“... poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action. Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought. The farthest horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems, carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives.”
― Audre Lorde
I was recently part of a discussion on Anna Deavere Smith’s work. The problem with America (let alone anywhere else) is surely that the default is always that authority is right so any questioning is thereby wrong: teenagers who rebel need discipline, education. When you start questioning many American institutions you realize the answers don’t make sense because there is often no inherent logic in the first place.
Photo: Andrew Lucre
