Witness 2017-2020

By Hilton Obenzinger

WITNESS 2017-2020 chronicles four years of troubles, shootings, wildfires,racial reckoning, planetary murder, plague, monumental lies, crazy delusions,#MeToo, an uprising for justice, and more. But a failed far-right insurrection had to be the capstone of these terrible times, and the nation is not done yet. What was once nfamiliar and stran ge ("flatten the curve") has become common, even banal, demanding a poem. Language has to keep up, and Hilton Obenzinger presents a powerful testimony filled with rage, fear, laughter, and joy.

Hilton Obenzinger bears witness to a time like no other in recent memory. A virus that won't let go, the raging fires provoked by global warming, and the state terrorism that menaces with neo-fascist criminality and has taken the lives of so many unarmed black youths all combine to shape a period in which we cry out for justice and for peace. These poems tell it like it is. When this poet tells us that he had a dream in which he was walking through beautiful woods with Moses, and that he doesn't mean Charlton Heston but "more like the old graybeard Walt Whitman," we know where these poems are headed. Go with them. I promise you won't regret it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hamilton Stone
• Release date: Aug 18, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005563684

Book preview

What Reviewers Are Saying About Hilton Obenzinger’s Witness

Hilton Obenzinger bears witness to a time like no other in recent memory. A virus that won’t let go, the raging fires provoked by global warming, and the state terrorism that menaces with neo-fascist criminality and has taken the lives of so many unarmed black youths all combine to shape a period in which we cry out for justice and for peace. These poems tell it like it is. When this poet tells us that he had a dream in which he was walking through beautiful woods with Moses, and that he doesn’t mean Charlton Heston but more like the old graybeard Walt Whitman, we know where these poems are headed. Go with them. I promise you won’t regret it.

–Margaret Randall

I have been following Hilton Obenzinger’s work with delight and astonishment for over 40 years. He is a treasure. Funny, surreal, radical – he is the American Jonathan Swift.

–Diane di Prima

You cannot go wrong when Hilton Obenzinger offers a new book of Poetry. His poetry brings great joy and wisdom to the page. There is a wide-ranging heart at work and the surprises that come with a unique poetic vision.

–Neeli Cherkovski

Witness

2017-2020

Selections

Hilton Obenzinger

Published at Smashwords.com by Irene Weinberger Books, an imprint of Hamilton Stone Editions

(P.O. Box 43, Maplewood, NJ 07040). The ISBN of the print edition is 9780990376798.

© 2021 by Hilton Obenzinger

The hard copy edition of this book is available in print from your local bookstore and from online book sellers. See more books from Irene Weinberbeger Books at www.hamiltonstone.org and Hamilton Stone Editions www.hamiltonstone.org

Smashwords Edition License Notes

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Many of these poems were posted on Facebook and appeared in Best American Poetry, Café Review, Heron Clan, Meredith Sue Willis’s Books for Readers, Musings of a Pandemic, Tikkun, and other journals.

Cover photograph by Alan Senauke. San Francisco Bay, Berkeley Marina, September 9, 2020. That day the sky turned orange when smoke from wildfires blew over the low clouds of the marine layer, filtering out the rest of the sun’s spectrum.

Copyediting: Elissa Rabellino

Also by Hilton Obenzinger

A Cinch: Amazing Works from the Columbia Review, edited with Les Gottesman and Alan Senauke

Thunder Road

Bright Lights! Big City!

Beyond Up and Down, with Les Gottesman and Alan Senauke

The Day of the Exquisite Poet Is Kaput

This Passover or the Next I Will Never Be in Jerusalem

New York on Fire

Cannibal Eliot and the Lost Histories of San Francisco

a*hole: a novel

Running through Fire: How I Survived the Holocaust [oral history by Zosia Goldberg]

American Palestine: Melville, Twain, and the Holy Land

Mania

Busy Dying

Beginning: The Immigration Poems, 1924–1926, of Nachman Obzinger [editor]

How We Write: The Varieties of Writing Experience

Treyf Pesach [Unkosher Passover]

Remembering

Diane di Prima

Les Gottesman

Corky Lee

Table of Contents

Preface

The Grand Canyon of San Francisco

November 2015–January 2016

Part One

Facial Recognition

2017–2019

Houston, We Have a Problem

September 2, 2017

Let’s Shoot

November 6, 2017

The Count

November 16, 2017

Warning

January 13, 2018

Old Men with Canes

June 12, 2018

All Regrets

August 26, 2018

Revolutionary Letter

October 5, 2018

They Dragged the Autistic Kid across the Floor

October 15, 2018

Old People Endlessly Talk About Their Health

October 25, 2018

Facial Recognition

April 28, 2019

After Capitalism Is Gone

July 5, 2019

The Great Replacement Theory

August 5, 2019

Inscribe the Planet

September 19, 2019

The Planet on September 26, 2084

September 26, 2019

California Living

October 31, 2019

Holiday Greetings

December 14, 2019

Part Two

Corona Chronicles

2020

Our Social Distance

March 13, 2020

Shelter in Place

March 19, 2020

Flatten the Curve

March 22, 2020

Out of an Abundance of Caution

March 25, 2020

We’re All in This Together

March 29, 2020

The Great Toilet Paper Panic

April 1, 2020

Why Is This Night Different?

April 6, 2020

Resurrection Day

April 7, 2020

Getting Affairs in Order

April 13, 2020

Ask Boccaccio

April 19, 2020

Fear Itself

April 28, 2020

God