The particulars in poems are like the particularities,
the personalities, that distinguish people from one another. Poems
are easy to share, easy to pass on, and when you read a poem, you can
imagine someone's speaking to you or for you, maybe even someone far
away or someone made up or someone deceased. That's why we can go to
poems when we want to remember something or someone, to celebrate or
to look beyond death or to say goodbye, and that's one reason poems
can seem important, even to people who aren't me, who don't so much
live in a world of words. The poet Frank O'Hara said, "If you
don't need poetry, bully for you," but he also said when he didn't
want to be alive anymore, the thought that he wouldn't write any more poems had
stopped him. Poetry helps me want to be alive, and I want to show you
why by showing you how; how a couple of poems react to the fact that we're
alive in one place at one time in one culture, and in another we won't be alive
at all.
16 January 2015
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