Can Poetry Save the Earth? A Field Guide to Nature Poems by John Felstiner

3 Miscellaneous Mario Benedetti.Pedro and the Cap tain: A Play in Four Parts. Adrianne Aron, tr. San Francisco. Cadmus. 2009. xv + 100 pages. $10.95. isbn 978-0 932274-72-4 Mario Benedetti (1920-2009)died ear lier thisyear, bringing to an end his prolific life and output. This mul tifaceted Uruguayan was beloved inLatin America forhis poetry and shortstories. He wrote fewplays, but Pedro and theCaptain is among his best.Likemany ofhis intellectualcon temporaries,Benedettiwas politically committed to speaking out against injustice,and thisplay examines the reality thatmany individuals faced and continue to face in our times. In his case, he was speaking out against Uruguay's repressive 1973 dictator ship. In the prologue to this play, Benedettiwrites: "I see theplay as a dramatic inquiry into thepsychology of the torturer, a sort of answer to the question ofwhat ittakes, what has to be going on, foran ordinaryperson to become a torturer." In her excellent introduction, translator Adrianne Aron, a clinical psychologist with a focus on human rights and psychological trauma, draws attention to theUnited States7 ongoing role in thecontinued break ing of the Geneva Convention, particularly in the aftermathof the events of September 11, 2001. She discusses her contemporary use of the word "waterboarding" as the translation for the combination of asphyxiation and drowning, known as el submarino in Spanish and pres ent inBenedetti's play. The psychol ogy of torture is simple: to hurt, humiliate, and dehumanize another human being intosubmission, ifnot finishthemoffcompletely. Although the captain seems to have theupper hand during thefirst part of this play, the relationship between bothmen shiftsas thedays pass. With each encounter, Pedro seems to become morally stronger, even though the captain and his fellow jailers are doing everything in their power to break him. The shift is initially imperceptible since Pedro often appears hooded and tied up. But littleby littlePedro's face is revealed, and his character gains momentum and is able to turn the tables on theman who is sup posed to be learning more about him. Pedro is remarkable in that he manages to break through the captain's own ambivalence about his work and forcehim to question his actions. When it comes to his own self, Pedro remains true to his innermost beliefs. By humanizing these two char acters, rather than dehumanizing them, as the torturer does, Benedetti brings them onto common ground and offers viewers psychological insights into themoral and person al issues at stake. We don't know what the captain will ultimately do, but Benedetti offers us a sense of possible redemption for someone who has worked as best he could to denigrate another human being, one whose most unforgiveable crime may have only been tomake the = captain see how false, dishonest, and = horrible his actions have been, not = only tohimself,but to thosehe loves = most: his family. = Mario Benedetti takes us to a = place where we are forced to reflect = not only on the issues facing both = protagonists of this play but also = on the dilemmas attached to per- = mitring these actions to take place = and choosing to allow them to exist = (complicitly or incomplicitly).Adri- = anne Aron, who has worked with = survivors of such violence, knows = only toowell the lasting scars these = actions can have, not only on the = torturedbut also on theperpetrator = of such acts and the societies that = allow them. = CatherineRend?n = Savannah, Georgia = JohnFelstiner. Can Poetry Save the E Earth? A Field Guide to Nature E Poems. New Haven, Connecticut. Yale E University Press.2009. xiv+ 396 pages E + 22 plates.$35. isbn 978-0-300-13750-7| The titlenotwithstanding, JohnFel- E stiner'sCan Poetry Save theEarth? is E anything but an extended inquiry E into the environmental virtues of = nature poetry. The book contains E no serious consideration of the con- E nection between individual contem- E plation and social action along the E lines of Elaine Scarry's On Beauty E and Being Just(1999) or Scott Slovic's E GoingAway toThink (2008). The best E that it can manage on that score is E a loose defense of poetry's alleged E ability to inculcate habits of atten- E tion and reflection thatmight be E harnessed to

Art · Art history · Human rights · Injustice · Literature · Poetry · Political science · Prologue · Sociology · Torture · Comparative Literary Analysis and Criticism · Cultural and Social Studies in Latin America · History · Law · Literary and Philosophical Studies