Toward a Cruel and Radiant Beauty

Abstract

This collection of poetry reflects an attempt to look directly at those things from which I would rather turn look away. It is guided by a belief that looking directly at the world—attending honestly to the inconceivable magnitude of its joys and its sufferings—will impart upon the viewer a sense of their responsibility to that world. And this is grounded in the hope that if one does not turn away from this responsibility, it will lead them, ceaselessly, into action. If the poems themselves are a manifestation of this action, they are but a very small part of the work still required. More than anything, they are an attempt to catalogue this process of reorientation. Insisting that to care for another is an act of both faith and imagination, they have guided me into a better way of living. I hope they can be useful to their readers, whatever form that use may take.