"Necessity" response

Sam Hammil has a very interesting view of the world and he doesn’t hold back. I love how he taught poetry and writing in prisons and to battered women as a way to help them express what they have been or are going through. He uses his experiences from his life and from working with those people to prove his thoughts about writing. He comes across as cynical and he tries to show the world as it is, not as people would like to believe it is.


He constantly talks about how the world truly is and how it’s not as pretty as people feel it is. He talks about rape, massacres, prison, and abuse, and how we all will cringe and feel bad for those who are suffering yet we won’t do anything about it. He says we are in a world where emotions are frowned upon as if we all are desensitized to the horrors around us. WE are instilling this desensitization in the children of the world. Hamill has some harsh beliefs about the world, a negative picture and I believe he’s right. People are drenched in “solipsism” these days (page 5). I love how he says “We think poetry is about emotions. Poetry is not about.”(page 4). That is definitely true. Everything he said about “Knowledge is the loss of innocence” really hit home (page 5). I never have thought of it in that way. Truly there are so many points in the paper that I really appreciate. I’m glad someone has pointed out the negativity in the world.

Statistics on battered women.

wccha.org