27 oct 2011

Solace

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?

5 comentarios:

John dijo...

Longfellow; Victorian parlor poetry in general.

Blake. Whitman. Dickinson.

Tagore.

Jim Murdoch dijo...

For me? Larkin. There is beauty even in the most miserable of souls.

Vance Maverick dijo...

Much 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.

Robeyns'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.

Jonathan dijo...

I need consolation all the time.

Clarissa dijo...

I 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.

I find it very consoling that somebody who lived long before me knew so perfectly exactly how I feel.