Sherry Chandler

from the NYTimes:

Mr. Pryor’s often harsh observations and explicit language did offend some audiences. But he insistently presented characters with little or no distortion. “A lie is profanity,” he explained. “A lie is the worst thing in the world. Art is the ability to tell the truth, especially about oneself.”

from the introduction to Chapter 1 of Imagine a World, entitled “The Feel of War:”

For poets there is a “sacredness” about language—it is the medium through which they seek to reach toward the core realities of human experience. For politicians, however, language can become instead a tool for manipulating public opinion. Poets feel viscerally violated when this happens.

… the poet seeks to let our common language be emptied of whatever power-driven agendas are crammed into it, so that words can expand toward our real human needs instead of our false ones.

The poet’s methods for letting language be emptied or purified are varied. In time of war, it might be taking actual lines from newspaper reports of the war and rearranging them or drawing out their implications, playfully or bitterly, so that their deceptiveness is exposed. Or it might be starting with a particular place or person affected by the war and letting one’s imagination and heart enter the experience of that place or person, waiting attentively until words come which seem fitting. And then, perhaps, holding in mind both the experience and the words, watching to see where the words’ images or sounds might lead, checking always to see if the direction seems truthful to the lived experience.

Through means like this, poets can offer us the very feel of war, in a way that invites us to experience for ourselves war’s lived texture. This is not the sort of invitation we’re delighted to receive. It’s an invitation to share pain, to horror. But unless we peacemakers accept the invitation to experience the grip of evil on our world, we can’t know what it is we’re up against.

[Addendum: There is another Kentucky connection to this book. Lovely paintings at each chapter head and the cover illustration were done by Cincinnatian Mary Ann Lederer, whose sister-in-law Ann Lederer is one of Lexington's most accomplished poets. I had the book on my table yesterday at the book fair and couldn't help but notice that children were drawn to the cover with its bright reds and yellows. A good thing, that.]