Poeta Doctus

This week, files concerning US involvement in the massacres following the anti-communist coup in Indonesia led by General Mohammed Suharto in 1965 were declassified. Their reception illuminates both that dark time and continuing efforts of the US establishment to mitigate that involvement.

A by turns harrowing and clear-eyed poetic probing of this time is Peter Dale Scott‘s Coming to Jakarta, the first volume in his monumental Seculum trilogy ( which includes Listening to the Candle and Minding the Darkness). If poetry can be “news that stays news”, then maybe a rereading of that first volume, if not the trilogy, is in order.

Happily, Freeman Ng has recorded Scott reading the entirety of Coming to Jakarta, supplemented by Ng’s interviewing Scott after each part concerning that part’s genesis and details.

My appreciation of Scott’s Seculum can be read here.