I am grateful to have participated in a far-reaching interview of poets from the anthology WINTER IN AMERICA (AGAIN; one of the editors spoke with several of us:
https://paulenelson.com/2025/07/20/resistance-as-writing/
How can one write poetry about current political events without resorting to invective or rhetoric? Why is this important? Poetry is a use of language that is capable of a kind of depth of being that rhetoric is not. Rhetoric is opinion, which is centered in the human ego and is part of the vanity project. Poetry at its most potent taps into realms so far beyond rhetoric and opinion, when one has had a taste of them it is hard to go back. Many “poets” stay mired into work that is nothing more than their opinion. These are my convictions, but on June 5, 2025, via Zoom, I caught up with 4 contributors to Winter in America (Again to discuss how they navigate the need to write about the implications of fascism in North America from a place that’s deeper than ego and opinion. The audio version of the interview is linked here.