‘The Poet and the News’
— Hannah Cohen
Honestly, when I look at life straight, I’m just a poet, which means I’m just a human who should, if I’m doing it right, be able to listen
What is the writer’s place in the history of politics and violence? I don’t have the answer for this, but Emilia Phillips’s essay about how we tackle the terrible in our writing may provide a path to several answers. She looks at words by Tom Sleigh, Jack Gilbert, Wislawa Szymborska, and opens up their trauma. She poses the question, can we write about trauma that isn’t ours? Does our emotional and physical distance provide a new outlook, or do we, as Phillips states, “re-perform the act of violence”? Is there a right or wrong way?
Times are difficult and heart-breaking, but I think about the power of poetry every day. How Maggie Smith’s poem “Good Bones” circulated the social media web and became more than just this collection of lines and words. While it’s true that some poets present the terror and pain of the world from a comfortable and privileged standpoint, I agree with Emilia in that there are no easy answers when writing poetry influenced by the news—we must do what we feel is just.