It is far too easy, when life is dark, to turn to facts and non-facts, arguments and counterarguments, all the words and torrents of opinion. We look to these things to help us make sense of the nonsensical, the absurd, the impossible to believe.
But I find, when life is dark, poetry often helps more than facts, arguments and opinions. At least, it helps me.
Listen to what author Garrison Keillor wrote in 2005, some 20 years ago:
"America is in hard times these days, the beloved country awash to the scuppers in expensive trash, gripped by persistent jitters, politics even more divorced from reality than usual, the levers of power firmly in the hands of a cadre of Christian pirates and bullies whose cynicism is stunning, especially their perversion of the gospel of the Lord to blast the poor and the meek and subvert the tax system in favor of the rich, while public institutions are put into perpetual fiscal crisis, meanwhile newspapers dwindle in sad decline, journalism is lost in the whirlwind of amusement, and the hairy hand of the censor reaches out--what mustn't be lost, in this dank time, is the passion of young people's truth and justice and liberty--the spirit that has kept the American porch light lit through dark ages of history--and when this spirit is betrayed by the timid and the greedy and the naive, then we must depend on the poets.
American poetry is the truest journalism we have.
What your life can be, lived bravely and independently, you can discover in poetry.
(Garrison Keillor, Good Poems for Hard Times)
It is dark and it is time; time to listen to the poets, the artists, the writers, the dreamers.
For they can tell us truer things than mere facts will ever tell.
Show us truer things than mere facts will ever show.
Help us imagine truer futures than mere facts will ever help us imagine.
This is why fascist regimes try to quiet the poets and artists and writers and dreamers first.
Don't let them.
Read the poets.
Witness the art.
Buy the books.
Dream the dreams.
When life is dark, read the poets.
Keep the American porch light lit.
Photo by Mrika Selimi on Unsplash
