Seeking to Make the World Anew: Poems of the Living Dialectic

by Sam Friedman Institute of Infectious Disease Research

Overview

Seeking to Make the World Anew is a collection of poems that confront the crisis of modern society, that yearn for change, and that wonder about what kind of social order might replace the one we have. This compilation serves as a testament of the author's agonizing encounters with the degradations, insults, and diseases that this world abounds in—and expresses his awe at how people come together and seek solutions through struggle. Sam Friedman includes an introductory essay about how his ideas and his art developed through his experiences in the Civil Rights Movement, anti-war movements, scientific research and activism around the AIDS epidemic, and through thinking, arguing, and writing about how a new-style, freedom-loving socialist movement might be the only way to save humanity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780761841715
Publisher:	Hamilton Books
Publication date:	10/03/2008
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	150
File size:	503 KB

About the Author

Sam Friedman is a poet, socialist, activist, and AIDS researcher. As a poet, he has been published in Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, Canadian Dimension, Lips, Long Shot, Paterson Literary Review, Edison Literary Review, AIDS Care, Home Planet News, and many other venues. As an AIDS researcher, he has published hundreds of articles in leading scientific journals including Nature, Science, Scientific American, and many others.

Table of Contents

Part 1 Part 1. Being: Loving and Living through the Daily Grind Chapter 2 Work and Daily Life Chapter 3 AIDS in an Indifferent World Chapter 4 Ecology: The Whole World at Risk Chapter 5 Imperial Power in Action Chapter 6 Repression and Oppression Chapter 7 Same Thing, Different Forms Chapter 8 The Doldrums of the Years with Little Movement Chapter 9 If We Fail Chapter 10 Hopes and Fears as the System Approaches Crisis Part 11 Part 2. Essence: Soaring and Souring and Soaring Again through Struggle Chapter 12 Struggles in our History Chapter 13 AIDS Struggles Chapter 14 Future Struggles—We Hope Part 15 Part 3: Notion: Making the World Anew

Editorial Reviews

Sam Friedman is a remarkable activist. His writing is reportage from the front lines of the war on drug users. Like a soft tissue infection, he gets under the skin of the oppressor and lends voice to the mute and invisible.

Allan Clear

Sam Friedman's poetry burns with dialectical fire, both as denunciation and as questioning of a false and alienating world. His introduction offers thoughtful reflections on Marxism, dialectics, and the anti-Stalinist left since the 1960s.

Kevin Anderson

Friedman's poems recognize the communal necessities of our survival and confront political and social issues head-on, including two of our greatest and most difficult current themes: the often tragic and always impure struggles for socialist alternatives to increasingly destructive capitalism, and the potential demise of our species if the world fails to create such an alternative. But these poems, while making clear the primacy of communal politics to our lives, do not rise from abstract, ideological dogma. Their ideas are rooted in dire predicaments the vast majority of people daily face. These poems are rooted in sadness, outrage, tenderness, even dark comedy, that is, a genuine concern for human welfare.

Dale Jacobson

This book is full of work that is rooted to the world with compassion, love, anger, and sorrow. The poet's strong social conscience is evident in every page. By his commitment to social justice, he forces us to examine our own.

Maria Mazziotti Gillan

Friedman's poems recognize the communal necessities of our survival and confront political and social issues head-on, including two of our greatest and most difficult current themes: the often tragic and always impure struggles for socialist alternatives to increasingly destructive capitalism, and the potential demise of our species if the world fails to create such an alternative. But these poems, while making clear the primacy of communal politics to our lives, do not rise from abstract, ideological dogma. Their ideas are rooted in dire predicaments the vast majority of people daily face. These poems are rooted in sadness, outrage, tenderness, even dark comedy, that is, a genuine concern for human welfare.--Dale Jacobson, University of North Dakota, and honorary poet laureate of North Dakota (2005)

Sam Friedman's poetry burns with dialectical fire, both as denunciation and as questioning of a false and alienating world. His introduction offers thoughtful reflections on Marxism, dialectics, and the anti-Stalinist left since the 1960s.--Kevin Anderson, author of Lenin, Hegel, and Western Marxism; Marxist theorist, scholar, and activist

This book is full of work that is rooted to the world with compassion, love, anger, and sorrow. The poet's strong social conscience is evident in every page. By his commitment to social justice, he forces us to examine our own.--Maria Mazziotti Gillan, founder and executive director of the Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College in Paterson, NJ, and Professor and Direc

From the Publisher