#penfest13

In his Iranian jail cell, Bauer would sit in silence. He would attempt to sleep as much as he could, to alchemize a scrap of paper or an elastic band or the movement of a sliver of sunlight across the floor into something fascinating. He would be interrogated for hours, accused of being a spy, prodded to write articles of propaganda, and then left alone and undisturbed for another week, or two, or more. He would succumb to bouts of intense rage or tearful despair. All this while separated from the woman he loves, the woman who will send him mountains of books to keep him sane upon her release, who will become his wife. 

"What I needed most was an intimate relationship" said Bauer of that lonely, maddening period. Where he found this relationship, or at least a sustaining semblance of one, was in an old copy of Walt Whitman's 'Leaves of Grass', for a time the only book he had access to. He memorized the poems, spent hours reading and rereading sentences, absorbing and internalizing every wondrous image. In time his captors let through a trickle of other books, and this became a flood upon Sarah's release. Soon Bauer and Josh had more books than even they could handle. 

At the pleading of his family and friends, when he was released Bauer took a break from investigative journalism. He rejoined normal society and tried to re-acclimatize as best he could to a world with no locked doors or metal bars, but his experience had stirred something in him. When a hunger strike spread throughout the Solitary wings of California's supermax prisons, he knew what his next project was going to be. 

Bauer was taken on a tour of Pelican Bay prison, a place where some hopeless, forgotten cases have been locked away, alone, for over twenty years. He spoke of the ways in which prisoners can unwittingly condemn themselves to years (usually a minimum of six) in the cells of the specially designed isolation unit. If a tattoo is deemed gang-related, regardless of the universality of the symbols or changing nature of what they have come to signify, it is enough to send a man to the SHU. No one has drawn up a comprehensive list of unsuitable reading materials for prisoners to abide by, yet the reading of certain easily attainable books is considered proof enough of nefarious intent. 

There are 80,000 people in solitary confinement in the U.S today. One man has been there for 42 years. Listening to Bauer recount this, my first thought was "I'd rather be dead." I doubt I was the only audience member who felt this way. I asked Bauer whether he feels the American prison system has, through this treatment toward its most broken citizens, institutionalized inhumanity. He said yes, there was no doubt that this has become the reality of the system today. Having corresponded with a number of these men, men we deem monstrous and lock away in cages so as not to ever again have to be reminded of the worst in our own natures, Bauer understands better than most the complexity of fighting these cases. On the one hand, these are very often explosively violent people, incapable of re-joining society in any functioning way. Yet they are still human beings, citizens of a country that, at least publicly, vows to uphold the tenants of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 

There's probably no easy solution to this. It first requires a comprehensive review of how racial profiling and mandatory minimums have caused more black men to be incarcerated in American prisons today than were confined to plantations at the height of the slavery era. Next comes the unenviable task of convincing the general public to view these Disappeared as more than the color of their jumpsuits and the nature of their crimes.

Zeyar Lynn, reading first, has a pensive and expressive rhythm. He explores his systemic alienation within the Burmese government's agenda, enforced by academics in the employ of the state, as when he says:

My history is not mine.

I am already dead.

Eleven out of ten people do not know me.

In contrast, Khin Aung Aye is inquisitive and forceful, populating his poems with the residue of failed systems and bogus ideology. For example, when he mentions God, as in the poem “State of Unhappiness Das Kapital”, it is with bitterness and disappointment:

God is not dead can't speak well can't hear well even from those closest to Him

Has God gone dumb having lost at dice?

Read by Mr. Byrne, Burmese poet Pandora's “The Daft” elicits vocal reply from the audience, with its images of hordes of idiots rising up to overtake the world and non-idiots rushing to comply with them.

After the reading, the two poets give us a quick history of modern Burmese poetry, and explain the absence of Burmese minority poets in the anthology by noting their lack of exposure even within present Burmese culture. Zeyar Lynn speaks to how he avoids writing exclusively political poetry, saying that such poems read like news reports. He also explains how his own translations of poets like Ashbery, Bernstein, and Plath helped break Burmese poets out of the restrictions of classical (and state-sanctioned) Burmese literature.

We have five minutes to stumble into another event, and I find myself on the 9th Floor in Joan Hall’s teak studded home. A humor writer, John Kenney, stands as the audience perches on pillows on the floor. Everything in this apartment is wooden or wicker and two trees (I literally mean potted trees) seemingly melt New York into a Pacific paradise.

Jack Dowling greets me at the door of his modern bachelor pad on the 10th Floor with a strong handshake. Shane Bauer and Sarah Shourd, working on memoir about being held hostage in Iran for two years, sit in black leather chairs in front of bay windows overlooking the Manhattan skyline. It takes me a moment to realize there are people sitting on a loft above me.

After a frantic dash up three flights only to discover a dead-end, I end up back on the 9th Floor and sneak late into Patricia Dillon’s apartment because she has left the door ajar for better lighting. She is a professional photographer, and Jordi Puntí’s reading is punctuated by flashes from her giant camera. Puntí reads about four brothers, all named Christopher, and his dramatic reading of their first encounter causes quite a few chuckles from the audience.

Exhausted and intellectually sated, I journey back down to the gallery to schmooze with the authors. I even run into two panelists from a previous event! All in all, I found quite a few wild things along the way.

Nick Holdstock 330A

John Kenney 954H

Shane Bauer & Sarah Shourd 1023H

Jordi Punti 928A

  Jordi Puntí. Courtesy of Patricia Dillon.

Hemon pointed out the value given to force and violence in American culture: “We have to show that we are the strongest.” A perspective, he argued, that enabled force to become a sustainable solution while absurd notions, like torture, are perpetuated into law. Frakt raised the reality of—religious and racist bigotry—explaining that there were people in the Bush administration post 9/11 who simply did not view the detainees as human beings. As Mora elaborated, the Muslim and Arab detainees were “individuals who had opted out of the human race because of their savagery.”

Who do we hold accountable and how?

Mora and Frakt discussed the importance of record keeping and documentation. After Mora’s investigations into the abusive and degrading treatment of the detainees at Guantánamo, he confronted Jim Haynes, author of the “Rumsfeld Memorandum”, about the language that outright approved the techniques such as sensory deprivation and waterboarding in interrogation. Only after threatening Haynes with a publicized memo was the Memorandum rescinded. “I could no longer ethically or morally proceed orally,” said Mora. Frakt voiced his support for public action as integral to establishing a historical record, correcting the widespread misperception that all detainees are “terrorists,” and advocating Obama’s supposed goal of shutting Guantánamo down.

How can we expect the international community to abide by laws if we break them?