Wouldn't it be marvelous if we could have poems from Russia as well as Ukraine? In a saner, more contemplative world we would see poets as frontline observers, people who provide historicity, perspective, underlying and overarching facets. people whose testimony is so much more than a recital of events. We don't remember what newspapers had to say about three royal fools who caused World War I's carnage unless we delve into decaying archives, but what Sassoon and Owen, Ford and Brooke said is part of our literary DNA. We remember Yeats' Irish airman foreseeing his death in the skies over England. A more insightful and responsible media establishment would be telling us what the poets are saying instead of spoon-feeding us political blarney. Who doesn't remember Picasso's Guernica more vividly than than the breathless reports off so many correspondents?
Thank you Richard and Michael for curating this collection of poems. It has now been six months since Russia invaded Ukraine and the war rages on with incalculable suffering by civilians.
Tragic. Six months of killing, thousands, perhaps tens of thousands dead, and many more than the usual percentage of civilians because of the way the Russians are prosecuting this war.
This from the Pasteur quote that gave me the title for the new book.
“Two opposing thoughts seem to me now in contest. The one, the law of blood and death, opening out each day new modes of destruction, forces nations to be always ready for battl. ... The one places a single life above all victories, the other sacrifices hundreds of thousands of lives to the ambition of a single individual. …” Louis Pasteur
The popular press organizes its responseS to what we experience by pigeonholing them—war, money, crime, medicine, science, art, literature, music, etc—and in this way it impedes rather than heightens human sensibility.
The categorical priorities of the press are politics, money, conflict, race and nationality. But that’s not the way we respond to what experience, it’s that part of our response that’s most susceptible to being recruited to the official narrative of elites. It’s part of life that makes us most vulnerable to manipulation.
Art, literature and music are elixirs. They ennoble our baser responses. They connect the dots, and it’s this virtue that makes them so dangerous to an official narrative. That’s why we the elixirs frardely make the front page or the to of television news. They’;re too worthy, too dangerous.
How dare we imagine that poets might have something enlightening to say about such con sequential matters as war? The question we should ask is how dare we think they don’t, and that is the question two poets, Michael Young and Richard Levine, are asking as they anthologize poets’ responses to the Ukraine war that has shattered the post-World War II peace.
These are wonderful. Bertha's poem, Winter's War, floors me.
Wouldn't it be marvelous if we could have poems from Russia as well as Ukraine? In a saner, more contemplative world we would see poets as frontline observers, people who provide historicity, perspective, underlying and overarching facets. people whose testimony is so much more than a recital of events. We don't remember what newspapers had to say about three royal fools who caused World War I's carnage unless we delve into decaying archives, but what Sassoon and Owen, Ford and Brooke said is part of our literary DNA. We remember Yeats' Irish airman foreseeing his death in the skies over England. A more insightful and responsible media establishment would be telling us what the poets are saying instead of spoon-feeding us political blarney. Who doesn't remember Picasso's Guernica more vividly than than the breathless reports off so many correspondents?
Thank you Richard and Michael for curating this collection of poems. It has now been six months since Russia invaded Ukraine and the war rages on with incalculable suffering by civilians.
Thank you, Michael. It is heartbreaking. Our world is in a terrible state and the innocent people who are suffering for it--I pray for them.
Tragic. Six months of killing, thousands, perhaps tens of thousands dead, and many more than the usual percentage of civilians because of the way the Russians are prosecuting this war.
This from the Pasteur quote that gave me the title for the new book.
“Two opposing thoughts seem to me now in contest. The one, the law of blood and death, opening out each day new modes of destruction, forces nations to be always ready for battl. ... The one places a single life above all victories, the other sacrifices hundreds of thousands of lives to the ambition of a single individual. …” Louis Pasteur
Peace,
Richard
Thank you Richard, Michael, and Djelloul for publishing poems to support Ukraine, and honored to be part of it.
Thank you, Richard, Michael and Djelloul. This a beautiful and important collection.
HOW THE PRESS IMPEDES
EVOLUTION OF SENSIBILITY
The popular press organizes its responseS to what we experience by pigeonholing them—war, money, crime, medicine, science, art, literature, music, etc—and in this way it impedes rather than heightens human sensibility.
The categorical priorities of the press are politics, money, conflict, race and nationality. But that’s not the way we respond to what experience, it’s that part of our response that’s most susceptible to being recruited to the official narrative of elites. It’s part of life that makes us most vulnerable to manipulation.
Art, literature and music are elixirs. They ennoble our baser responses. They connect the dots, and it’s this virtue that makes them so dangerous to an official narrative. That’s why we the elixirs frardely make the front page or the to of television news. They’;re too worthy, too dangerous.
How dare we imagine that poets might have something enlightening to say about such con sequential matters as war? The question we should ask is how dare we think they don’t, and that is the question two poets, Michael Young and Richard Levine, are asking as they anthologize poets’ responses to the Ukraine war that has shattered the post-World War II peace.