A Jewish pessimist says, “Things can’t get any worse.”
A Jewish optimist says, “Oh, yes they can.”
We’re inundated with bad news—local, global, political; climate change, war. There’s a widespread, exhausting sense of dissolution, of rage, and of perpetual crisis that feels as if it’s been going on forever. At the same time, each day’s news is a fresh assault.
In the face of all this, what can poetry do? The sense of crisis is a human constant—but so is poetry. Poems can lament or rage, mourn or pray, narrate or describe. They can help us to understand our feelings and to share them with others. They can bear witness; in Carolyn Forché’s phrase, they’re against forgetting. Maybe they can do more—we hope to find out.
In this four-week critique workshop, we’ll examine a few poems (I’ll provide a list) that tell or respond to bad news, and we’ll workshop the poems students will bring in. I expect to learn more about the relationship between the situations we are coping with and the art we love and try to practice.
Please note that this workshop is capped at twelve participants.