Tumultuous times create heightened, often complex, emotions. It can be hard to voice or even identify our feelings when faced with war, illness, worry, or great changes of any kind.
Poetry offers many gifts — among them, capturing, reflecting or even just sitting beside us with our thoughts and feelings.
We asked five poetry experts — all poets themselves — for the poems they turn to in anxious times, for comfort or company.
We’d love to hear yours, too — you can share them in the comments section.
The Storm — Eugenio Montale
One poem I’ve been returning to this year is an old favourite: Charles Wright’s translation of Eugenio Montale’s . The title in Italian is La Bufera, an idiom Dante introduced in the Inferno, more akin to “tempest” or “squall” than “storm”, though I like the simplicity of Wright’s translation.
The first stanza begins in a relatively recognisable, concrete world: a thunderous March storm pummels a magnolia tree with hail. The storm swiftly becomes figurative as the poet addresses someone who has been startled awake from a “nest of sleep” by “sounds of shaking crystal”. The realist world becomes populated with surrealist images of gold flaring:
