Justice Is Our Love In Action
Poetry by Stewart Acuff
Art by Mitch Klein
Justice Is Our Love in Action is very much a book for the moment, a time when the president rants and rages on Twitter, leaders wallow in corruption, our fellow citizens revel in hate and the world seems turned upside down by forces beyond our control. Poet Stewart Acuff asks the question on all our minds: “What would it mean for all of us / For the most powerful country in the world to destroy its own democracy”? This slim volume of free verse explores all the emotions–grief, rage, sadness and more—we experience when we confront that unsettling question.
For Acuff, the personal is political, and the political is personal. His poetry weaves the individual within a web of family, community, nation and world. He believes we are “watching democracy die,” and he mourns the passing of an America which upheld ideals of justice, compassion and equity.
As we rely on and celebrate ghastly ghosts of fascism
We as a country make a mockery of the best of our history
The very cause of America, the reason for America crumbles to a choking dust
He sees the effects of this decay in “diseases of despair” like alcoholism and opioid addiction.
The dead eyes of the panhandlers playing a role for another bag of heroin or rock or crack
The young folks and old men waiting for a liquor store to open It is what happens when you rip away any way to make a living
Souls will die, hearts will shatter
But now that living death spreads
It spreads to those making a living but watching democracy die
Acuff is informed by his experience working as a labor organizer for the AFL-CIO. As a young organizer in Atlanta, he walked among giants of the civil rights movement, including Rev. James Orange, Rev. Jesse Jackson and Andrew Young, Jr. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. looms large in his verse and his conception of justice:
Dr. King taught us the kind of Love that will overcome
Ain’t a patient love, it ain’t a waitin love nor a lazy love nor a caint kind of love
It’s a marchin love and votin and registerin and doorknockin and
phonin and postin and rallying and hell raisin love and jail going love and sittin in and walkin picket lines love
It’s love in action, what some folks call justice.
Much of the problem, as Acuff sees it, is in a society and country which no longer honors or practices compassion. The antidote is an attitude which sees no difference between thee and me: “When he degrades you, he degrades my sister / When he despises you, he despises all I’ve ever loved”.
And compassion is fundamental to his idea of justice:
We re-commit ourselves to an ever-expanding definition of justice
Justice is our Love in action
Let us live to see the Other as brother or sister
When weariness overtakes him, Acuff always find solace in comrades in the struggle.
When your breath comes shallow with dread
It is love that sustains
And maybe only love …
When we refill the souls of each other
And it’s in these sustaining connections where we’ll find the love for “love in action” and the strength for “the Resistance rising.”
Acuff grew up in west Tennessee and some of the most vivid verse describes the natural world of his childhood home:
And in the flooded woodlands flourished stunning cypress trees
When they grew in water, they grew knees that poked up above the water
The knees breathed for the trees
He also gives the reader a little taste of “the South’s best bastions of barbecue.”
The book itself is a pleasing experience. Uncluttered pages of verse are embedded in bold color. They are accompanied by Mitch Klein’s fine illustrations. For those trying to “stay woke” while navigating turbulent waters, Justice Is Our Love In Action will both steel your resolve and provide a balm for your wounds. It is available from Hard Ball Press.
