07-17-2023, 08:44 PM
There was a column in yesterday's NY Times by this title, written by a religion columnist. I'll put the link in, but I now many people don't have a subscription, so I wanted to post one paragraph from it here. It was interesting to me, because it echoed Busker's poem Tiktaalik:
Another way to think about it is that we keep making poetry because it’s part of natural curiosity, exploration and discovery. I trace poetry back to the story in Genesis, when God brings all the creatures of the world before Adam and says, “You name it.” Poetry is created in the world as one of the very first vocations and tasks of human beings, because poetry very often is an attempt to name the world properly, because to name it is to know it. And if we’re going to know it well, we’ve got to name it well, and if we’re going to name it well, we’ve got to pay very careful attention to this world that God has made. So I also think of poetry as the art of attention. It’s the ability to pay attention to the world and produce for the world the name of something that must be known.
Here's the link, if you do have access:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/16/opini...Position=1
Another way to think about it is that we keep making poetry because it’s part of natural curiosity, exploration and discovery. I trace poetry back to the story in Genesis, when God brings all the creatures of the world before Adam and says, “You name it.” Poetry is created in the world as one of the very first vocations and tasks of human beings, because poetry very often is an attempt to name the world properly, because to name it is to know it. And if we’re going to know it well, we’ve got to name it well, and if we’re going to name it well, we’ve got to pay very careful attention to this world that God has made. So I also think of poetry as the art of attention. It’s the ability to pay attention to the world and produce for the world the name of something that must be known.
Here's the link, if you do have access:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/16/opini...Position=1