Witness: 2017-2020
Poems
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 unfamiliar and strange (“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,” writes Margaret Randall. “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.” According to Neeli Cherkovski, “There is a wide-ranging heart at work and the surprises that come with a unique poetic vision.”
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.
Witness 2017-2020 is available at Irene Weinberger Books
ISBN 9780990376798
108 pgs.
Print: $16.95
E-book: $3.99