Topic: The Importance of the Arts in a Time of Tragedy and Conflict
Source: Thomas Lux, Director of the Poetry Program at Sarah Lawrence College and Poet
Contact: Judith Schwartzstein, Assistant Director of Public Affairs at Sarah Lawrence College (914) 395-2219 or Marilynne Herbert/Alison Weatherby, Halstead Communications, (212) 734-2190
In the weeks since the tragedy at the World Trade Center, people are finding consolation in poetry in an almost unprecedented way; poems can be found posted on bus stops, on improvised memorials across the city, and are being sent from friend to friend over email. At a memorial service after the recent terrorist attacks, poet Thomas Lux, Director of the MFA Program in Poetry at Sarah Lawrence College, read a poem of his own called "The People of the Other Village." In comments afterwards, he said:
"We need poetry now more than ever. Poetry, and all of the arts, can help us cope and understand the world around us. The arts allow us, and allow us access to, human expression, a precious and necessary freedom. Poetry, the act of making or reading a poem, is by nature an affirmative act, an act of creation and possibilities, and therefore the opposite of oblivion and ignorance and cruelty. We need to keep on -- and we will here at Sarah Lawrence -- writing poems and stories, we're going to keep dancing and studying history and religion, we're going to paint paintings and study plants, rocks, and the stars. Because we can. Because we have the privilege of that freedom and with that freedom comes responsibilities. Let's go to work."
Lux is the author of several books, the most recent of which are New and Selected Poems 1975-1995 and The Street of Clocks.
To interview Thomas Lux, contact Judith Schwartzstein, Assistant Director of Public Affairs at Sarah Lawrence College at (914) 395-2219; or Marilynne Herbert/Alison Weatherby, Halstead Communications at (212) 724-2190.
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