{"id":454,"date":"2007-06-08T00:50:57","date_gmt":"2007-06-08T04:50:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/2010\/01\/19\/eliza-griswold-wideawake-fieldive-never-been-where-we-are-although-the-glass-studded-with-soldiers-rusted-buttons-says-we-arent-the-first-the-airstrips-islands-of-cracked-macadam-suggest-an-ancient-vo\/"},"modified":"2010-01-19T01:01:42","modified_gmt":"2010-01-19T05:01:42","slug":"eliza-griswold-wideawake-field","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/2007\/06\/08\/eliza-griswold-wideawake-field\/","title":{"rendered":"Eliza Griswold, &#8220;Wideawake Field&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>I&#8217;ve never been where we are,<br \/>\nalthough the glass studded<br \/>\nwith soldier&#8217;s rusted buttons<br \/>\nsays we aren&#8217;t the first.<br \/>\nThe airstrip&#8217;s islands of cracked macadam<br \/>\nsuggest an ancient volcano.<br \/>\nWe are the volcano.<\/p>\n<p>We, the notes sung<br \/>\nby a creator, who, if not singular,<br \/>\nis creation&#8212;<br \/>\nnot an idea, a force.<br \/>\nLet us tumble.<br \/>\nLet us laugh at our grip.<br \/>\nIf these are last days,<br \/>\nlet them not catch us sleeping<br \/>\nbut awake in this field, and ready.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The title poem from Griswold&#8217;s debut collection, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.powells.com\/partner\/29017\/biblio\/0374299307\"><i>Wideawake Field<\/i><\/a>. She is also a Nieman Fellow journalist who&#8217;s written feature stories on, among other subjects, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thenation.com\/doc\/20030414\/griswold\">the frontlines of Iraq<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mukto-mona.com\/news\/bangla_bhai\/islamic_rev_NYTimes.htm\">the radical Islamist insurgency in Bangladesh<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/id\/2097314\/entry\/2097322\/\">cannibalism among Congolese rebels<\/a>, and <a href=\"https:\/\/ssl.tnr.com\/p\/docsub.mhtml?i=20070507&#038;s=griswold050707\">what U.S. military are doing in Afghan prisons<\/a>, and her first book-length work of nonfiction, <i>The Tenth Parallel<\/i>, will be published later this year. (I first mentioned these articles after <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mediabistro.com\/galleycat\/party_hopping\/scene_eliza_griswolds_wideawake_field_party_59634.asp\">attending Griswold&#8217;s book party<\/a> for <i>GalleyCat<\/i>.)<\/p>\n<p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve never been where we are, although the glass studded with soldier&#8217;s rusted buttons says we aren&#8217;t the first. The airstrip&#8217;s islands of cracked macadam suggest an ancient volcano. We are the volcano. We, the notes sung by a creator, who, if not singular, is creation&#8212; not an idea, a force. Let us tumble. Let [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}