The Witness of Poetry (The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures)

A beautiful book by the 1983 Nobel Laureate on poetry, humanity, suffering, and the ‘passionate pursuit of the real.’ Searching in poetry after historical catastrophes, the possibility of truth and hope and the profound meaning of our ‘great human family.’

I love this book. it really spoke to me about the role of the poet (and on a broader scale the role of the artist regardless of medium) in society, and our respondsibility. Highly reccommentd.

Explained much of 20th-century geo-political dynamics, told primarily from the perspective of the intellectual classes. Wore my highlighter out with insightful lines.

I have been poking at this book of essays since finishing an earlier book. It is extraordinary in certain section as it makes a case for a certain basis of Polish and other European poetry based on the depth of history with the wars, strife, religious controversy, and political battles, waged in Europe for a thousand or more years. A history that creates a poetry that can't be written in the United States or the new world because the soil doesn't support the plant. Some of the analysis is parochial, even familial. But it is trenchant, revealing thoughts or points of view that were illuminating to me. Milosz touches, too, on topics I think of outside the realm and reach of poetry, particularly the political realm. But he spins webs that tie politics, politics, and possibility together in ways one might think of in the context of science fiction or futurism. Read in context with The Separate Notebooks, it is revelatory. It is a short, provocative book that is very worth the time spent reading,

I first bought this book for a class in 1987. I have since bought it again and again somewhere around 12 times. The "mistake" I make is that I lend it to a friend and they fall in love with it and with Milosz too and then, I just let them keep it and I buy it again because I understand. To say that this book transformed the way I look at poetry and art as a whole is an understatement. It should be a core component of any discussion of 20th century aesthetics. It's a masterpiece.

"I have titled this book _The Witness of Poetry_ notbecause we witness it, but because it witnesses us," Miloszsays. This Nobel Laureate who's been around the block is believable when he says it looks like we are in big trouble. That we are a loathsome and self-loathing, despairing, cruel race isn't really news, but Milosz goes further and tells us convincingly how we got to be such [people]. If you follow him this far, you'll want to read on to see what advice he offers before it all goes up the spout (or we simply turn into zombies). So.... either read this short "poetics" and then his tiny book _Road-Side Dog_, or read _Road-Side Dog_ (maybe start with "Beautiful Girl") and then read the _Witness of Poetry_. Pretty amazing guy. -- Oh, and I don't think there'll be a movie.

An extraordinary book. If you care about culture, and have any time at all, read this book.

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