Poetry as Witness

This weekend, two horrific crimes were committed in the Orlando, Florida area: the shooting death of singer Christina Grimmie and the hostage situation/mass shooting at Pulse nightclub that left at least fifty dead and more than fifty injured.

Too often, reaction to crime is too late to stop it. However, poetry can be a lasting witness to crime as time seems to go by faster than we can keep up.

It's natural to want to move on from loss, but in some cases, the longer we remember it, the better. If poetry about loss spreads the message that all, one person or many, are precious and irreplaceable, we may actually change attitudes for the better. And that's what we need at the core, to change the attitude that one person is superior to another and has any call to impose will on another.