Poetry and Terror: Politics and Poetics in Coming to Jakarta

by Peter Dale Scott University of California, Berkeley, Freeman Ng (Editor), Robert Hass Robert Hass (Foreword by)

Overview

A study at many levels of Scott’s long poem Coming to Jakarta, a book-length response to a midlife crisis triggered in part by the author’s initial inability to share his knowledge and horror about American involvement in the great Indonesian massacre of 1965. Interviews with Ng supply fuller information about the poem’s discussions of: a) how this psychological trauma led to an explorations of violence in American society and then, after a key recognition, in the poet himself; b) the poem's look at east-west relations through the lens of the yin-yang, spiritual-secular doubleness of the human condition; c) how the process of writing the poem led to the recovery of memories too threatening at first to be retained by his normal presentational self, and d) the mystery of right action, guided by the Bhagavad Gita and the maxim in the Gospel of Thomas that "If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you.”

Led by the interviews to greater self-awareness, Scott then analyses his poem as also an elegy, not just for the dead in Indonesia, but “for the passing of the Sixties era, when so many of us imagined that a Movement might achieve major changes for a better America.” Subsequent chapters develop how human doubleness can lead to an inner tension between the needs of politics and the needs of poetry, and how some poetry can serve as a non-violent higher politics, contributing to the evolution of human culture and thus our “second nature.”

The book also reproduces a Scott prose essay, inspired by the poem, on the U.S. involvement in and support for the 1965 massacre. It then discusses how this essay was translated into Indonesian and officially banned by the Indonesian dictatorship, and how ultimately it and the poem helped inspire the ground-breaking films of Josh Oppenheimer that have led to the first official discussions in Indonesia of what happened in 1965.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781498576680
Publisher:	Lexington Books
Publication date:	07/18/2019
Series:	AsiaWorld
Pages:	302
Sales rank:	736,820
Product dimensions:	5.95(w) x 8.79(h) x 0.88(d)

About the Author

Peter Dale Scott is a poet and author of many books including The American Deep State: Big Money, Big Oil, and the Attack on U.S. Democracy and Coming to Jakarta: A Poem About Terror, and he isco-founder of the Peace and Conflict Studies Program at University of California, Berkeley.

Freeman Ng is a former Google software engineer, an author, and an artist.

Table of Contents

Introduction



I. INTERVIEWS WITH FREEMAN NG

Introduction: The Stream One Lives By

I.i–I.iii Wind-driven ghost of snow

II.i–II.iii As if in a small plane

II.iv–II.v The blind man’s prophecy

Appendix to II.iv–v “shalt lose all companions”

II.vi–II.vii We who desired to prepare the soil

II.viii–II.ix The world like myself

II.x–II.xi Cave of winds

II.xii–II.xiii Indonesia

II.xiv–II.xv This world that can only be dominated

II.xvi–II.xvii The ruthlessness that made possible

II.xviii–III.ii Part of the enemy

III.iii–III.v An ovenbird’s nest

III.vi–III.vii The brooding toils of energy

III.viii–III.ix Like the heroes of all good tales

III.x The stream one lives by

III.xi–III.xii The known and unknown roadways

III.xiii–III.xv Like giant doomed stars

III.xvi–III.xvii The cool hissing of the bullets

IV.i Beyond the mists

IV.ii-IV.iii The music changing

IV.iv–IV.v Those baffled eyes

IV.vi Truth and nonviolence

IV.vii–IV.ix Its propensity to distance

IV.x–IV.xii Portending deluge

IV.xiii–IV.xiv If a sentence is left dangling

IV.xv ¡Djakarta se acerca!

IV.xvi–IV.xviii Whirr of low wings

V.i–V.ii The shadow play

V.iii Let there be the courage



II Trauma, Poetry, Politics, and the Mystery of Hope



III America’s Culpability in Indonesia, and Why We Should

Acknowledge It



IV “Gaps” of Consciousness; or, How Writing Coming to Jakarta

Led Me to Deep Politics

Preface to Chapter 5



V The CIA and the Overthrow of Sukarno, 1965–1967

Epilogue to Chapter 5 (2015)



VI Catastrophe and Hope: Art and Better Politics

Editorial Reviews

Coming to Jakarta was one of the most important public poems of the late twentieth century. Not identity politics, not liberal mea culpa, it offered information the mainstream media would not disseminate, and then pondered the psychic cost of knowing such things but being helpless. Good, then, to have a book that explores the background of the poem, and also testifies, through reflections on Milton and Milosz, to Scott’s growing faith that poetry can indeed change the world.

Alan Williamson

Coming to Jakarta (1988) was probably the first poem to actually shock readers since The Waste Land (1922). Both poems are tied to cataclysmic events, The Waste Land to the horror of World War I, Jakarta to the under-reported massacre of hundreds of thousands of Indonesians in 1965, with encouragement and support from the United States. Poetry and Terror is a welcome addition to the growing literature surrounding Peter Dale Scott's masterpiece. Calling it an elegy 'for the passing of an era when many had hopes for major changes in America, ' when America still had the reputation of advancing 'universal principles, ' Coming to Jakarta is now seen as an early warning that democracy in America has been abridged from encroachments by the deep state. Most of the book is taken up with an extended interview of Scott by a former student, Freeman Ng, which is essentially a close reading of Jakarta. More important, in Poetry and Terror Scott asserts his belief that by turning from the prose exposés for which he had long been known to the writing of poetry, he found a way to release the hidden half of what he calls the double self. The protocols of academic argument stood in the way of his seeing clearly and therefore stating his own connection to the truth of the deep state's activity in Indonesia. The experience left him with the conviction that in all art we have 'a form of corrective alterity, ' or more precisely, 'that poetry can be part of humanity's approach to truth' and thereby to the recovery of justice.

--Roger Mitchell, Emeritus Professor, Indiana University

Little could be more timely in our 'fake news'/'post-truth' moment than the publication of Poetry and Terror. Scott's reflections on the harrowing composition of his breakthrough book of poetry Coming to Jakarta and its aftermath face us with the 'news that stays news' uncovered by his courageous, dogged probing into the murderous corruptions of power and the complicities of the self, and bear witness to just what must be undergone to free the truth--from suppression and repression--that it might set us free.

--Bryan Sentes, Dawson College

Most of this book involves a close commentary on Scott's Coming to Jakarta: A Poem About Terror (1988), and a meticulously documented analysis of the 1965 Indonesian massacre on which the poem is based. He reveals that it was drafted in the six weeks after the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, when Scott feared that his and other activists' efforts 'had been at best fruitless, or perhaps even counterproductive.' Such fears are now widespread; what makes Scott unusual is his faith that poetry can both express and alleviate such doubts. He bases that faith on his reading of other poets who faced a similarly devastating experience, including T.S. Eliot, who after World War One 'completed The Waste Land while being treated at a psychological clinic in Lausanne'; Ezra Pound, who 'notoriously wrote the Pisan Cantos . . . after a breakdown from being caged by the U.S. Army as a war criminal for six weeks in the open air'; and William Wordsworth, who dealt in The Prelude with his collapse and recovery from personal and political disappointments. Finding a 'similar movement' in such poets as Czeslaw Milosz, Denise Levertov, and Robert Duncan, Scott articulates the relation between poetry and politics that he began to discern in Coming to Jakarta: 'a poem which proceeds from a successful revolt in a poet's psyche, against an inadequate prevailing rationality, can contribute in the long run to a collective revolt against a failing system in society.'

--Tracy Ware, Queen's University

Coming to Jakarta was one of the most important public poems of the late twentieth century. Not identity politics, not liberal mea culpa, it offered information the mainstream media would not disseminate, and then pondered the psychic cost of knowing such things but being helpless. Good, then, to have a book that explores the background of the poem, and also testifies, through reflections on Milton and Milosz, to Scott's growing faith that poetry can indeed change the world.--Alan Williamson, University of California, Davis

From the Publisher

Most of this book involves a close commentary on Scott’s Coming to Jakarta: A Poem About Terror (1988), and a meticulously documented analysis of the 1965 Indonesian massacre on which the poem is based. He reveals that it was drafted in the six weeks after the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, when Scott feared that his and other activists’ efforts ‘had been at best fruitless, or perhaps even counterproductive.’ Such fears are now widespread; what makes Scott unusual is his faith that poetry can both express and alleviate such doubts. He bases that faith on his reading of other poets who faced a similarly devastating experience, including T.S. Eliot, who after World War One ‘completed The Waste Land while being treated at a psychological clinic in Lausanne’; Ezra Pound, who ‘notoriously wrote the Pisan Cantos. .. after a breakdown from being caged by the U.S. Army as a war criminal for six weeks in the open air’; and William Wordsworth, who dealt in The Prelude with his collapse and recovery from personal and political disappointments. Finding a ‘similar movement’ in such poets as Czeslaw Milosz, Denise Levertov, and Robert Duncan, Scott articulates the relation between poetry and politics that he began to discern in Coming to Jakarta: ‘a poem which proceeds from a successful revolt in a poet’s psyche, against an inadequate prevailing rationality, can contribute in the long run to a collective revolt against a failing system in society.’

Tracy Ware

Coming to Jakarta (1988) was probably the first poem to actually shock readers since The Waste Land (1922). Both poems are tied to cataclysmic events, The Waste Land to the horror of World War I, Jakarta to the under-reported massacre of hundreds of thousands of Indonesians in 1965, with encouragement and support from the United States. Poetry and Terror is a welcome addition to the growing literature surrounding Peter Dale Scott’s masterpiece. Calling it an elegy 'for the passing of an era when many had hopes for major changes in America,' when America still had the reputation of advancing 'universal principles,' Coming to Jakarta is now seen as an early warning that democracy in America has been abridged from encroachments by the deep state. Most of the book is taken up with an extended interview of Scott by a former student, Freeman Ng, which is essentially a close reading of Jakarta. More important, in Poetry and Terror Scott asserts his belief that by turning from the prose exposés for which he had long been known to the writing of poetry, he found a way to release the hidden half of what he calls the double self. The protocols of academic argument stood in the way of his seeing clearly and therefore stating his own connection to the truth of the deep state’s activity in Indonesia. The experience left him with the conviction that in all art we have 'a form of corrective alterity,' or more precisely, 'that poetry can be part of humanity’s approach to truth' and thereby to the recovery of justice.

Roger Mitchell

Little could be more timely in our ‘fake news’/’post-truth’ moment than the publication of Poetry and Terror.  Scott’s reflections on the harrowing composition of his breakthrough book of poetry Coming to Jakarta and its aftermath face us with the ‘news that stays news’ uncovered by his courageous, dogged probing into the murderous corruptions of power and the complicities of the self, and bear witness to just what must be undergone to free the truth—from suppression and repression—that it might set us free.

Bryan Sentes