Authors gather to explore artistic response to terrorism

the Register Guard ^ | 29 April 02 | By JAIME SHERMAN

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Authors gather to explore artistic response to terrorism

By JAIME SHERMAN
The Register-Guard

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As an American, author Annick Smith tends to think of political solutions for ending terrorism. But as a writer, she feels compelled to decide how to respond through literature and art.

"After 9-11, a lot of people were writing, `Respond, respond,' " Smith told nearly 500 people who gathered Sunday at the University of Oregon.

She and six other noted naturalist authors sought to do just that, concluding a three-day colloquium on "Literary and Artistic Responses to Terrorism" with a reading and panel discussion.

Joining Smith were Scott Russell Sanders, John Daniel, Ann Zwinger, William Kittredge, Terry Tempest Williams and Finn Rock author Barry Lopez.

	Barry Lopez

Sunday's event, in fact, was in honor of Lopez, whose nature writings earlier this spring received the Orion Society's John Hay Award, created in honor of the 19th-century American author and statesman. The Orion Society is a cultural and literary organization based in Massachusetts.

For winning the award, Lopez received a medallion, a $3,000 honorarium - and the opportunity to choose the subject matter for an authors' colloquium. His choice: responses to terrorism.

Lopez said Sunday that responding to terrorism shouldn't be an individual goal.

"It's never about one woman or one man," he said. "It's always about community and everything worth doing comes out of community."

Sunday's discussion extended beyond the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 to include potential threats to democracy in the name of fighting terrorism.

Lopez said one response is to not allow love for the United States to be defined by "barbarians who say they're acting for democracy." He was referring to the Bush administration, which several of the other authors also lambasted.

Lopez compared the Homeland Security Act, the recent law passed by Congress in an effort to protect against potential terrorists, to Nazi police tactics during World War II.

The other authors read short passages of Lopez's writings that have influenced them and offered their own musings on how to respond to terrorism.

Smith, who lives near the Blackfoot River in Montana, said what's most important is that writers continue to tell their stories.

The weekend's discussions, she said, helped define "how to live with each other, with animals, on this planet, with death and terror."

She said many people are confused about how to respond to the terrorism of Sept. 11. Some can best deal with their confusion by working politically, especially on the local level where it's easier to see results, she said.

Sanders addressed how terrorism seeks to destroy. "While fear is a normal, natural part of being a human being, terror is something people inflict upon each other," he said.

The solution for rooting out terrorism is expressing compassion, forgiveness, empathy, sympathy, reverence, wonder and love, he said.

Daniel said each word a writer uses shapes readers - and can shape responses to terrorism. "Does it make a difference what words we reach for?" he asked. "I think it does."

Daniel called terrorism "a failed imagination for peace." More than the absence of war, peace is "an active desire" that a community must work toward, he said.

Zwinger said art can be a response to what the heart is feeling about terrorism and that positive words and actions can change people.

"If you care, you will not destroy," she said. "This is your world. Take care of it."

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Copyright © 2002 The Register-Guard

[Glutton]

lopez has written books like, "Never Cry Wolf."