Photo by Susan Biddle shows Martín Espada (left) and Ethelbert Miller (center.) Not sure of the woman on the right.
I'm exhausted, I'm exhilarated. Yesterday's Washington Post feature by David Montgomery, "Poets Adverse to War," in the Style section is worth checking out, for the photos alone, not to mention some of the quotations form the poets. I just wish the story had led off with that. But poets here are not accorded the same place in public life as they are in Europe and Latin America.
For instance, Martín Espada: "People in this society are starved for meaning...In a time of war, the government divorces language from meaning. . . . They drain the blood from words. Poets can put the blood back into words...No change for the good ever happens without being imagined first. . . . That's where poets come in...What I do is an act of faith. I put words out into the atmosphere. They become part of what we breathe. Hopefully that has some impact. But we shouldn't try to quantify the impact of a poem like it's a package of beans....You don't fight the good fight just because you think you're going to win....You fight the good fight because it's the right thing to do, regardless of the outcome, which you can't predict anyhow. That's how I feel about the work that I do."
For more photos see Split This Rock's photo archives at Flickr. For instance, here's Jill Brazel's photo of the silent march to the White House on the 5th Anniversary of the start of the war in Iraq:
