{"id":9783,"date":"2025-04-08T11:45:23","date_gmt":"2025-04-08T15:45:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/planetwordmuseum.org\/?p=9783"},"modified":"2025-04-09T12:30:04","modified_gmt":"2025-04-09T16:30:04","slug":"from-the-founder-poetry-for-uncertain-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwordmuseum.org\/from-the-founder-poetry-for-uncertain-times\/","title":{"rendered":"Poetry for Uncertain Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Without intentionally searching for them, lines of poetry keep spinning around in my head, leading me to greater truths than I knew I was looking for. A few weeks ago, \u201cIf\u2014<\/a>\u201d by Rudyard Kipling leapt to my mind and crouched there, until I realized how perfectly it described this political moment and how one might respond.<\/p>\n

Then yesterday it was the oft-cited phrase \u201cthings fall apart\u201d that wedged into my thoughts. The poem those ominous words come from, \u201cThe Second Coming<\/a>\u201d by William Butler Yeats, also seems to fit the current time.<\/p>\n

As Yeats wrote, things were falling apart because the center wasn\u2019t holding, resulting in a time when<\/p>\n

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
\nThe blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
\nThe ceremony of innocence is drowned;
\nThe best lack all conviction, while the worst
\nAre full of passionate intensity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Perhaps it\u2019s become hackneyed, but nonetheless it\u2019s another century-old poem that seems to fit our current circumstances. How apropos, I thought to myself, that the Poetry Foundation included \u201cThe Second Coming\u201d in a group of poems to read for \u201cAnxiety and Uncertainty<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

So often, I think, poetry has the answers we are seeking. Perfectly chosen words, ones we may have been enjoying or pondering for decades \u2014 even millennia \u2014 may help us understand ourselves, our place in the world, and our responsibilities to it. I find myself returning to the words of Emma Lazarus in \u201cThe New Colossus<\/a>\u201d or Percy Bysshe Shelley in \u201cOzymandias<\/a>\u201d or those of Elizabeth Alexander in \u201cApollo<\/a>\u201d to help me think about the history we\u2019re witnessing.<\/p>\n

How fitting, then, that given the current turmoil, we find ourselves at the beginning of National Poetry Month<\/a>. The month of April itself prompts us to \u201cwax poetic\u201d about the sudden natural beauty we see all around us: the pink, magenta, lilac, and white bursting out against a still mostly-bare brown backdrop; the rap, rap, rapping of woodpeckers, who replace the need for any alarm clock; the spring onion poking glossily through dull, matted grass.<\/p>\n

But even if it weren\u2019t early spring, there couldn\u2019t be a more important time to honor poetry than this April. We all could use the beauty, guidance, and solace offered by poetry, confronted as we are by fundamental questions about our responsibilities toward the environment, toward our fellow humans, toward our institutions, and toward the words that shaped our country.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Why Poetry <\/em>by Matthew Zapruder<\/p><\/div>\n

In his 2017 book, Why Poetry<\/em><\/a>, poet and professor Matthew Zapruder explains why poetry is what we need at times like these. He says the \u201cdrifting quality\u201d of poetry, its freedom with language, its very ambiguity and inscrutability (my words, not his), make poetry essential at uncertain times.<\/p>\n

He quotes the great American poet W.S. Merwin as saying, \u201cPoetry addresses individuals in their most intimate, private, frightened and elated moments. People turn to poetry in times of crisis because it comes closer than any other art form to addressing what cannot be said.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zapruder adds that \u201c[i]n our current difficult time, many poems that sincerely attempt to engage the most challenging political, social, and cultural issues that face us are being written.\u201d And he reminds us that no matter \u201chow small and helpless we might feel or even be, one thing we as individuals can always be responsible for is attention to our language. We can do our best not to let our words delude us into comfort…This is also what poetry can do to, and for, and with us.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt may not be the solution,\u201d he says, \u201cbut it is at least a necessary beginning.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014Ann Friedman, founder of Planet Word<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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