Ashley Capps - Spit and Image

In the current Boston Review, there’s a selection of poems from Ashley Capps, introduced by Graham Foust. The poems are very good, but that’s not the point of this post. The point of this post is that there is another piece by Capps that’s not in the issue, but on the BR website instead:

http://www.bostonreview.net/BR33.5/capps.php

I’m just wanting people to notice it, because often when there’s web content from a journal it gets missed. One of the things that’s amazing about this poem is that it’s not just a political poem, it’s an amazing poem, using found voices and layers of tone. We have very few poems like this. A poem that works art into the political without sacrificing the art. We should celebrate it when we find it.

She sent me a link to this YouTube video that goes along with the poem:



About this video, she writes:

In the course of my teaching and activism, I have encountered a lot of videos and footage, and I have to say that this (5 minute) video is simultaneously the shortest, the least grisly, and the most affecting, powerful video I have ever seen of its kind. I think it has everything to do with the tone and careful language of the narrator here--and he accomplishes something I could never do in a poem.