Poets and Poems: Teow Lim Goh and “Bitter Creek”

Two great waves of immigration occurred in the United States beginning in the 1840s. The first was the Irish, driven by the Great Potato Famine. The potato blight eventually eased, but Irish immigration continued; many were greeted by army recruiters during the Civil War – as soon as they stepped off the boat. 

The second wave arrived beginning in the late 1840s, driven by unfavorable conditions at home and attracted by the potential wealth offered by California Gold Rush. This wave was the Chinese, who kept coming through the 1850s, and 1860s, and beyond. They helped to build the Transcontinental Railroad and worked in the mines of Wyoming, Colorado, and Montana. 

 

In the East, the Irish often faced discrimination. In the West, the Chinese faced discrimination and violence. 

 

Epic poetry isn’t exactly the fashion in literary circles these days, but match good poetry with a good story, and I suspect no one will mind whether its epic or not. This is what Teow Lim Goh has done with Bitter Creek: An Epic Poem. I don’t know how else one could tell this story poetically other than in an epic framework.

 

And what a story she tells.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Tuesday Readings

 

The 2025 International Poetry Competition and The 2025 International High School Poetry Competition – Society of Classical Poets.

 

“Miniver Cheevy,” poem by Edwin Arlington Robinson – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

A Little Contraband – poem by Malcolm Guite at New Grub Street.

English Poet John Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’ and 3 Great One-Liners – James Sale at The Epoch Times.

 

Open for Halloween Subs / Best of the Net Nominations – Steve Knepper at New Verse Review.

Some Wednesday Readings

Why Literature Still Matters – Louis Markos at The Imaginative Conservative. 

Horrific Price: The Unlimited Courage of Apollo 1 – Jason Clark at This is the Day.

 

When art goes to war – James Panero at The New Criterion.

 

Spin – artwork by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

Walking the Fault Line – Srikanth Ready at the Poetry Foundation.

 

Immigration – Kit Swartz at Gentle Reformation.

 

Book Interviews: Iron Harvest by Mick Jenkinson – Paul Brookes at The Wombwell Rainbow. 

 

On Courage – Adam Smith at Front Porch Republic. 

 

Going Medieval – Andrew Klavan at The New Jerusalem.

 

“A Flower Given to My Daughter,” poem by James Joyce – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

The Biggest Policy Change of the Century – Christopher Caldwell at The Free Press. 

 

Photograph: James Joyce (1915) by Alex Ehrezweig.

 

“The Dying Citizen” by Victor Davis Hanson

Victor Davis Hanson sees a war going on for America. In The Dying Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization Are Destroying the Idea of America, he makes his case, and a well-documented, well-written, and disheartening case it is. The ultimate result of this war could be the death of the idea of American citizenship, he says, and it may already be on life support. 

It is a paradox that the very people who have benefitted most from American culture and society are the ones waging this war – the elites of business, politics, academia, culture, and the media. 

 

The Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow in Residence of Classics and Military History at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and a Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College, Hanson is a writer, speaker, teacher, Hanson has written or edited 24 books. He’s received numerous award and recognitions, including the National Humanities Medal, the Bradley Prize, the Edmund Burke Award, William F. Buckley Prize, Claremont Institute’s Statesmanship Award, a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship, and many others. 

 

He’s an excellent lecturer, and I’m speaking from experience. I took his “Athens and Sparta” online course offered by Hillsdale College. He’s also taught on “The Second World Wars” and “American Citizenship and Its Decline.” The Dying Citizen is paired to this last course. 

 

Victor Davis Hanson

Hanson develops six key themes to make his case that the idea of citizenship is on life support: the squeezing of the middle class to create a rich-poor society; using undocumented and illegal immigration to diminish the value of citizenship; the push away from the melding of people into Americans and instead emphasizing tribes of origin; the growth of a federal bureaucracy immune from accountability; the ongoing attacks on the Constitution and the idea of a federal republic; and the embrace of globalism by America’s elites.

 

In an epilogue, Hanson discusses the elections of 2016 and 2020, the impact of Donald Trump, and the emergence of the COIVD-19 pandemic, and how all these events and people reflect and explain the war over the idea of America and citizenship.

 

Hanson is a conservative. He doesn’t dance around difficult or controversial topics. He states his hypothesis clearly and assembles considerable evidence to support it. And he clearly describes what’s at stake.