Colum McCann

'I do believe in poetic realism. I do believe that we should sing even in the darkest little corners. I do believe that our ability to say things beautifully is one of the things that absolutely sets us apart. Because anyone can say the most brutal and awful things but to find some kind of redemption, to find some sort of grace is the overarching need, I think, of the human spirit in the end ... It's easy to be cynical. It's much more muscular, much tougher to find some kind of redemption or some sort of grace. I don't want to sound soft or poncy but the fact of the matter is that I think it's necessary to have some sort of optimism against all the available evidence and most of the optimists I meet are tougher than the cynics.'

Colum McCann talking with Michael Cathcart, BooksPlus, RN, Sunday 29 November 2015
http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/2015/11/bps_20151129_1405.mp3 

http://colummccann.com/ 

Elizabeth Charles, British writer (1828-1896)

'To know how to say what others only know how to think is what makes men poets or sages; and to dare to say what others only dare to think makes men martyrs or reformers - or both.'

Chronicles of the Schonberg-Cotta Family
(a fictionalised account of life of Martin Luther)

Speaking out

Bucharest, photo by Alessandro Galantucci, Flickr creative commons https://flic.kr/p/kfJnfu

 

 

'All great questions must be raised by great voices, and the greatest voice is the voice of the people - speaking out - in prose, or painting or poetry or music; speaking out - in homes and halls, streets and farms, courts and cafes - let that voice speak and the stillness you hear will be the gratitude of mankind.'

Robert F. Kennedy, 10th Annversary Convocation Center for Study of Democratic Institutions of the Fund for the Republic, New York City, January 22, 1963.

Life Saving

'Her early poetry did not come easily to Plath, who during their marriage, Ted Hughes said, "composed very slowly, consulting her Thesaurus and dictionary for almost every word, putting a slow strong line of ink under each word that attracted her." ... She had a "vision" of the kind of poems she would like to write but "[I] do not. When will they come?" They were waiting.'
Josephine Hart, 2012, Life Saving: Why we need poetry, Virago Press, UK.

W. H. Auden

'When I find myself in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a drawing room full of dukes.'

De Profundis

'FedericoGarciaLorcaDeProfundisLeidenWallPoem' by David Eppstein - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:FedericoGarciaLorcaDeProfundisLeidenWallPoem.jpg#mediaviewer/File:FedericoGarciaLorcaDeProfundisLeidenWallPoem.jpg

Those hundred lovers
are asleep forever
beneath the dry earth.
Andalusia has
long, red-colored roads.
Córdoba, green olive trees
for placing a hundred crosses
to remember them.

Translation by Tom Clark

reality

Photo by Karl-Ludwig Poggemann, Flickr creative commons. Manuscipt, James Douglas Morrison