This is an interesting
comment thread. To what poetry to turn to in search of solace? After reflecting about it for few moments, I discovered that the answer for me was Robert Creeley. Notice that this is a different question from who is your favorite poet, or the one who has influenced your own poetry the most, etc... What poet do you turn to in times of need?
Longfellow; Victorian parlor poetry in general.
ResponderEliminarBlake. Whitman. Dickinson.
Tagore.
For me? Larkin. There is beauty even in the most miserable of souls.
ResponderEliminarMuch as I love art, I only find it consoling when I don't really need consolation. When dying miserably "for lack of what is found there", I would be incapable of finding it there if I looked.
ResponderEliminarRobeyns's example is the last stanza of Hikmet's Invitation. This too makes me feel like a heartless bastard -- don't the two figures cancel each other out? The resolution of the paradox is that trees aren't really free, or solitary, or in solidarity at all -- they're just trees.
I need consolation all the time.
ResponderEliminarI turn to the great Marina Tsvetaeva. She was a brilliant poet of the Russian Silver Age and she had a truly tragic life. I feel that her poetic voice expresses me perfectly.
ResponderEliminarI find it very consoling that somebody who lived long before me knew so perfectly exactly how I feel.