POETRY // Framing the Disaster: Thomas Hardy & Stephen Edgar
EXCERPT //
“When the very worst happens, what then? Till recently in the US, EU, Australia, or any place with abundant oat milk, Labradoodles, etc., many millions of people could live decades without seriously confronting this question. Pestilence, socioeconomic upheavals, and environmental calamity are changing all that.
Soon it may be impossible for anyone at all to stop wondering, ‘What will become of us?’
‘In Time of “The Breaking of Nations”’ and ‘The Swallows of Baghdad’ offer related but distinct answers. Both, in their ways, are hopeful. In a philosophical mood, Hardy takes the long view: Power changes hands. Wars happen. People keep going. Farmer, horse, toil, mother, and child (if not every young father) remain. …
The Australian poet Stephen Edgar takes a shorter view in ‘The Swallows of Baghdad,’ confining himself to one battleground of modern-day Iraq, but from the start his approach feels still more impersonal than Hardy’s. Edgar, who frequently addresses recent and current calamities like war and racial violence, is among the few living poets to do so from a position of restraint.”
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