I think what I would really most like to write about is palm
I think what I would really most like to write about is palm trees and bougainvillea and hummingbirds. I would like to go into the desert and write about salamanders and the Grand Canyon, but history keeps rupturing my experience because politics are everywhere.
"I think what I would really most like to write about is palm trees and bougainvillea and hummingbirds. I would like to go into the desert and write about salamanders and the Grand Canyon, but history keeps rupturing my experience because politics are everywhere." Thus spoke Robin Coste Lewis, the poet whose voice moves between beauty and burden. In her confession lies a deep truth: the soul yearns for delight in the wonders of the natural world, yet is constantly pulled back into the gravity of history and the strife of politics.
The ancients, too, wrestled with this tension. The poets of Greece sang of flowers, stars, and rivers, but their songs were interrupted by wars and the commands of kings. They longed to write of peace, yet found their lyres forced into hymns of blood and battle. For though man’s heart hungers for beauty, politics and history press themselves upon every age, demanding witness, demanding voice.
Consider the life of Anna Akhmatova, the Russian poet. She yearned to sing of love, of gardens, of small joys, but the terror of Stalin’s regime tore through her verses. Her poetry became a vessel for grief, for truth, for the unspeakable pain of a nation. Like Robin Coste Lewis, she wished for hummingbirds and salamanders, but history would not release her. The burden of politics compelled her pen, even when her heart longed for the innocence of beauty.
And yet, there is greatness in this struggle. For when beauty and sorrow meet in one voice, the song becomes richer, deeper, more eternal. To weave palm trees with history, bougainvillea with politics, is to create a tapestry that reveals both the sweetness of life and the shadows that seek to destroy it. It is the mark of poets who carry not only their own joy but the grief of their people.
So let this truth be handed down: though the heart may long for gardens and rivers, the world will place burdens upon the poet, upon the dreamer, upon every soul that sees beauty. Do not despair when politics intrudes, for even then, your voice may turn suffering into song, and oppression into memory. For in the meeting of the delicate hummingbird and the heavy weight of history, the deepest poetry is born—truth that carries both the fragrance of flowers and the fire of struggle.
PABui Thi Phuc An
There’s also the marketplace’s gravity. ors and audiences often reward topical urgency, which can compress the lyric into commentary. How does a writer defend the slow gaze without forfeiting relevance? Could you outline a practice architecture—threshold rituals to clear the nervous system, a daily field note that is not for publication, and endnotes or paratext where research resides so the poem can sing? I’m seeking a path where readers feel both the palm’s shade and the weather system of history moving overhead.
TTBui The Tung
Maybe the formal solution is micro to macro. Start with sensory exactness—the papery crackle of bracts, the iridescent flicker at a feeder—and let history seep in through image selection and juxtaposition. Are there forms that naturally carry that double exposure—haibun to weave travel and reflection, centos to chorus many voices, erasure to reveal what records tried to hide? I’d love a drafting exercise: two columns, “ecstasy” and “context,” then a final braid where every delight answers a documented pressure without turning the poem into a sermon.
QLQuynh Lee
Place complicates everything. The desert and that enormous canyon are not empty: they hold layered sovereignties, water fights, extraction scars, and Indigenous stewardship that predates nation-states. Before describing a salamander or a stratum, what research rituals honor those presences? I’m curious about a practical method—archives, conversations, permissions, and a checklist distinguishing land acknowledgments from narrative accountability. How do we balance lyrical intimacy with the humility of being a guest, ensuring the natural world isn’t framed as scenery but as a community with prior claims?
MP9D-33 -Nguyen Minh Phuong-DH
Part of me worries about the ethics of respite. When the world aches, can attention to bougainvillea be an act of care rather than avoidance? What boundaries help a writer protect contemplative time without drifting into denial—news fasts, sabbath hours, or time-boxed doomscrolling? I’d love guidance on metabolizing the day’s headlines before entering the page, so the poem isn’t raw panic or glossy escape. How might joy function as resistance here, and how do we prevent turning others’ suffering into aesthetic seasoning?
NL27.Le Ngoc Linh
As a reader, I feel the tug-of-war between rapture and rupture: the impulse to praise a frond’s shadow versus the obligation to register harm. Is there a craft stance that lets both truths breathe without canceling each other out? I’m picturing a braided essay where the palm’s anatomy sits beside a redlined map, or a lyric that allows a hummingbird’s hover to coexist with a footnote on displacement. Could you sketch strategies—negative capability, contrapuntal structure, documentary poetics—that keep beauty audible while history refuses to be background?