Poetry and tyranny …

… Flogged, imprisoned, murdered: today, being a poet is a dangerous job | Poetry | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)

“The purpose of poetry is to remind us / how difficult it is to remain just one person,” Czesław Miłosz tells us in “Ars Poetica?”. Khakhar went from being a Modi enthusiast to calling him an emperor with no clothes. Brecht’s support of Stalin’s show trials is unforgivable but it has not stopped us from endlessly quoting him during this pandemic about how in the dark times there will be singing about the dark times. Poems don’t murder people. Dictators do. But poetry brings us close to death, demands that we witness, take stock.