Post by louisa on Nov 24, 2008 1:02:01 GMT 2
The Blind Leading the Blind from Alive Together
by Lisel Mueller
submitted by Margo Berdeshevsky
I want to resist the word "favorite," a word that implies, like Oscars and Tony's and Pulitzers and Nobels and other prizes attached to the worlds of our creativity — that an artistic contribution to the world is like a football match or a relay race that could really be won, over another's beautiful drop in the ocean of what saves our lives. (And saving our lives, to my mind and heart, is what the arts may do, sometimes. Sometimes!) "Favorite," suggests politics and fame points, not the best way to weigh spirit and something almost holy, like a poem, or what a poem may be. But here I am selecting nineteen lines.
I know what it is, and deeply support selecting words or music or poem or painting or some piece of greatness — (and I want to use that word softly, cautiously,) but a piece that touches my life this day, and I want to support asking others to feel it, love it, with me. So I do that, with Lisel Mueller's heart-wrenching poem, "The Blind Leading the Blind." It begs, it invites, it cries for our humanity. It sings for communication— one of us for another of us, — one with another, even in our darkest minutes. And as a poem, sparely, and hard as the diamonds it says will teach us of toads — it breaks my heart. So I select its nineteen lines, and let them do their own work. Sufficient unto the day.
Read The Blind Leading the Blind:
writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2007/02/10
Read about the poet:
www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/85
To Buy Alive Together
www.lsu.edu/lsupress/bookPages/9780807121276.html
by Lisel Mueller
submitted by Margo Berdeshevsky
I want to resist the word "favorite," a word that implies, like Oscars and Tony's and Pulitzers and Nobels and other prizes attached to the worlds of our creativity — that an artistic contribution to the world is like a football match or a relay race that could really be won, over another's beautiful drop in the ocean of what saves our lives. (And saving our lives, to my mind and heart, is what the arts may do, sometimes. Sometimes!) "Favorite," suggests politics and fame points, not the best way to weigh spirit and something almost holy, like a poem, or what a poem may be. But here I am selecting nineteen lines.
I know what it is, and deeply support selecting words or music or poem or painting or some piece of greatness — (and I want to use that word softly, cautiously,) but a piece that touches my life this day, and I want to support asking others to feel it, love it, with me. So I do that, with Lisel Mueller's heart-wrenching poem, "The Blind Leading the Blind." It begs, it invites, it cries for our humanity. It sings for communication— one of us for another of us, — one with another, even in our darkest minutes. And as a poem, sparely, and hard as the diamonds it says will teach us of toads — it breaks my heart. So I select its nineteen lines, and let them do their own work. Sufficient unto the day.
Read The Blind Leading the Blind:
writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2007/02/10
Read about the poet:
www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/85
To Buy Alive Together
www.lsu.edu/lsupress/bookPages/9780807121276.html