an excerpt from an article published April 9, 2024 atThe Gladis Publication
I’ll tell you the truth: I’ve grown tired of hope.
Hope has felt like a threadbare concept, worn thin by the traffic of too many expectations. Or worse, a word that embodies wishful thinking disconnected from the harsh, heavy pain of the world.
…
Exploring slant-side expressions of the meaning of hope keeps me tethered to the kind of collective imagination our world is keening for. And poetry partners with it all.
In the past, I’ve accepted a simplistic definition of hope—something along the lines of “light in the darkness.” That characterization became useless when the lights I was used to, whether in the global community, personal relationships, or familiar perspectives, sputtered and went out. I’ve had to hunt up a new articulation in the face of a new kind of darkness.
The good news? Hope seems at home in the dark. Hope is not what I’ve pictured in the past—cheerful, soft, sweet, or even comfortable sensibilities. Often, the untameable thing that acts most like the hope I want to have is abrasive and scours a veneer of false tranquility right off my surfaces. Hope is not docile or domesticated. She cannot, nor does she attempt to, erase horror; but it seems she can and will accompany me within the horror.
Read the rest: