“Beati pacifici : quoniam filii Dei vocabuntur.”
Dear Reader,
On the eve of an election as consequential as this one, one has to wonder if poetry is worth the time. It’s a valid question. One I often ask as I scribble away wondering if my time would be better spent doing “real work”. Yet despite this hangup, time and time again, I find myself returning to poetry in times like these because poets often know what to say when our politicians and pundits have reduced the power of language to hot takes and irreverent jabs at opponents real and imagined in hopes to score points with a populace who could care less, or in some cases care too much.
You see, it’s the poets who cut through the crap and tell it slant. Poets refuse to deal in absolutes and oversimplification (the bread and butter of political discourse). They take a wide view of the world, all its beauty and trouble, and for better or worse, tell it like it is. In doing so they invite us to imagine the world as it could be, beyond the black-and-white rhetoric of dehumanizing despots and pseudo-messiahs, a world in which we see farther and deeper than we ever dared dream.
Sure, poets don’t do well with policy. The polis as a set of intellectual ideas is anathema, akin to poetic death. It’s people that make up the polis and it’s people the poet sees, and in an age where politics reduces neighbors to ballots and hometowns to battlegrounds, maybe we need a few voices who know people and not a lick of policy.
Then again, what do I know? Im a poet after all and biased to be sure. But maybe, just maybe, before we all hit the ballot box, poetry is exactly what we need, and maybe when we color in that blank little bubble, we will see the faces of people, and remember that old poet from Nazareth’s most important words:
“I’m telling you to love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the supple moves of prayer, for then you are working out of your true selves, your God-created selves. This is what God does. He gives his best—the sun to warm and the rain to nourish—to everyone, regardless: the good and bad, the nice and nasty. If all you do is love the lovable, do you expect a bonus? Anybody can do that. If you simply say hello to those who greet you, do you expect a medal? Any run-of-the-mill sinner does that.”
-Ryan
FIELD NOTES #23 I've never once met a man who didn't know who he was (delusion seems to run deep). But in the ramshackle borders of everyday living, delusion is about as good as we can get: The postman humming, skipping down the street, is more of a poet than I'll ever be. 𑁍𑁍𑁍 I've died a thousand times and a thousand times again. All those prayers and all those years settle beneath the sand, only to emerge and gasp for air. But the dead don't breathe and neither do I. This city of bones just skulls piled high. A prophet once said: let the dead bones rise. You're silent as the grave, dead or alive. 𑁍𑁍𑁍 Life is like a clear stream tumbling down a mountain's edge: liquid sunlight spilling out into wide open canyons as if the earth itself was desperate for a drink. Of course, there's the drop off, the plunge just past the end, brown bile polluting the last bit of sun caught between the currents. There, everything you see is pond-scum and algae. A thin film of death you can't seem to break through, and all that's left of light is something like a word on the tip of your tongue, clinging for dear life. But it's just as your about to give up hope the water turns the bend and all you can see is open ocean before the ride begins again.