occupy-berkeley-beat-poets-has-new-meaning.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.

Cynthia Haven, ed. An Invisible Rope: Portraits of Czeslaw Milosz. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2011. Contains Peter Dale Scott, “A Difficult, Inspirational Giant.”

Mao Tse-tung. Mao Tse-tung: An Anthology of His Writings. New York: New American Library. 1962.

Diane McWhorter. Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama: The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001.

Seth Rosenfeld. Subversives: The FBI’s War on Student Radicals, and Reagan’s Rise to Power. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012.

Rosemary Radford Ruether. America, Amerikkka : elect nation and imperial violence. Oakville, CT : Equinox, 2007.

Jonathan Schell. The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People. New York: Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt, 2003.

Peter Dale Scott, “Alcuin’s Versus de Cuculo: the Vision of Pastoral Friendship,” Studies in Philology, LXII, 4 (July 1965), 510-30, http://www.enotes.com/alcuin-essays/alcuin/peter-dale-scott-essay-date-july-1965.

Peter Dale Scott. American War Machine: Deep Politics, the CIA Global Drug Connection, and the Road to Afghanistan. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010.

Neil J. Smelser. Reflections on the University of California: From the Free Speech Movement to the Global University. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010.

 

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]]> https://www.comingtojakarta.net/2013/08/01/greek-theater-new-draft/feed/ 2 297 Greek Theater: second draft https://www.comingtojakarta.net/2013/03/13/greek-theater-second-draft/ https://www.comingtojakarta.net/2013/03/13/greek-theater-second-draft/#comments Wed, 13 Mar 2013 23:37:22 +0000 http://www.comingtojakarta.net/?p=224 UPDATE: a final draft of this poem has been posted here. This is the second draft of a poem by Peter Dale Scott that was originally posted here in order receive feedback from readers. You can read the original draft along with the comments it received here, and what will probably be the final draft […]

The post Greek Theater: second draft first appeared on Coming to Coming To Jakarta.

]]> UPDATE: a final draft of this poem has been posted here.

This is the second draft of a poem by Peter Dale Scott that was originally posted here in order receive feedback from readers. You can read the original draft along with the comments it received here, and what will probably be the final draft here. (Though you’re still invited to make comments on it.)

GREEK THEATER

How Mario Savio Changed My Life

 

But in diverting the city’s desires another way instead of complying with them…
that is the only business of a good citizen.
— Plato, Gorgias 517 B-C
It has taken weeks
of unsettled half-awareness
for me to recognize
the student wrestled to the ground Cohen Freedom’s Orator 213
by six policemen in uniforms
a baton menacing his neck and tie
(an arm across his throat
to keep him from speaking) San Francisco Chronicle December 9 1964
on the cover of this book
about how J. Edgar Hoover
slipped lies to the San Francisco Examiner
advancing the career of Ronald Reagan Seth Rosenfeld Subversives 212-13, 227
is Mario Savio
on the stage of the Greek Theater December 7 1964; Rosenfeld Subversives 224
wrecking the well-planned closure
of the assembly called to proclaim
an end to the protests and sit-ins
of the Free Speech Movement
and the inauguration
of a new era of freedom under law Rosenfeld Subversives 223
by an ambitious professor Cohen Freedom’s Orator 213-14
hoping thereby to become
our next Chancellor
who defended the war on TV
and is now less googled
than his daughter a language poet Leslie Scalapino
The anticlimax when Mario
came back out to announce
there would be a Free Speech rally Cohen Freedom’s Orator 213-14
on the Sproul Hall steps Rosenfeld Subversives 224
up-ended my own planned life
I was just a few yards away
at the same camera angle
one of those who had urged
the students to trust
the decency of those in power
my head then filled with Anglo-Latin
verse from the ninth century
why the return of a cuckoo in spring
spoke to the heart
expressing aspirations of friendship
more deeply than Virgil could Scott Alcuin’s Versus de Cuculo
and did more to invent Europe
at a higher level —
Christianus sum I am a Christian
non possum militare — I cannot make war – Acta Maximiliani 1.3
than the battle stopping the Moors
on the banks of the Loire
two different kinds of power
the power of dominance Douglass Gandhi and the Unspeakable 25
and the power of persuasion
through not enmity but love
as I had seen in an iconic moment
alone reading Plato’s Gorgias Plato Gorgias 503-21
in the Ambassador’s huge bed
when I was chargé d’affaires in Warsaw —
the power of persuasion
and that of the nightstick – Cf. Arendt Between Past and Future, 93
the first a traditio
so precious and fragile
I gave up all those frills
(my chauffeur        that flag up ahead on the limo)
to help preserve it in a university
Well – little could I foresee
how Mario in an instant
had changed me from a Latinist
into an activist
no longer a mere spectator
(as I had been five days earlier
when the students filed into Sproul Hall
singing We shall overcome) December 2 1964; Rosenfeld 216-22
that same evening I spoke
at the crisis faculty meeting Cohen Freedom’s Orator 214-15
and only one month later
my first public appeal
to get troops out of Vietnam
which though I could not know it
was doomed to help end
my evenings with Milosz
debating the right English
for what is poetry
that does not save
nations or peoples? Milosz New Collected Poems 78
a heartbreaking loss at the time Haven An Invisible Rope 69
but not one that deterred me
as much as the crazy violence
that broke out on all sides
the gates opened
to a decade of tear gas
from Filthy Speech to Prairie Fire Smelser Reflections 30-38
and the struggle between
two kinds of decency
one struggling for an end
to racial hiring
in the local supermarkets Rosenfeld Subversives 176-77
one that of the U.S. middle class
who did not want their kids dropping acid
or cursing Amerikkka Ruether America Amerikkka
and so when given a chance
voted for Ronald Reagan
the great persuader Broder Washington Post 6/7/04
while Richard Aoki
as a paid FBI informant
armed the Black Panthers Rosenfeld Subversives 418-19, 421
and while I discomforted
by the screeds of the Situationnistes’
plans for Paris ‘68
plastered on the outer walls
of Cody’s bookstore
You have to maim a horse
on stage to remind these people Scott Rumors of No Law 43
tried to write like Brecht
whose Entfremdungseffekt alienation effect
leaves you wishing for something more
and I quoted from Chairman Mao’s
Talks at the Yenan Forum
which by then I was teaching
along with Lenin Gandhi and T.S. Eliot
to a large undergraduate class
love is a concept Mao Tse-tung 260
Fundamentally we do not start from a concept Scott Rumors of No Law 43
before I decided to follow Gandhi
the approach to Truth is through love Gandhi’s Bible 2001, 169
But once one has seen
a student’s cheek under a boot
as an example of freedom under law
and a vivid pantomime
on a political stage
of the two kinds of power
one has to choose between
the power of the Internet
versus the killer drone
either the troops with DEA equipment
who massacred dozens of students
at Thammasat University in Bangkok Scott American War Machine 127
and the cop who thanked Howard Zinn
for his talk to the Police Academy
then pled with him desperately
to please leave the antiwar blockade
before a little later
battering him with an outsized club Ellsberg A Memory
or the power of satyagraha truthforce nonviolence
which changed the American South
and expelled Russian troops from Poland Schell Unconquerable World 227-31
encouraging me to search
at the limits of language
in the spirit of Mario
for new Socratic energies
(grounded on those hints
of human freedom
encoded in our DNA)
at a higher level
than the Occupy movement
still struggling to break free
from the habits of the past
that less than a year ago
led the UC campus police
to drag my colleague Celeste Langan
a Wordsworth scholar
across the grass by her hair Robert Hass New York Times November 19 2011

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Acta Maximiliani, ed. H. Musurillo. The Acts of the Christian Martyrs. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972.Hannah Arendt. Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political Thought. New York: Penguin Books, 1993.

David S. Broder, “The Great Persuader,” Washington Post, June 7, 2004, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A21076-2004Jun6.html.

Robert Cohen. Freedom’s Orator: Mario Savio and the Radical Legacy of the 1960s. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.

James W. Douglass. Gandhi and the Unspeakable: His Final Experiment with Truth, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2012.

Daniel Ellsberg, “A Memory of Howard Zinn.” AntiWar.com, January 27, 2010, http://antiwar.com/blog/2010/01/27/a-memory-of-howard-zinn/.

Mahatma Gandhi, ed. Louis Fischer. The Essential Gandhi: An Anthology of His Writings on His Life, Work, and Ideas.

Mahatma Gandhi, ed. William W. Emilsen. Gandhi’s Bible. Delhi: ISPCK, 2001.

Ralph J. Gleason, “The Tragedy at The Greek Theater,” San Francisco Chronicle, December 9, 1964, http://www.fsm-a.org/stacks/R_Gleason.html.

Robert Hass, “Poet-Bashing Police,” New York Times, November 19, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/20/opinion/sunday/at-occupy-berkeley-beat-poets-has-new-meaning.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.

Cynthia Haven, ed. An Invisible Rope: Portraits of Czeslaw Milosz. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2011. Contains Peter Dale Scott, “A Difficult, Inspirational Giant.”

Mao Tse-tung. Mao Tse-tung: An Anthology of His Writings. New York: New American Library. 1962.

Seth Rosenfeld. Subversives: The FBI’s War on Student Radicals, and Reagan’s Rise to Power. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012.

Rosemary Radford Ruether. America, Amerikkka : elect nation and imperial violence. Oakville, CT : Equinox, 2007.

Jonathan Schell. The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People. New York: Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt, 2003.

Peter Dale Scott, “Alcuin’s Versus de Cuculo: the Vision of Pastoral Friendship,” Studies in Philology, LXII, 4 (July 1965), 510-30, http://www.enotes.com/alcuin-essays/alcuin/peter-dale-scott-essay-date-july-1965.

Peter Dale Scott. American War Machine: Deep Politics, the CIA Global Drug Connection, and the Road to Afghanistan. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010.

Neil J. Smelser. Reflections on the University of California: From the Free Speech Movement to the Global University. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010.

 

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]]> https://www.comingtojakarta.net/2013/03/13/greek-theater-second-draft/feed/ 4 224 Greek Theater: a poem https://www.comingtojakarta.net/2013/02/28/greek-theater-a-poem/ https://www.comingtojakarta.net/2013/02/28/greek-theater-a-poem/#comments Thu, 28 Feb 2013 02:15:38 +0000 http://www.comingtojakarta.net/?p=144 UPDATE: a final draft of this poem has been posted here. The following is a new poem by Peter Dale Scott, which he is posting on this blog in order to solicit public feedback for future revision. Here is his message to readers of this post: For the first time in my life, I am […]

The post Greek Theater: a poem first appeared on Coming to Coming To Jakarta.

]]> UPDATE: a final draft of this poem has been posted here.

The following is a new poem by Peter Dale Scott, which he is posting on this blog in order to solicit public feedback for future revision. Here is his message to readers of this post:

For the first time in my life, I am publishing a Final Draft of a poem on the Internet, with an invitation to viewers to record, not just their likes or dislikes, but also specific comments on the poem where they think it could be improved. The period for possible changes will continue for a few weeks.

Eventually I hope to post a hypertext version of the poem with the sidenotes and other parts of the poem linked directly to relevant source or background material.

My very great thanks to my friend and collaborator Freeman Ng, creator of this website.


— Peter Dale Scott

Note: a second draft of this poem has now been posted, here.
And a third and probably final draft here.

GREEK THEATER

How Mario Savio Changed My Life

But in diverting the city’s desires another way instead of complying with them…
that is the only business of a good citizen.
— Plato, Gorgias 517 B-C
It has taken weeks
of unsettled half-awareness
for me to recognize
the student wrestled to the ground Cohen Freedom’s Orator 213
by six policemen in uniforms
a baton menacing his neck and tie
(an arm across his throat
to keep him from speaking) San Francisco Chronicle December 9 1964
on the cover of this book
about how J. Edgar Hoover
slipped lies to the San Francisco Examiner
advancing the career of Ronald Reagan Seth Rosenfeld Subversives 212-13, 227
is Mario Savio
on the stage of the Greek Theater December 7 1964; Rosenfeld Subversives 224
wrecking the well-planned closure
of the assembly called to proclaim
an end to the protests and sit-ins
of the Free Speech Movement
and the inauguration
of a new era of freedom under law Rosenfeld Subversives 223
by an ambitious professor Cohen Freedom’s Orator 213-14
hoping thereby to become
our next Chancellor
who defended the war on TV
and is now less googled
than his daughter a language poet Leslie Scalapino
The anticlimax when Mario
came back out to announce
there would be a Free Speech rally Cohen Freedom’s Orator 213-14
on the Sproul Hall steps Rosenfeld Subversives 224
up-ended my own planned life
I was just a few yards away
at the same camera angle
one of those who had urged
the students to trust
the decency of those in power
my head then filled with Anglo-Latin
verse from the ninth century
why the return of a cuckoo in spring
spoke to the heart
expressing aspirations of friendship
more deeply than Virgil could Scott Alcuin’s Versus de Cuculo
and did more to invent Europe
at a higher level —
Christianus sum I am a Christian
non possum militare — I cannot make war – Acta Maximiliani 1.3
than the battle stopping the Moors
on the banks of the Loire
two different kinds of power
as I had seen in an iconic moment
alone reading Plato’s Gorgias Plato Gorgias 503-21
in the Ambassador’s huge bed
when I was chargé d’affaires in Warsaw —
the power of persuasion
and that of the nightstick – Cf. Arendt Between Past and Future, 93
the first a traditio
so precious and fragile
I gave up all those frills
(my chauffeur        that flag up ahead on the limo)
to help preserve it in a university
Well – little could I foresee
how Mario in an instant
had changed me from a Latinist
into an activist
no longer a mere spectator
(as I had been five days earlier
when the students filed into Sproul Hall
singing We shall overcome) December 2 1964; Rosenfeld 216-22
that same evening I spoke
at the crisis faculty meeting Cohen Freedom’s Orator 214-15
and only one month later
my first public appeal
to get troops out of Vietnam
which though I could not know it
was doomed to help end
my evenings with Milosz
debating the right English
for what is poetry
that does not save
nations or peoples? Milosz New Collected Poems 78
a heartbreaking loss at the time Haven An Invisible Rope 69
but not one that deterred me
as much as the crazy violence
that broke out on all sides
the gates opened
to a decade of tear gas
from Filthy Speech to Prairie Fire Smelser Reflections 30-38
and the struggle between
two kinds of decency
one struggling for an end
to racial hiring
in the local supermarkets Rosenfeld Subversives 176-77
one that of the U.S. middle class
who did not want their kids dropping acid
or cursing Amerikkka Ruether America Amerikkka
and so when given a chance
voted for Ronald Reagan
the great persuader Broder Washington Post 6/7/04
(who bankrupted Gorbachev) Mann Rebellion of Ronald Reagan 248
while Richard Aoki
as a paid FBI informant
armed the Black Panthers Rosenfeld Subversives 418-19, 421
But once one has seen
a student’s cheek under a boot
as an example of freedom under law
and a vivid pantomime
on a political stage
of the two kinds of power
one has to choose between
the power of the Internet
versus the killer drone
either the troops with DEA equipment
who massacred dozens of students
at Thammasat University in Bangkok Scott American War Machine 127
and the cop who thanked Howard Zinn
for his talk to the Police Academy
then pled with him desperately
to please leave the antiwar blockade
before a little later
battering him with an outsized club Ellsberg A Memory
or the power of nonviolence
which changed the American South
and expelled Russian troops from Poland Schell Unconquerable World 227-31
encouraging me to search
at the limits of language
in the spirit of Mario
for new Socratic energies
(grounded on those hints
of human freedom
encoded in our DNA)
at a higher level
than the Occupy movement
still struggling to break free
from the habits of the past
that less than a year ago
led the UC campus police
to arrest my colleague Celeste Langan
after dragging her eight feet
by her hair Robert Hass New York Times November 19 2011

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Acta Maximiliani, ed. H. Musurillo. The Acts of the Christian Martyrs. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972.Hannah Arendt. Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political Thought. New York: Penguin Books, 1993.

David S. Broder, “The Great Persuader,” Washington Post, June 7, 2004, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A21076-2004Jun6.html.

Robert Cohen. Freedom’s Orator: Mario Savio and the Radical Legacy of the 1960s. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Daniel Ellsberg, “A Memory of Howard Zinn.” AntiWar.com, January 27, 2010, http://antiwar.com/blog/2010/01/27/a-memory-of-howard-zinn/.

Ralph J. Gleason, “The Tragedy at The Greek Theater,” San Francisco Chronicle, December 9, 1964, http://www.fsm-a.org/stacks/R_Gleason.html.

Robert Hass, “Poet-Bashing Police,” New York Times, November 19, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/20/opinion/sunday/at-occupy-berkeley-beat-poets-has-new-meaning.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.

Cynthia Haven, ed. An Invisible Rope: Portraits of Czeslaw Milosz. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2011. Contains Peter Dale Scott, “A Difficult, Inspirational Giant.”

James Mann. The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan: A History of the End of the Cold War. New York: Viking, 2009.

Seth Rosenfeld. Subversives: The FBI’s War on Student Radicals, and Reagan’s Rise to Power. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012.

Rosemary Radford Ruether. America, Amerikkka : elect nation and imperial violence. Oakville, CT : Equinox, 2007.

Jonathan Schell. The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People. New York: Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt, 2003.

Peter Dale Scott, “Alcuin’s Versus de Cuculo: the Vision of Pastoral Friendship,” Studies in Philology, LXII, 4 (July 1965), 510-30, http://www.enotes.com/alcuin-essays/alcuin/peter-dale-scott-essay-date-july-1965.

Peter Dale Scott. American War Machine: Deep Politics, the CIA Global Drug Connection, and the Road to Afghanistan. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010.

Neil J. Smelser. Reflections on the University of California: From the Free Speech Movement to the Global University (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010).

 

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]]> https://www.comingtojakarta.net/2013/02/28/greek-theater-a-poem/feed/ 16 144 Tilting Point https://www.comingtojakarta.net/2013/01/06/tilting-point/ https://www.comingtojakarta.net/2013/01/06/tilting-point/#comments Sun, 06 Jan 2013 22:03:37 +0000 http://www.comingtojakarta.net/?p=107 We take a break from the Coming To Jakarta readings to discuss Peter’s new poetry collection: Tilting Point.   Buy the book from:  Amazon.com (sorry, it’s not possible to order this book from Indiebound.org yet) subscribe: RSS | Twitter | Facebook | Google+

The post Tilting Point first appeared on Coming to Coming To Jakarta.

]]> We take a break from the Coming To Jakarta readings to discuss Peter’s new poetry collection: Tilting Point.

 

Buy the book from: 

Amazon.com
(sorry, it’s not possible to order this book from Indiebound.org yet)

subscribe: RSS | Twitter | Facebook | Google+

The post Tilting Point first appeared on Coming to Coming To Jakarta.

]]> https://www.comingtojakarta.net/2013/01/06/tilting-point/feed/ 2 107 Deep Politics Intro https://www.comingtojakarta.net/2012/07/29/deep-politics-intro/ https://www.comingtojakarta.net/2012/07/29/deep-politics-intro/#comments Sun, 29 Jul 2012 23:39:21 +0000 http://www.comingtojakarta.net/?p=69 We take a break from the poem to discuss the subject of Deep Politics that Peter writes about in his prose books. |<< First video < All videos > Next video >>> Buy the book: from Amazon.com from a local independent bookstore through IndieBound.org subscribe: RSS | Twitter | Facebook | Google+

The post Deep Politics Intro first appeared on Coming to Coming To Jakarta.

]]> We take a break from the poem to discuss the subject of Deep Politics that Peter writes about in his prose books.


|<< First video < All videos > Next video >>>

Buy the book: from Amazon.com
from a local independent bookstore through IndieBound.org

subscribe: RSS | Twitter | Facebook | Google+

The post Deep Politics Intro first appeared on Coming to Coming To Jakarta.

]]> https://www.comingtojakarta.net/2012/07/29/deep-politics-intro/feed/ 1 69