I think children have a capacity to witness adult behavior systems with a kind of alien clarity. One of the phrases in the poem comes from a chapter in the biblical book of Corinthians, a passage that often sounds to me like poetry. To me it's a reminder that poems too may function prophetically; that belonging, home, and identity are shaped by language; and that the patterns we inherit are not immutable.
Elizabeth Willis on "Letter to the Corinthians" |
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Nick Ripatrazone on "When Dylan Thomas Tried to Get Spooky"
"Dylan Thomas once described God as 'the author, the milky-way farmer, the first cause, architect, lamp-lighter, quintessence, the beginning Word, the anthropomorphic bowler-out and black-baller, the stuff of all men, scapegoat, martyr, maker, woe-bearer.' At nineteen, suffused with Blake’s mysticism and something devilish, he wrote a horror story during Christmas. We will never know the exact mixture of the alchemy, but 'The Tree' is a staggering myth."
via LITERARY HUB |
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What Sparks Poetry: Ranjit Hoskote on Translation
"Mir’s voice speaks with clarity and urgency, with anguish and a timely critical resonance to our historical moment. His themes are our themes, his loss is our loss, his bewilderment is our bewilderment—the destroyed city, the devastated countryside, the scattering of friends, the exactions of exile. All these are features of our lives today, in a world marred by genocidal wars and forced migrations, invasions and insurrections, tanks and bulldozers, bombed cities and slaughtered populations." |
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