GOOD AFTERNOON MYANMAR…
January 25th, 2008
How oppressed does a poet have to be before they resort to hiding acrostic protest messages in love poems published for Valentine’s Day? The military dictators in Myanmar belatedly found the answer to that question in the February edition of a popular magazine titled The Love Journal. The generals are not happy.
From The BBC:
The Burmese authorities have arrested a well known poet, who published a love poem with a hidden message criticising the country’s military leader.
Poet Saw Wai’s work – titled February the Fourteenth – was published in a Rangoon magazine, The Love Journal.
Taken together, the first words of each line read: “General Than Shwe is crazy with power.”
I think it’s also telling that the magazine’s readers quickly found the hidden message, but the government censors did not.
Maybe we should start paying more attention to the poems in The New Yorker?
The best poety is always subversive on some level.
Shalom Terry,
That is so true.
B’shalom,
Jeff
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