The poem "Father" originated in watching my father drown a litter of kittens and, because I loved and trusted him, and he told me that if the kittens were allowed to live, they would either starve or be predated so it was easier to drown them now. The last line is presented as a doubtful certainty! a willed agreement, and the whole poem is loosely intended as a parable of the old notion that suffering is an act of God and is to be accepted.
John F. Deane on "Father" |
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"In Praise of Poetry About Bugs"
"The kind of attention we train on a bug, when we do, displaces the inner concerns of a meditating subject or re-places those concerns onto external phenomena. The poet considers unlikeness to generate kind-ness—similarity or analogy, and, in certain poems or poets’ moods, something like gentleness."
via LITERARY HUB |
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What Sparks Poetry:
Eleanor Goodman on Translation
"For Zheng, and for me, the function of poetry, its innate raison d’être, is to mourn. And in mourning, to point a finger. Look! the poet cries, Look! Look at everything that’s been lost, that we are in the process of losing, that we are throwing away out of ignorance and fear and laziness and greed, the habits we’ve formed over a lifetime and cannot loosen our grasp on even if it kills us.” |
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