Catherine Chandler

Notwithstanding...

   The world goes on despite us and our poems.
   — David Mason (from his poem "Winter 1963")
 
Keyboard strokes replace the fountain pen,
and voices yield to verses on the page ―
so have the poets sung from age to age,
devoted to their vital art. 
                            But when
the audience for classic beauty fades,
displaced by fandom of a looser form
whose stale epiphanies become the norm;
when AI scatters reams of ready-mades;
 
when deconstruction proves it vain to find
the meaning; when an old philosophy
conjectures on the use of poetry
as pure abstraction of an idle mind,
 
I offer up this faithful antiphon,
although the world goes on. And on. And on.



Catherine Chandler is the author of six books of poetry, including Lines of Flight (Able Muse Press, 2011), shortlisted for the Poets' Prize, and The Frangible Hour (University of Evansville Press), winner of the 2016 Richard Wilbur Award. She also won the Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award in 2010, as well as being among the finalists over a dozen times. Her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize on nine occasions.  Her latest book, Annals of the Dear Unknown (Kelsay Books, 2022), a creative historical verse-tale, has just been released.  More information is available on her poetry blog, The Wonderful Boat.