Live Encounters Poets on Poetry July 2026
Must contemporary poetry be relevant as the daily news? by Angela Patten.
“It is difficult to get the news from poems, yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there,” William Carlos Williams famously said. I have always found that remark misleading. Redemption is a lot to ask of poetry and the same claim might also be made for music or painting. Williams was no doubt referring to the need for an imaginative life and a shared sense of our human experience as opposed to the endless stream of information that passes for ‘news.’ At its best, poetry can nudge us out of our complacency and evoke our compassion. But I do not think that poetry will ever enjoy the mass appeal of the daily news although it might provide an escape from it. Apart from those who developed a love of poetry at an early age, it is an acquired taste like certain kinds of jazz.
When catastrophe occurs, people tend to look to poetry for meaning and solace. The rest of the time it is forgotten. But there are exceptions – like the New York Times reporter who wrote “Words of War: A Literary Lifeline for the Battlefield.” The subheading posed the question: “Does poetry have any place in a war zone? For one correspondent, it is indispensable.” And poetry is indispensable for some of us, providing us with insight and consolation in a world fraught with confusion and tragedy.
© Angela Patten
Angela Patten’s publications include five poetry collections, most recently Feeding the Wild Rabbit (Kelsay Books 2024) and a prose memoir, High Tea at a Low Table: Stories From An Irish Childhood (Wind Ridge Books 2013). Winner of the Anthony Cronin International Short Poem Award and the Cultural Center of Cape Cod National Poetry Prize, Patten has received artist grants from the University of Vermont Retired Scholars Award Program, the Vermont Arts Council and the Vermont Community Foundation. Her work has appeared widely in literary journals and in anthologies including The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing and The White Page/An Bhileog Bhan: Twentieth-Century Irish Women Poets. Born and raised in Dublin, she maintains dual citizenship in Ireland and the United States. She lives in Burlington, Vermont, and is a Senior Lecturer Emerita in English at the University of Vermont.