![]() ![]() ![]() The non-violent direct action by nine Catholics was distinctive for implicating the church in the anti-war movement (Dan and his brother Phil appeared in collars on the cover of Time) but even more so for casting the action in the poetics of liturgy. The poem stems from his own imprisonment for burning draft files in Catonsville, MD as a protest in 1968 against the war in Vietnam. The house and wall are gone altogether, but still I know it by heart. ![]() With permanent marker, in his distinctive hand, Daniel Berrigan, poet and priest, covered the dining room wall of our little hospitality and resistance house in Battle Creek with this portion of “Tulips in the prison yard.” It was a blessing and virtually a call to discipleship. You stand, a first flicker in the brain’s soil, the precursor Of ignorant furies, the slavish pieties of judas priests Kurt Vonnegut once quipped, “For me, Daniel Berrigan is Jesus as poet.” For Berrigan, poetry was mode and method of survival. ![]()
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