Sam Hammil Response

I felt that Sam Hammil was saying that we are killing ourselves by not speaking, that we are scared of speaking up because that would make things real. I agree with him because I fall into the category of people doing that. I sometimes hold back things I would like to say because I am scared of the consequences. I feel that Mr. Hammil’s work relates to the poems because he is a witness. Each poem was a witness of some kind, they had had something done to them or were on the outside watching. He is a witness to prison, to rape and his assaults on a woman. He believes that writing is a way of speaking and goes around teaching people how to write. He teaches creative writing at prisons because he has been there and it helped him to speak up about how he was feeling and what had happened. He helps battered women because he can relate to them because he has once done the battery.

            A realistic, scar and sad fact that he mentions was that 3 of 4 women go back to the people who beat them. When it comes to women being beaten I never could understand how they could allow that or even go back to it. I have always said that I would never allow myself to be put in that position and take it. Yet, I think how many of those women had said that? Many. It amazes me how large of a roll emotions have in our lives. Love, fear, and guilt are some of many emotions that cause these women to go back to people who hurt them. Sometimes our minds don’t really comprehend what is happen or chooses to see it a different way because of our emotions.

            Mr. Hammil mentions, “Knowledge is the loss of innocence.” I have never thought about knowledge in that particular way, but he is spot on. Instead of using knowledge to our advantage to learn and prepare we don’t use knowledge properly then wonder how things got this bad. Important people only tell us what they think we should know what if we had the knowledge of everything that was going on around us? Would things be the same? Would we still be at war or feel the way we feel towards it? We as people are constantly living in a fear of the unknown. If we spoke up, whether we used our voice or writing, how much different would the world be? Sam Hammil wrote many things that people are afraid of saying and afraid of learning. I learned from him and saw things that I believed in a different perspective. We need more people to do and say the things he said because we need to make it known how important speaking is.