Only Poetry Can Address Grief: Moving Forward after 911 (tags)
In the middle of the Anti-Capitalist Convergence march in Washington DC last month, I found myself nose to nose with a line of police attempting to push the crowd back. I was facing an angry but very short policewoman so in my case it was actually nightstick to bosom. "Get back, get back!" she was shouting, but our line was not giving ground. I explained to her, calmly and I thought, quite reasonably, that we were not going to get back, because there was nowhere for us to go.
Only Poetry Can Address Grief: Moving Forward After 911 (tags)
"The language of abstraction doesn't work. Ideology doesn't work. Judgment and hectoring and shaming and blaming cannot truly touch the depth of that loss. Only poetry can address grief. Only words that convey what we can see and smell and taste and touch of life, can move us."