“We are accustomed to rather easy categories: we distinguish between ‘personal’ and ‘political’ poems. The poetry of witness inhabits the social sphere, a space between the personal and political.” — Carolyn Forché, Against Forgetting

In her poem, “Singapore,” Mary Oliver writes, “A person wants to stand in a happy place, in a poem.” Most of us do, don’t we? The world is in turmoil and we don’t want to be reminded. We want to remain standing in our happy place. We don’t want to look.

The poet, teacher and activist Carolyn Forché, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, chooses to look at some of the most devastating events of 20th-century world history and, “in our furious moment . . . does not shy away from turning her lens on our country,” NYTimes Book Review, 10/18/25).

She was no doubt influenced by her experience in El Salvador between 1978 and 1980 where she was recruited by activist Leonel Gomez Vides to witness and document the state violence and poverty leading up to the Salvadoran Civil War. She chronicles this experience in her 2019 memoir, What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance.

Last month, Forché published Otherwhere: New and Selected Poems, 1976-2026. When asked what single poem had to be in this collection, Forché responded: “‘The Colonel,’ written from El Salvador just before the long war against the dictatorship. It seemed for a time to be taught even in middle schools, and once, a group of sixth-grade boys rang my doorbell and asked if I was the one who wrote “the ears poem.” Surprised and pleased, I answered yes, and they gasped in horror and ran away.”

THE COLONEL

What you have heard is true. I was in his house. His wife carried a tray of coffee and sugar. His daughter filed her nails, his son went out for the night. There were daily papers, pet dogs, a pistol on the cushion beside him. The moon swung bare on its black cord over the house. On the television was a cop show. It was in English. Broken bottles were embedded in the walls around the house to scoop the kneecaps from a man’s legs or cut his hands to lace. On the windows there were gratings like those in liquor stores. We had dinner, rack of lamb, good wine, a gold bell was on the table for calling the maid. The maid brought green mangoes, salt, a type of bread. I was asked how I enjoyed the country. There was a brief commercial in Spanish. His wife took everything away. There was some talk then of how difficult it had become to govern. The parrot said hello on the terrace. The colonel told it to shut up, and pushed himself from the table. My friend said to me with his eyes: say nothing. The colonel returned with a sack used to bring groceries home. He spilled many human ears on the table. They were like dried peach halves. There is no other way to say this. He took one of them in his hands, shook it in our faces, dropped it into a water glass. It came alive there. I am tired of fooling around he said. As for the rights of anyone, tell your people they can go fuck themselves. He swept the ears to the floor with his arm and held the last of his wine in the air. Something for your poetry, no? he said. Some of the ears on the floor caught this scrap of his voice. Some of the ears on the floor were pressed to the ground.

This is admittedly, a very tough read about the horror in El Salvador. Otherwhere also includes poems about horror closer to home, such as the recent horror in Minneapolis. The poem, “On Living in the Hour of Cities Under Siege,” includes these lines:

Here are the bouquets left in the snow for the dead,
candles in glass jars guttering out, hymns once sung in church.
Anyone may be taken, and those who stand
in the way are shot in the head.

Okay, at this moment, I hear Mary Oliver whispering that I can’t end this post here; that we do indeed need to also stand in a happy place in a poem. So in that spirit, I’ll leave you with this beautiful poem also by Forché:

SONG COMING TOWARD US

I am spirit entering

the stomach of the stones.

Bowls of clay and water sing,

set on the fires to dry.

The mountain moves

like the spirit of southeast morning.

You walk where drums are buried.

Feel their skins tapping all night.

Snow flutes swell ahead of your life.

Listen to yourself.

I am spirit living

thin wooden years

around the aspen.

You live

like a brief wisp

in a giant place.