I'm trying to write more

Thia gave me a book of poetry by Czeslaw Milosz for Christmas. He's a Lithuanian poet who lived through both world wars and, of course, the Holocaust. The book Thia gave me is a large collection of his works translated from Polish. The Foreword to the book (by Seamus Heaney, another poet I like) says, "His life and works were founded upon faith in 'A word wakened by lips that perish.' This first artistic principle was clearly related to the last Gospel of the Mass, the In principio of St. John: 'In the beginning was the Word.' Inexorably then, through his pursuit of poetic vocation, his study of what such pursuit entailed, and the unremitting, abounding yield of his habit of composition, he developed a fierce conviction about the holy force of his art, how poetry was called upon to combat death and nothingness..."

What a lovely thought, and one I want to strive to live into, in my own amateurish attempts at creative writing. The holy force of art. Mmmm.


Current Milosz poem that's caught my eye - a poem called "Notes," that is really a collection of epigraphs ranging on a wide variety of subjects. A small excerpt:

SUPPLICATION
From galactic silence protect us.

THE PERFECT REPUBLIC
Right from early morning - the sun has barely made it through the
dense maples - they walk contemplating the holy word: Is.

STRONG OR WEAK POINT
You were always ready to fall to your knees!
Yes, I was always ready to fall to my knees.

LONGING
Not that I want to be a god or a hero.
Just to change into a tree, grow for ages, not hurt anyone.

HISTORY OF THE CHURCH
For two thousand years I have been trying to understand what It was.