Is there a connection between law and poetry? The anthology “Law and Poetry: Promises from the Preamble” suggests there is. The study of law and the study of poetry is essentially the study of language. Both disciplines communicate their meanings through carefully chosen words and both are creations of imagination that add form and structure to the realities of daily life (Eberle & Grossfeld, 2006). Poetry, like the law, reflects and can reshape the culture which surrounds it, while offering insight and understanding into the human experience (Id). We must understand each other before installing guidelines on how a society may thrive under a judicial system. Poetry allows the reader to step into the shoes of a judge, an attorney, a witness, or the accused.
This anthology includes 56 poems – one
for each state, the District of Columbia, and five U.S. territories. In this
collection of poems, the authors challenge the language of the Preamble,
forcing the reader to consider how the shared human experience of opportunity
under the law can be achieved.
Offerings to an Ulcerated God
“Mrs. Lopez refuses to pay rent,
and we want her out,”
the landlord’s lawyer
said,
tugging at his law school
ring.
The judge called for an
interpreter,
but all the interpreters
were gone,
trafficking in Spanish
at the criminal session
on the second floor.
A volunteer stood up in the gallery.
Mrs. Lopez showed the
interpreter
a poker hand of snapshots,
the rat curled in a glue
trap
next to the refrigerator,
the water frozen in the
toilet,
a door without a doorknob.
(No rent for this. I know
the law
and I want to speak,
she whispered to the
interpreter).
“Tell her she has to pay
and she has ten days to
get out,”
the judge commanded, rose
so the rest of the
courtroom rose,
and left the bench.
Suddenly
the courtroom clattered
with the end of business:
the clerk of the court
gathered her files
and the bailiff went to
lunch.
Mrs. Lopez stood before
the bench,
still holding up her fan
of snapshots
like an offering this
ulcerated god
refused to taste,
while the interpreter
felt the burning
bubble in his throat
as he slowly turned to
face her.
-Martin Espada
Letters of Credit
He looks deeply into the mirror of his
children
but cannot see himself,
though he knows he is there,
somewhere in the depths.
They speak to him
with the greatest
politeness, and if there is affection
he feels it as the
slightest warm breeze in summer,
a hot dying breath of
presence, not of comfort.
He works their love like his job,
studying precedent
and applying law to fact,
to derive a holding, a balance
of truth, justice and
equity, completely anomalous
in the calculus of
emotion. Still there is a sense of obligation,
like throwing coins into
the tollbooth - regardless of whether
they hit, or bounce off
the rim and roll away, the debt is paid.
They are gone, glimpsed through
materializing letters
on the instant messaging
boards of computer screens,
or in the electronic
conversions of voices to ear, heard
like the ocean in shell:
false, imitative, distant and faint,
or like letters of credit,
carrying his value into the void
of commerce, of life, to
distant lands he will need see.
-Steven M. Richman
Have you
written poetry about or influenced by the law or your time in law school? Leave
it in the comments or send it to taylor.mace@msl.edu
to be featured on the blog.
-Taylor Mace
Eberle, Edward J. and Grossfeld, Bernhard (2006) “Law and Poetry,”
Roger Williams University Law
Review: Vol. 11: Iss. 2, Article 3.
Adams, Kristen David. Law and Poetry: Promises from
the Preamble. American Bar Association,
Business Law Section, 2021.
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