In a post-truth world, poetry is an anomaly. A strange and wondrous thing animated by the truth. Our lone defense against the rising tide of propaganda, lies, and manufactured facts.
Poetry is an unflinching gaze. It bears witness; recording the pain of the world라이브 바카라 wounded spots. It can be direct or mysterious, sometimes both. It has the power to be provocative, subversive, sentimental, soothing. The form contains multitudes: epic, free verse, rhyming verse, sonnet, limerick, hip hop...
In 1993, American poet and teacher Carolyn Forché first coined the term ‘poetry of witness’ in the anthology Against Forgetting, which she edited. Poets who had written under extreme conditions such as war, exile, torture, censorship and imprisonment found a home in this remarkable collection. Their poems, “postcards from the volcano of twentieth-century barbarism”, talked about some of the worst atrocities inflicted on human beings in our time. This is what poetry of witness does best: it urges us not to look away. Teaches us to empathise. To experience the horrific tremors of violence people in Palestine, Bosnia, El Salvador, Syria, Afghanistan, Africa, Ukraine, Yemen, the subcontinent ruptured by the Partition, all live with.
Poetry of witness stands steadfast; against complacency, against forgetting.
Why read poetry? Why stand still and tune into poetry라이브 바카라 cadences in a madly spinning world? Because poetry, as the wise Irish poet Seamus Heaney put it, “inspires a hope that new possibility can still open up.” Despite the wars and the bloodshed, despite the rise of despots and widening divides, despite fear and heartbreak, poetry showcases the human capacity to speak up, to register injustices, to break free of the shackles of “word limits and sound-bites’’; to celebrate love and empathy, to dream of peace.
Han Kang, the first Asian woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, was praised by the Nobel Committee for her “poetic prose”. Han writes about intense subjects; confronting historical trauma and the scars state-sponsored violence leaves on the human psyche. The line between poetry and prose blurs as she navigates the troubled waters of history. Han라이브 바카라 writing is an exquisite endorsement of poetry. Novelist, journalist, or historian—poetry can open up new perspectives on the human condition for all. Nothing else is as potent as poetry to remind us of our shared humanity.
Whatever language you speak or dream in, poetry can worm its way into your heart.
As the poet Kamala Das, “Indian, very brown, born in Malabar”, famously said:
All around me are words, and words and words,
They grow on me like leaves, they never
Seem to stop their slow growing
From within...
Words are a nuisance, but
They grow on me like leaves on a tree,
They never seem to stop their coming,
From a silence, somewhere deep within.
