June 20, 2006

"To Be Free of This Cage: The Poetry of Gauntanamo Bay's Detainees," Bookforum 13.2 (Summer 2006): 26-27.

Many of the the themes are similar to most prison writing: family, isolation & loneliness, religion, hope for a non-prison future... Ustad Badruzzaman Badr's "Lions in the Cage" offers up a more defiant tone:

We are heroes of the time
We are the proud youth
We are the hairy lions

We live in the stories now
We live in the epics
We live in the public hearts (ll.1-6)

He transforms his surroundings by transforming the detainees into the heroes of old who not only challenge "Pharoah of the times" (l.9) but also to whom the stars prophesy the successful turn of events that the world has been waiting for.

Bookforum also runs a short interview with Marc D. Falkoff (who is currently at work on assembling an anthology of Gauntanamo detainee poetry) that explains the process of how the poems come to be considered declassified by the government.