Against Forgetting

This landmark anthology takes its impulse from the words of Bertolt Brecht: "In the dark times, will there be singing? /Yes, there will be singing./About the dark times." Bearing witness to extremity--whether of war, torture, exile, or repression--this volume encompasses more than 140 poets from five continents, a chorus of voices from dark times, giving testimony to the poetic imagination seared by the fire of human suffering.

From every continent comes the news that our age is an age of murder and repression on a scale unimagined before. And yet I can't peruse this book without marveling at what beauty these writers have made of the calamity called the Twentieth Century. I would not have thought a poetry anthology could be so stirring. Arthur Miller

In a class by itself, edited and and introduced with precise passion and Olympian breadth, Against Forgetting encapsulates both the horrors of our century and the power of musical language to make a place to live, breathe, hope, love. Calvin Bedient

Poetry cannot block a bullet or still a sjambok, but it can bear witness to brutality—thereby cultivating a flower in a graveyard. Carolyn Fourché's Against Forgetting is itself a blow against tyranny, against prejudice, against injustice. It bears witness to the evil we would prefer to forget, but never can—and never should. Nelson Mandela

Carolyn Forché, poet, translator, and activist, teaches writing at George Mason University. She has published two award-winning volumes of poetry, Gathering the Tribes and The Country Between Us. In 1990 Ms. Fourché received a Lannan Literary Award, granted to poets and writers of literary excellence "whose work promotes a truer understanding of contemporary life."