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Seeing the world’s challenges through poetry past and present

The overwhelming volume of news can leave us numb. That’s where poets can rescue us with vivid new ways of seeing. As the poet Adrienne Rich noted, politically engaged poems can inspire by “reaching into us for what’s still passionate.”

 

Capital & Main and the Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center have commissioned six distinguished California poets to write short essays that link poetry to social and political themes. The authors harness the poetry of the past and present to provide new perspectives on  such topics as climate change, growing inequality, the immigrant experience and police violence.

Poets On The Beat

Breaking the Dangerous Habit of Silence

California Poet Laureate Lee Herrick on how poetry became a weapon against hate and erasure in the face of COVID-era ...

Poets On The Beat

Where You Live When You Lose Your Homeland

From different centuries, the poems of Bertolt Brecht and Angel Dominguez convey the lonely yearning of Los Angeles exiles.

Poets On The Beat

Is Climate Change Transforming Literature and Poetry?

Southern California writers have long used distant blazes to create atmosphere. Worsening fires have changed all that.

Poets On The Beat

Inspiration From Anguish

Student poets respond to a hotter and diminished planet.

Poets On The Beat

George Floyd, Black Deaths and Lynchings By Other Means

Three years after Floyd’s death, a poet searches for meaning amid 400 years of Black dispossession.

Poets On The Beat

Despite the Losses, the Singing Continues

From rust belt assembly lines to Amazon warehouses, former Los Angeles poet laureate Luis Rodriguez reminds us that labor has ...