"Seldomly do we see this kind of gravity in American poetry. Clear, direct and free of personal references, it’s also aimed at the widest public, at the nation."
Thursday, April 15, 2010
offer to the betrayed world / a rose
Also, this blog post by poet Linh Dinh about the recent plane crash in Poland (killing the president, his wife, many of the country's leaders) is simple (some excerpts of Polish poetry) but pretty soberingly lovely at the same time.
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2 comments:
one of my students asked me today "what country lets president fly in old broken jet?"
i love wislawa! i don't know how i feel about the end of that article though. of course americans will cringe at grand posturing, if an american were doing the posturing... because america is too young to have a huge depth of suffering. it would be pretentious to address our nation that way. i mean, don't get me wrong, we have plenty, plenty, plenty of misdeeds under the belt. but it's not like the suffering of poland.
anyway it's probably more complicated than that. maybe america is too pixelated for a "national" bard. it's a specific kind of grief that we don't have access to. or at least i don't. no drop of nationalism in my body.
also, carrie's comment made me sad but amused and now i feel absurd.
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