Essays and reflections on why poetry matters now.
In the wake of rising authoritarianism in the US, and isolationism here in the UK, I have found it hard to sit down and write poetry. Clearly this seems to be a time for action more than words. Revisiting an essay from 2007, written in the wake of US censorship of Iranian poetry, I began …
“I have defined poetry as a ‘passionate pursuit of the Real.’” -Czeslaw Milosz, The Witness of Poetry After finishing The Witness of Poetry, I found myself mourning the loss of a man I never met and mourning, most importantly, a mind and spirit so capable of characterizing the poetics of the past century–and thereby helping …
“Like priests in a town of agnostics, [poets] still command a certain residual prestige.” -Dana Gioia, “Can Poetry Matter?” The main problem I have with Gioia’s classic 1991 indictment of the health of the art, and all its subsequent aftershocks, is that this view of poetry still comes from within the tribe. Gioia blames the …
“Every word was once a poem” –Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The Poet” In this so-called information age, we live among language more than ever before. For example, one of the latest fads drawing hype to itself faster than a black hole sucks light is Twitter: a web-based social networking site predicated on “tweets”–brief text messages uploaded …
No, this is not an April fool’s post. Thanks to the Academy of American Poets, April is National Poetry Month, and apparently has been since 1996. Interestingly enough, according to some sources, April is also: Health Awareness Month National Blood Donor Month National Oral Health Month Notice a pattern? I do. National months are only …
National Poetry Month Means Time to Take Your Vitamins Read More »
“Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason.” –Novalis Stephen Nachmanovitch’s Free Play is one of the best books on the inner game of art I have ever read (Mastery and The War of Art being others). So when I came across a transcript of the lecture he gave to the National Association of Poetry Therapy …
