For some, poetry and politics may seem like strange bedfellows. This is especially true if your experience of reading poetry is silent.
Poets will tell you that this is all wrong, and that poetry is meant to be heard, read aloud, chanted, sung, brought to life with breath and rhythm. Hip-hop rhymers will easily school you on the matter.
Boomers may recall the visceral experience of hearing a frail Robert Frost, temporarily blinded by the diamond-glare of January sun, recite his poem “The Gift Outright” from memory at JFK’s inauguration. Frost had intended to read his new poem, “Dedication,” which he had written specifically for the event, but the winter light was too intense for his aged eyes. Frost’s dilemma and response to it speak to the tenacity of remembered poems: they live on in memory, even when youth deserts us, and even after our eyesight fails.
He was the first poet to speak at the inauguration of a president, and not the last.
A few years later, from a 1965 reading broadcast from Albert Hall, those same Boomers may remember a different poem by British poet Adrian Mitchell, who was dubbed the Shadow Poet Laureate by Red Pepper magazine. His poem is entitled “To Whom It May Concern (Tell Me Lies About Vietnam).”
This unbearably visceral poem, especially as forcefully spoken by Mitchell, arrives with bone-breaking power. A memorable excerpt:
I smell something burning, hope it’s just my brains. They’re only dropping peppermints and daisy-chains.
The poem’s momentum builds as each stanza adds a new level of denial and deceit:
So scrub my skin with women Chain my tongue with whisky Stuff my nose with garlic Coat my eyes with butter Fill my ears with silver Stick my legs in plaster...
…and the most recent memory of the incendiary poem concludes with a remix, confronting then-President George W. Bush and then-UK Prime Minister Tony Blair regarding “tell me lies” about Afghanistan, Israel, Congo.
Amanda S. C. Gorman, self-described as a “skinny Black girl,” was born in 1998, long after American troops had hopped the last chopper out of the ‘Nam. Her emphatic recitation of her stunning poem “The Hill We Climb” gave a depth to President Biden’s 2021 inauguration that is impossible to dismiss.
She had been preceded by the stately Maya Angelou, who read her uplifting poem, “On the Pulse of the Morning” at the first inauguration of President Bill Clinton in 1993. Angelou was only the second poet, and the very first African American in history, to honor a president in this way, and to be honored herself as the result.
Armenian-American student, poet and activist Samson Khachatryan at age 17 is scarcely old enough to recall even the most recent of these events, but their poem, Apricot Blood, recently published in The Armenian Weekly, resonates with similar power:
Apricot Blood
Rivers of patterns splay on a proud khachkar
Tall, baked by a glowing apricot sky
and looming mountains, crisp like knuckles,
All rocks cast a shadow
The mountains throw down a gaze
where the daisy-yellow glow
Is drenched in a maroon pomegranate splatter.
The mountains watch as generations of mothers
Pinch golden cheeks with stalagmited fingers
And they tell their children “վայ, կուտեմ քեզ!” ( I could eat you up!)
After time, the shadow still drapes
over those same tender faces
Split open and gobbled like nascent summer fruits.
Hollow cheeks caress bones
Forming a perfect circular socket for an apricot
Drenched in the sky.
From the serpentine etches on
A stubborn-strong khachkar,
To the gashed ravines of glistening pomegranates,
Our wounds are still open
And from them, sweet nectar still flows.
— Samson Khachatryan
Samson goes by the preferred pronoun he/they, and attends California School of the Arts-San Gabriel Valley with a focus on creative writing. The young poet also creates intriguing visual art on Instagram @aplaceforcircles. Samson’s geometric drawings call to mind the lacy, interlocking carvings of endangered khachkars.
We just caught up via Zoom with Samson soon after they returned from a Washington, D.C. internship as part of the ANCA Haroutioun & Elizabeth Kasparian Summer Academy, hosted by the Armenian National Committee of America on Capitol Hill in August. This year’s grass roots advocacy sessions welcomed 30 exceptional high school students from across the USA who were chosen based upon their academic excellence and pro-Artsakh/Armenia activism.
Among the goals of the two-week session: to demand Azerbaijani accountability and reverse the Artsakh genocide, defend Armenia’s security and sovereignty, and secure justice for the Armenian genocides.
Of the experience, Samson recounts, “It felt so good, so refreshing to be around Armenians who are passionate not only about being heard, but about effecting change. We can’t afford to make ourselves small. Ongoing displacement of Armenians calls upon the Diaspora to mobilize.”
The young artist describes seeing ancient Armenian texts in the Library of Congress as “surreal,” and felt empowered by “…actively promoting policies that would benefit all Armenians, especially those displaced from Artsakh.”
Claiming a New Narrative
“Armenian issues don’t seem to be a high priority for the current administration,” says Samson. This differs from the example of the Vietnam war, for example, when that footage was literally on television every night when American families sat down to dinner.
Samson is also skeptical about future administrations, including the candidacy of Kamala Harris. “Demanding accountability for the atrocities against Armenia is economically inconvenient for the USA. Part of the reparations that Armenians, both in Armenia and in the world diaspora, demand is that the US stop supplying aid and arms to Azerbaijan. We can’t condone it, and we will no longer tolerate it,” they say. Other demands include formal recognition for the past and ongoing atrocities, and rematriation of seized ancestral lands.
Israel and Russia both currently supply weapons to Azerbaijan. The Times of Israel comments, “Israel has a big stake in Azerbaijan, which serves as a critical source of oil and is a staunch ally against Israel’s arch-enemy Iran. It is also a lucrative customer of sophisticated arms.”
Samson comments, “Politics are inherent to my life. The more aware you become, the more radicalized you become.”
“Let’s be honest. Being queer in Armenia sucks.“
Samson, born and raised in Glendale, now a Glendora resident, says that their Armenian identity continues to develop and refine itself. Their parents met in Glendale, where both attended Hoover High School.
They say, “Both of my parents came to the US when they were eight and ten years old, my mom from Russia and my dad from Armenia, though they had lived in Iran for a while previously. Both sets of my grandparents have told me that they immigrated for better social and economic opportunities. My mom and her parents lived in North Hollywood, and my grandpa supported them by becoming a taxi driver and eventually limousines. My dad and his parents lived in Glendale, where my grandpa started his business making signs and billboards for other local businesses.”
And then there’s that no-so-little detail of the pronoun. “Let’s be honest,” says Samson. “Being queer in Armenia sucks. There’s an uphill battle right now there to preserve human rights, including the rights of women. The culture is conservative when it comes to sexual roles and identity, so it’s up to younger Armenians to unpack and dissolve the old restrictive structures.”
Up next for this talented young disruptor: college applications, with an eye on UC Berkeley. Samson says, “I am ready to go wherever my art and the call for social justice take me.”
