Poetry in times of crisis

https://lithub.com/poetry-and-poets-in-a-time-of-crisis/

“We only know that the immediate signs are bad. Deep, potentially irresolvable fissures in our democracy have revealed themselves, along with an epidemic of rage, as well as hopelessness. The results of this election were, for at least half the country and much of the rest of the world, a massive shock. Yet even had the results been different, we would still have been in a time of crisis. All the local and global problems were already there, and remain.

I am the father of a two-year-old son, so even before the election these facts worried me deeply. Since Trump’s victory I have felt even more spiritually sick, adrift. I keep looking around for a father of some sort, but mine has been gone nearly ten years, and there don’t seem to be any others available.

Since election night I have been experiencing an intense lethargy. During the day, as well as in the middle of the night, I am visited by sudden, destabilizing visions of the future. All night, intermittently, I feel them pressing into my mind. These visions bring anxiety and high alertness, though for no immediate perceivable danger, which in turn brings paralysis, and diurnal exhaustion.

I am a poet, which means that my areas of expertise and concern are language and the imagination. In the days after the election, shattered and exhausted and frustrated and angry and intensely anxious about the future, as so many of us are, I felt certain it was essential to begin to ask, what does this crisis mean for poets, and poetry? What, in these times, must we do? Can poetry help save us?

I have always believed that poetry has its own special role, distinct from all other uses of language. I agree with W.S. Merwin when he writes, “poetry like speech itself is made out of paradox, contradictions, irresolvables … It cannot be conscripted even into the service of good intentions.” He then goes on to explain, however, that circumstances can challenge this belief:”