For each of the next four issues of the Paris Review, editor Emily Nemens, will work in tandem with four quite different, highly esteemed poets to find and select poems that define the forefront of literature. Among the guest poetry editors are Civitellians Henri Cole (DG 2017) and Monica Youn (CRF 2013).
By way of introduction, the Paris Review asked each to provide a short response to the following prompt: Where is poetry now?
Henri Cole (featured in issue no. 226) says: “I think American poetry is much as I found it forty years ago as a student. The poets I loved are gone, but their poems have imprinted me with their depictions of bliss, loss, trembling, compulsion, desire, and disease.
I think being a poet in the world opposes the very nature of it, which is driven by profit. In a poem, we have only a little snapshot of the soul in a moment of being. Still, though there is no monetary gain, there is profit. Something enters the brain that wasn’t there before—an illumination, an aliveness, a triumphing over shame…”
Monica Youn (featuerd in issue no. 228) says: “Poetry was last spotted wandering in the wilderness, asking itself the question, “Why am I?” This is a moment of explosive communication, where tweets, status updates, emojis and the acronyms du jour have become primary modes of self-expression, and we recite song lyrics and protest slogans far more often than poems. It’s also a moment in which many of us have, with renewed urgency, been scrutinizing our own complacencies, our histories, our actions and inactions, our words and our silences. So it’s an opportune time for poetry to be questioning its own necessity – a reality check every art form or artist should engage in at healthy intervals…”