Saved by Faith Hahn
To Love Sorrowfully: Poetry and War
The word selah (Hebrew: ) — “to pause, reflect, and feel meaning” — appears almost seventy times in the poetry of the Psalms. Grief by its nature is poetical, elegiac. And poetry, like grief, is subversive, unbridled, and disobedient. Poetry violates linguistic norms because it must. Poetry helps us feel. And when we allow ourselves to feel that wh
... See moreJoanne Cacciatore • Bearing the Unbearable: Love, Loss, and the Heartbreaking Path of Grief
Our culture of illusion is, at its core, a culture of death. It will die and leave little of value behind. It was Sparta that celebrated raw militarism, discipline, obedience, and power, but it was Athenian art and philosophy that echoed down the ages to enlighten new worlds, including our own. Hope exists. It will always exist. It will not come th
... See moreChris Hedges • Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle
The End and the Beginning
By Wisława Szymborska
After every war
someone has to clean up.
Things won’t
straighten themselves up, after all.
Someone has to push the rubble
to the side of the road,
so the corpse-filled wagons
can pass.
Someone has to get mired
in scum and ashes,
sofa springs,
splintered glass,
and bloody rags.
Someone has to drag in a girder
to prop
... See moreIts lineage makes sense: surrealistic art was developed post-WWI and then grew in prominence after WWII as artists attempted to process the atrocities they experienced. Releases of the unconscious.