Poems to help you cope with disaster

January 4, 2005 7:22 AM

in light of recent events in SE asia, are there any poems (or poets) to which you have turned in order to help you cope with, explain, reflect, respond to the destruction and/ or the relief efforts? [mi]

there have been some great threads/ questions in the past regarding the subject of poetry-- both here and "in the blue."

i'm a high school teacher (of american and british lit.) and feel both a responsibility and a need to inspire some conversation/ dialogue about the tsunami with my students.

i immediately thought of this post about a year after 9/11.

posted by ronv to Writing & Language (4 answers total)

Inspired by a comment on this MeFi thread, I went out and picked up Annie Dillard's For The Time Being. It's a somewhat dense collection of essays (split up and rearranged in alternating sections) and quotations and ruminations on spirituality, science and evoltuion, the meaning of the individual... you know, "the big questions." Among other things, it touches on the 1991 floods in Bangladesh which killed 138,000. I found it a provocative (if dark) read, and think it would be great for high school students, at least those who can handle a narrative that isn't very straightforward.
posted by thirdparty at 7:45 AM on January 4, 2005

I found this post from a blog I read regularly quite thoughtful.
posted by katie at 8:11 AM on January 4, 2005

Ah - looks like I answered your question too hastily, as the post I point to isn't a poem, but a long quote from CS Lewis. Still, I think it's worth looking at and it would be appropriate for your class, especially British Lit.
posted by katie at 8:28 AM on January 4, 2005

. . . . the backward half-look
Over the shoulder, towards the primitive terror.
Now, we come to discover that the moments of agony
(Whether, or not, due to misunderstanding,
Having hoped for the wrong things or dreaded the wrong things,
Is not in question) are likewise permanent
With such permanence as time has. We appreciate this better
In the agony of others, nearly experienced,
Involving ourselves, than in our own.
For our own past is covered by the currents of action,
But the torment of others remains an experience
Unqualified, unworn by subsequent attrition.
People change, and smile: but the agony abides.
Time the destroyer is time the preserver,
Like the river with its cargo of dead negroes, cows and chicken coops,
The bitter apple, and the bite in the apple.
And the ragged rock in the restless waters,
Waves wash over it, fogs conceal it;
On a halcyon day it is merely a monument,
In navigable weather it is always a seamark
To lay a course by: but in the sombre season
Or the sudden fury, is what it always was.

-- TS Eliot, The Dry Salvages
posted by Rumple at 8:55 AM on January 4, 2005