Poets spend their lives courting juxtaposition and paradox; those elements add depth to a work of art, and without them there is no real exploration of the human condition. Still, the level of paradox that characterizes the world today is unsettling. This new year is marked by a dread such as I have never known in my fifty-five years. Everything is in question, from friendships to our future. After all my years of teaching students to recognize fallacies, the fallacies seem to have won—as if naming them has done nothing more than afforded them extra power.
Every time I compose a paragraph these days, I read it over and think, Yuck, who's gonna wanna read that little puddle of despair. Therefore, I resolve that my next blog entry shall be all haiku, in an attempt to counteract the despair of prose. The truest paradox is that which is a step on the way to clarity...that is what all poets, artists, teachers, thinkers need to remember as we resist the forces of evil for the next several years.
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a blessing of sorts —
the first of many winters
in the north cove
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