Hank Kalet

Haven’t done this in a long time, but I thought this would be a good time to bring it back. Today, I present the return of the Tuesday Top Ten. This week, Jersey’s finest:

1. William Carlos Williams. OK, I know many may have expected Bruce Springsteen to top the list, but the great poet from Rutherford is the man at the top — his great poem “Paterson” helping me to discover my real poetic voice.

2. Bruce Springsteen. No explanation necessary, but for those who need one I offer three: Rock ‘n’ Roll; story-telling and a particular sensibility that has become a part of my own.

3. Allen Ginsberg. Reading “Howl” all those years ago gave me the courage to write poetry.

4. Walt Whitman. The first American bard.

5. The Smithereens. Punk’s volume meets the Beatles’s finesse.

6. Blondie. Debbie Harry maybe associated with New York, but she’s a North Jersey girl.

7. Lauren Hill. Hip-hop soul.

8. The Feelies. Early indie rock gods.

9. Queen Latifah. The first great hip-hop queen.

10. Frank Sinatra. Swinging out of Hoboken into the Vegas night.

Channel Surfing, The South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press

The New York Times today offers a compelling editorial on the legal assaults being waged against voting in the United States.

Many states, as the editorial points out, are erecting hoops and barriers to voting that go against the rhetoric we are peddling to the rest of the world. These include “rules that make it hard, and financially perilous, for nonpartisan groups to register new voters,” “rules for maintaining voter rolls that are likely to throw off many eligible voters” and “unnecessarily tough ID requirements,” the Times writes.

The upshot is a widespread denial of the vote — and significant damage to the democratic process.

As the Times points out:

Protecting the integrity of voting is important, but many of these rules seem motivated by a partisan desire to suppress the vote, and particular kinds of voters, rather than to make sure that those who are entitled to vote — and only those who are entitled — do so. The right to vote is fundamental, and Congress and state legislatures should not pass laws that put an unnecessary burden on it. If they do, courts should strike them down.

Channel Surfing, The South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press

The governor’s budget is a painful reminder of how badly our elected officials have managed the state’s finances for years. No one likes the plan (or more, accurately, the pain it passes around), but no one has come up with any legitimate alternatives. So, as the Star-Ledger writes today, it is the plan we must live with.

Channel Surfing, The South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press

A poem on Memorial Day:

Dulce Et Decorum Est
By Wilfred Owen

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!– An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.–
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,–
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Channel Surfing, The South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press

Today’s editorial in The New York Times offers another reminder of why we should get out of Iraq.

American forces can never be a substitute for Iraqi soldiers and police officers who take seriously their duty to protect all the people, regardless of religion or ethnicity. Mr. Bush’s premise that American troops should simply stay on the ground until Iraq gets things right and defeats all insurgent forces and terrorist groups, however long it takes, is flat wrong. The United States presence is dangerous — to the soldiers themselves, to American standing in the world, and most tellingly to large numbers of innocent Iraqis.

The currently emerging story about what happened last November in Haditha, where at least two dozen Iraqi men, women and children were apparently shot by a small group of American marines, is only the latest indication of what terrible things can happen when soldiers are required to occupy hostile civilian territory in the midst of an armed insurrection and looming civil war. A military investigation is currently deciding whether any of the marines should be charged with murder, and whether a cover-up took place. All these questions have awful resonance for those who remember Vietnam, and what that prolonged and ultimately pointless war did to both the Vietnamese and the American social fabric.

Channel Surfing, The South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press