“HEARING IN THE DARKNESS THE EVERLASTING SONG OF US” (from Chuck Tripi’s “Agencies of Grace”): THE GAME OF POEMS (AN ANCIENT AND EMERGENT NATIONAL PASTTIME) AND FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS, POEMS TO LIGHT US IN DARK DAYS AND FRIDAY NIGHTS

What if we approached poetry as a stadium event, we’ll consider that and amazing poems that shine in darkness and lift us today, and how we need this light, in the context of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s national recruiting calls for “The Poet” and the relation of American football and politics and poetry and civic consciousness and resilience—We’ll dine on plenty of Whitman, Homer, and the lights of Ezra Pound, Mark Strand, Diane Ackerman, Brene Brown, Tolkien, Shakespeare, Robert Frost, Martin Luther King, Jr., Plato, a little Dickinson (goes a long way), William Stafford, Leonard Cohen, a way lit with Jack Gilbert, Joseph Brodsky, Martin Luther King, Kahil Bigran, James Wright, William Carlos Williams, Jane Hirshfield, Lucille Clifton, Pablo Neruda, Piere Joris, Bill Stafford, Pimone Triplett, Mary Oliver, Ander Monson! Virginia Woolf graces us, with news on us as readers, we who read poetry are so blessed.

© Barbara Mossberg

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