Darlene Silva Soberano
heaven towards what
This astonishing piece on the succour offered by poetry in crisis comes highly recommended by Shu-Ling Chua.
'Poetry, meanwhile, calls to its own insufficiency. Poetry lends itself well to crises because it does not pretend that it can fix the crisis alone – not materially, or even psychically. When Sealey writes, "How have we managed our way / to this bed – beholden to heat like dawn / indebted to light," she is signaling to the fact that love – especially one that endures – is not accidental; it is built out of responsibility. Beholden. Indebted. This responsibility can only appear in the poem because it is realised outside of the poem, in the real world, where difficult emotional work is undertaken.'