We are smitten with Kim Rosen–and we think you will be too. We encourage you to read the December 2010 interview, in the formidable The Sun magazine, by Alison Luterman, of this self-described emissary of poetry. The interview, “Kim Rosen on Reclaiming the Ancient Power of Poetry,” is well worth reading in whole, but here are a few quotes:
“Poetry can be a lantern that shines into dark places within us. Poems can be powerful medicine for personal transformation.”
“Sometimes I cringe because a poem seems trite to me, only to find that those words saved my friend’s life when she was going through her divorce. Think about art or music: You love Aretha Franklin; I love Beethoven. You love Rothko; I love Rembrandt. Maybe a certain poem doesn’t sing to me, but if it opens someone’s mind and heart, who cares whether I find it good or bad?”
“Poetry contained the grit of humanity right next to the vastness of being. The poems I love the most hold those two ideas together. I decided I could no longer be a teacher or a follower of one particular spiritual path. The only thing I could be was an emissary of poetry.”
“I think it times of cataclysmic change, poetry is the only language that will do. It’s the only language that speaks to the horror and the wonder, the reality and the mystery. It can hold both questions and answers at the same time without giving a pat solution or a self-help formula. Your favorite poem might be an outcry of rage that frees your voice to fill every inch of your body, mind, and being. Or it might be a poem of the inner life that returns you to a sense of wholeness. The great mystic Hildegard of Bingen said, “When the inner and the outer are wedded, revelation occurs.”
Kim, we couldn’t agree more.