Prison Journals of a Priest Revolutionary by Philip Berrigan

Give us no rest for thinking of the Land of Burning Children.ĭan’s testimony at the Federal trial reiterated the statement, but more to the point, the trial was altogether one with the moral and poetic trajectory of the action. Instead of children, the angering of the orderlies The thirsty and hungry thirsty and hungry.įor the fracture of good order, the burning of paper To say “peace peace” when there is no peace

To live and die content in the plagued city Remove the 1-A files sprinkle them in the public streetīe placed behind bars for some portion of our natural lives There we shall of purpose and forethought Dorothy Day termed it an “act of prayer.” William Stringfellow was even more specific: “a politically informed exorcism.” It took direct action to another discipline and dimension – of word and spirit.ĭan drafted, what to even call it, a press release? action statement? movement missive? in language to become a masterpiece of spiritual/political/poetic writing. 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.

Prison Journals of a Priest Revolutionary by Philip Berrigan