Poet as Citizen

“Political” poetry by men remains stranded…the enemy is always outside the self, the struggle somewhere else. –Adrienne Rich

Open the body to grief, turning your face to your own life, absorbing the failures your parents and your country have suffered. –Robert Bly

The thing to do is grab the broom of anger and drive off the beast of fear. –Zora Neale Hurston

One of the most subversive things you can do is spend as much time as possible nurturing what is not machine-like. –Austin Kleon

Hard times are coming when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. We’ll need writers who can remember freedom–poets, visionaries–realists of a larger reality. –Ursula K. LeGuin

Be joyful
though you have considered all the options.
–Wendell Berry

God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.
–Theodore Roethke

{An accidental collection winnowed out of my journal from the last two months that feels like a reliable pattern to follow for the next two months.}