![]() ![]() ![]() Here she is offering to lead us in that endeavor. Claudia Rankine wrote recently of Rich in the New Yorker that her poems are a chronicle of “what it means to risk the self in order to give the self”. Rich knows this, and issues instead a disquieting warning. Here she cites Berthold Brecht’s line “What kind of times are these, when to speak of trees is almost a crime, for it is a kind of silence about so many horrors!” The bald hue and cry of Brecht’s politics is unfashionable now – as it was when Rich wrote this poem in the 1990s. Read more Adrienne Rich – What Kind of Times Are TheseĪdrienne Rich devoted her life’s work to investigating the relationship between poetry and politics. One restless in the exotic time! and ever, Yesterday, I thought of her the same way, in our need for emotion and action, “remedial fears” and “muscular tears”. ![]() In her characteristic condensed brilliance, Brooks pays tribute to a guide who was both a fighter and who danced. ![]() Against horrific violence and discrimination in another era, Langston Hughes offered Brooks a “helmsman, hatchet, headlight”. I discovered this poem last summer after watching police and protesters clashing in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and videos of police shootings played on repeat. Gwendolyn Brooks’ brief poems are like talismans to carry close to your skin for protection and comfort. ![]()
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