Posts Tagged ‘purpose of poetry’
Poetry Friday: “Speculation: Along the Way”
November 3, 2017
Did you ever try finding words for the experience of prayer? Or for the sense of mysterious contact with the divine? That’s what Scott Cairns is attempting in “Speculation: Along the Way.” He tries out a metaphor of a distant thunderstorm — which might however be within. “Might” is in fact a key word in…
Read MoreCaution: National Poetry Month
April 22, 2016
How do you know if it’s a poem? Maybe it’s a month, a month-at-a-glance, many days lined with appointments to exchange energy in cells, rows, examination rooms, fields with clients, colleagues, patients, classmates. But, ah, a few blank, spacious days. Maybe it’s an old-fashioned phone book, the white pages with everything you need to call…
Read MoreJames Tate: Finding the Ultimate in the Ordinary
April 6, 2016
The poet James Tate died last year. It happened in July. He was seventy-one years old. This, then, is the first Lent and Easter season we’ve been without him. Pity, that. Back some years ago, The Paris Review published a lovely conversation between Charles Simic and James Tate. Simic opens up the conversation by noting…
Read MoreWhy Art?
February 8, 2016
I’m propped in bed reading my current bedtime novel. Pausing to reflect on a particularly engaging passage, my eyes raise from the novel—and rest on the shelves of poetry volumes on the opposite wall. Some of these books I open often; others have sat there untouched for years. Yet I need them all there. When…
Read MorePoetry as a Weapon of Jihad
January 18, 2016
“Strap on a suicide vest? Join a global mission whose leaders preach hatred and acts of violence against civilians? Spurn the traditions of one’s own community in favor of radicalization? Jihadis face a hard sell. By definition, poetry is a way to say what cannot be said in ordinary terms.” I sat stunned after reading…
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