In these pointed and wide-ranging essays, Wendy Willis explores everything from personal resistance to the rise of political podcasts, civic loneliness to the exploitation of personal data, public outrage to the opioid crisis-all with a poet's gift for finding the sacred in the mundane, a hope in the dark.
One of the country's sharpest observers of politics, art, and the American spirit, Willis returns often to the demanding question posed by Czech writer, activist, and politician Václav Havel: What does it mean to live in truth? Her view is honed by her place as a poet, as a mother, and, when necessary, as an activist. Together, the essays in These Are Strange Times, My Dear work within that largely unmapped place where the heartbreaks and uncertainties of one's inner life brush up against the cruelties and responsibilities of politics and government and our daily lives.
Autorentext
Wendy Willis is a writer living in Portland, Oregon. Winner of the Dorothy Brunsman Poetry Prize, she has published two books of poetry. Willis is a lawyer, the executive director of the Deliberative Democracy Consortium, and the founder and director of Oregon's Kitchen Table at Portland State University.
Inhalt
INTRODUCTION
CHRONICLING THE HISTORY OF THE SIEGE
Chronicling the History of the Siege: A Mid-Winter's Meditation on Resistance
Living Among the Things: On Civic Loneliness
A Million People on One String: Big Data and the Poetic Imagination
The Night Sits Wherever You Are: On Transparency & Secrets
I Hear the Place That Can't Be Named: One Writer's Reflections on the Right to Be Forgotten
Tilt: On Public Outrage
A GNOSTIC BILL OF RIGHTS
A Gnostic Bill of Rights
BECOMING CITIZEN
Becoming Citizen
Buying Our Way Home
The Rim of the Wound: An Open Letter to the Students of Columbia University's Multicultural Affairs Advisory Board, with a Special Note to My Own Daughters
Where the World I Know and the World I Fear Threaten to Meet
Love Does Not Boast
The Sacred & Profane of Vote by Mail
I'd Have to Cry these Wounds to Mourn for Us
THE WORLD MADE FLESH
Reckoning with the Bros: Donald Trump, Robert Bly and Swimming in the Sea of Grief
An All or Nothing Gamble: Václav Havel and his Spiritual Revolution
These are Strange Times, My Dear: Considering Ai Weiwei's @Large
The Word Made Flesh: On Encountering the Work of Marcel Broodthaers
Peeping in the Crack under the Goddamn Door: One Citizen's Reflections on The Phenom that is S-Town 94
The Perfume of Resistance: A Talk Given at the Association of Writers & Writing Programs