All Comments on 'At a Loss for Words'

it has a thoughtful soul-searching quality. i especially like the last lines because it is real and, for me, gets at the heart of the subject, like that quote about not speaking up as this one and that one is taken away--and then they came for me. haunting.

in keeping....like orwell thoughts here ..hum they say mexico is chipping the high ups...so they can connect to the criminal data base....soon there may be no need for books...says the www o)))...great write/blue

...writing get stronger and stronger. This is far better than your very early poems. Make sure to stay away from judgemental preaching...some of your stuff walks that fine line (but not this.).

a strong statement here tt!

Too late they realized their crime;

Jealously cheering repression of

Their competition ~ great works

Till all that's left is

Second rate crap.

This poem was mentioned in the Archival Review thread, in a picking through Lit's archive of over 34,000 poems.

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The evocative title workd on several levels, one by one unfolding as you read the poem. Initially, on the meta level. Dealing with monumental horrors eludes words. Still, we need to cope with what we hav, even if we find that the words are just what we have, not what is fitting to describe the matter.

***** On the concrete level the title resonates in a way which is so effective that it chills you. First, the loss of words is the physical barbaric act of an effort to annihilate a civilization by burning its books, the product of words.*****

Second, It’s the repression, the silencing then the disappearance and the physical death of the people who owned and authored the words - the building blocks of any human thought.

And third, it’d the shock of the recognition that repression on this level of brutality and degradation of human nature would never stop at a convenient point in say, only with one’s enemies, it comes to haunt you, bite you, then who knows…

Thanks for a rare contribution on an extremely difficult subject both in substance and in terms of the obstacles to even use art in depicting it. You did very well!

I must respond to what a previous poster said regarding the need to avoid preaching on the matter. If it was meant that the poem needs to stay neutral (I believe it meant to say something else) than it’s a totally misguided. But if it’s meant to advise you that the power of a poem is in showing rather than telling all that is wrong , than I have no debate with that comment. It’s just that I can not sit silent if I hear the echo of a positions of “ethical neutrality” In the name of any human endeavor. Nazism embarked its worst horrific crimes in the name of ethical neutrality – pertaining to science.

There are still to date efforts to claim ethical neutrality in art.

Recently, a teacher in the USA suggested an “objective neutral presentation” of the two following point of views: that of the supreme arian white Nordic race and that of the scientific view (the teacher had to hind another professional field for a living). Again, I am not suggesting that the poster was explicitly advocating “ethical neutrality” in the artistic presentation of the horrors of Nazism but it was unclear, thus my comments on that.

Past tragedies recalled ~ ever a timely reminder.