This morning I watched the internet news and my eyes and heart literally hurt. Many prayers to the people in London who were affected.

It also triggered a piece of thinking on what I keep reading in the blog-o-sphere (apologies for using that word) about “the new sincerity.” I’m not sure what the new sincerity is, per se, but I remember reading a bunch of news/commentary pieces on the death of irony after 9/11. There was immediate proof that irony does not go away in the face of adversity – the Onion did a special “Attack on America” issue that same week. And Jon Stewart and the Daily Show still seem to be going strong (at least I know I still watch.)
But, did how did 9/11 and the subsequent aftermath (wars, more terrorist attacks) affect my generation, we disaffected X-ers? I mean, are we content with just irony now? Does sincerity seem more important, less “square” than it did before? Do you want more content in your poetry, less snickering and cleverness and fireworks, more heart? I find myself to be drawn more and more to books of poetry in the bookstore and library that say something, something personal, something angry, something universal, but SOMETHING, not just people hiding behind language. I am hungry for poetry that matters. Louise Gluck wrote an essay deriding sincerity for sincerity’s sake. But I am starting to think that sincerity, is, after all, worth something in poetry. Should irony be banished? Hell no. It is part of who we are. But should it be the only feeling allowable, the only pitch poets can hit reliably? Hell no. Ilya Kaminsky’s writing is a brilliant example of the kind of poetry that happens when sincerity (coupled with artistic ability) is allowed on the page. Poetry is, in a way, a spiritual expression, a force against the blanking out of individual voices, against blank hate, against death itself. Even in the most despairing books of Gide and Sartre there is an undeniable, raging person voicing a will to exist, to be heard. I don’t want to believe poetry makes nothing happen. I don’t choose to believe that.