Poetry and Terror

Peter Dale Scott is a poet and author of many books including The American Deep State: Big Money, Big Oil, and the Attack on U.S. Democracy and Coming to Jakarta: A Poem About Terror, and he isco-founder of the Peace and Conflict Studies Program at University of California, Berkeley.Freeman Ng is a former Google software engineer, an author, and an artist.

• IntroductionI. INTERVIEWS WITH FREEMAN NGIntroduction: The Stream One Lives ByI.i–I.iii Wind-driven ghost of snowII.i–II.iii As if in a small planeII.iv–II.v The blind man’s prophecyAppendix to II.iv–v “shalt lose all companions”II.vi–II.vii We who desired to prepare the soilII.viii–II.ix The world like myselfII.x–II.xi Cave of windsII.xii–II.xiii IndonesiaII.xiv–II.xv This world that can only be dominatedII.xvi–II.xvii The ruthlessness that made possibleII.xviii–III.ii Part of the enemyIII.iii–III.v An ovenbird’s nestIII.vi–III.vii The brooding toils of energyIII.viii–III.ix Like the heroes of all good talesIII.x The stream one lives byIII.xi–III.xii The known and unknown roadwaysIII.xiii–III.xv Like giant doomed starsIII.xvi–III.xvii The cool hissing of the bulletsIV.i Beyond the mistsIV.ii-IV.iii The music changingIV.iv–IV.v Those baffled eyesIV.vi Truth and nonviolenceIV.vii–IV.ix Its propensity to distanceIV.x–IV.xii Portending delugeIV.xiii–IV.xiv If a sentence is left danglingIV.xv ¡Djakarta se acerca!IV.xvi–IV.xviii Whirr of low wingsV.i–V.ii The shadow playV.iii Let there be the courageII Trauma, Poetry, Politics, and the Mystery of HopeIII America’s Culpability in Indonesia, and Why We ShouldAcknowledge ItIV “Gaps” of Consciousness; or, How Writing Coming to JakartaLed Me to Deep PoliticsPreface to Chapter 5V The CIA and the Overthrow of Sukarno, 1965–1967Epilogue to Chapter 5 (2015)VI Catastrophe and Hope: Art and Better Politics

Coming to Jakarta (1988) was probably the first poem to actually shock readers since The Waste Land (1922). Both poems are tied to cataclysmic events, The Waste Land to the horror of World War I, Jakarta to the under-reported massacre of hundreds of thousands of Indonesians in 1965, with encouragement and support from the United States. Poetry and Terror is a welcome addition to the growing literature surrounding Peter Dale Scott’s masterpiece. Calling it an elegy 'for the passing of an era when many had hopes for major changes in America,' when America still had the reputation of advancing 'universal principles,' Coming to Jakarta is now seen as an early warning that democracy in America has been abridged from encroachments by the deep state. Most of the book is taken up with an extended interview of Scott by a former student, Freeman Ng, which is essentially a close reading of Jakarta. More important, in Poetry and Terror Scott asserts his belief that by turning from the prose exposés for which he had long been known to the writing of poetry, he found a way to release the hidden half of what he calls the double self. The protocols of academic argument stood in the way of his seeing clearly and therefore stating his own connection to the truth of the deep state’s activity in Indonesia. The experience left him with the conviction that in all art we have 'a form of corrective alterity,' or more precisely, 'that poetry can be part of humanity’s approach to truth' and thereby to the recovery of justice.