WRIGHT ON READING

From today's social media stream, Franz Wright on his Facebook wall opined:

I learn more about the world by reading a few words of Simic or Young or Herakleitos than -- than what? Reading the NY Times?

In the course of the evolving discussion with Facebookers, he continues:

It is not that difficult to get the news from real poetry as opposed to the absolute shit that passes for poetry now -- read Simic's poem about the old woman watching the deadlines of a newspaper going up in flames as she lights her stove. What he is saying is perfectly clear, and any child can grasp it. There is a lot of difficult poetry that is great, but I think it only appears to be difficult, and that we simply, more and more, have lost the power to be still and pay attention. H. G. Wells wrote somewhere that the world will either have a planetary socialist government or be destroyed, and I believe more and more that this is literally correct. But I am not getting into that. I will soon not have to worry about it. Swift's gravestone reads, if I understand correctly, in Latin: " ...where savage indignation can no longer stab him in the heart." This is what gives me a sense of peace these days.

Wright won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, and lives in Waltham.