Young adult literature, especially fantasy, holds a special place in my heart because of the home it gave me when I was young. I lived inside my books’ magical worlds. I identified with the shy, awkward heroines who became respected for the power that, at first, seemed hidden inside them. Those books gave me as sense of belonging and hope that shy, awkward girls like me had power in us that one day would bloom and earn us respect. They let me feel, in some way, what it would be like to achieve that hope. I’ve been thinking recently about the value of hope and whether it’s really a virtue. It could be just a denial of a not-as-good-as-hoped reality, and that’s a pretty dismal thought. What I’ve decided is that hope is valuable as long as it is joined with knowledge, respect, understanding, and work. Then, it has the potential to be powerful. Like the heroines, you can’t sit back and hope; you can’t use hope as an excuse; you have to get out there and try to make things happen, using hope as a motivator. Hope can be focused and channeled, providing energy for an effort to change even for the shy, awkward ones. Even if the result seems tiny, everything we do makes a difference. It all ripples out.
It’s interesting for me now to look back and think of the hope-giving worlds of books, not just from my old point of view but from the writer’s points of view. In our column this month, we have work that has its roots in horrible suffering – but also in hope. This poetry has the potential to inspire more love, respect, and understanding in the world, as it shows the horrifying consequences of failing in those virtues. May more of us find our power and work towards our hopes for ourselves and for the world. I am proud that one of the ways to work toward hope is to write poetry, and I am humbled to be able to share some of the poems written for that purpose.
This brings me to our first poet of the month: I am honored this month to, again, bring you work by one of the most powerful writers I have read, Peauladd Huy. I don’t think there has been a single time that I have read her work without crying. Ms. Huy writes with grace and powerfully fragile strength about her experience growing up in Cambodia under the terror of the Khmer Rouge. This one is a must read. The first poem, “Tribunus Onus,” is long, but see it through to its end. And don’t miss the interview. Ms. Huy read at Connotation Press’s reading in Chicago in 2012, and a video of that reading is available here. I feel most honored to be an editor because I can sometimes publish poetry like this. Perhaps the most important things we can do are love, respect, and try to make the world better. Peauladd’s poetry carries the hope that we can do that.
Sandra Hoben, another powerful poet, joins us in the column this month. Ms Hoben’s poetry is crisp and lovely, but it is not light. The subjects of these poems are significant, and they’re approached with a slow, deliberate pace, through beautiful metaphors. Her poem “Power is a word”, through a lovely scene, speaks of education, knowledge, and, coming to know power – a truly powerful trilogy of great import to us as a people and a society. These poems are full of love, with its ever-accompanying pain.
Associate Editor Julie Brooks Barbour shares more lovely work by three poets with us this month. She writes:In the poem “Polaris” by Catherine Abbey Hodges, there is a fluid movement from wings to the heavens, then to the engines that turn the system. Though a sense of perfection runs through the imagery and movement of these poems, as in the form of “January Villanelle,” this is balanced by the underlying idea of imperfection in each piece: the desire to disappear, like a creek into a sea; the uncertainty of stillness as we grow older. These poems left me with a deep longing, but a longing so beautiful that I wanted to disappear into the imagery and lyricism of the poems again and again.
I am haunted by Kristin LaTour’s poems: the scene in “Fortune” of the mother’s gravy “making grotesque patterns” over the “decal flowers” of the plates, while the father’s hand “pressed down her chestnut curls while her eyes leaked / like broken porcelain teacups. ” These are not images one can forget easily. There is struggle in these poems—“water and rock are fighting / one element wearing away / at the other”—but an answer appears: “Wait a little longer,” LaTour writes at the end of “Palm Reading.” These smart and wise poems will remain with you.
I find the poems of Laura Treacy Bentley to be as dazzling as the starlings in their murmurations at the end of her poem “Signs.” Swans don’t seem to care that they’re noticed by the speaker, but move toward “deeper water” nonetheless; plants turn toward winter as they give their last colors to a fading season. These poems slow fleeting moments just enough so we can pay attention before nature continues its journey.
Hedy Habra joins the column this month with an arresting poem. It moves in surprising, twisting ways that keep me on my toes. It questions ways of thinking and being, and then questions the questioning. All the while, the imagery in this ekphrastic piece is visually striking. And, again, I’m taken with the idea of language – here, an “invented alphabet” – and its connection to memory of the past and remembrance in the future.
Welcome to the Poetry Column. Here’s to writing hope!