Kim Stafford: “This topic has command of my daily writing practice. When one leader accuses another of lying, as a poet I’m startled awake to the importance of fugitive truth, vulnerable trust, the fragile treasure of honorable communication—and I vow again to seek some way to tell truth through poetry. When I read about sunflowers being carried as symbols of Ukrainian solidarity in demonstrations around the world, I wanted our poems to live like that: seeds in the mind to grow into peace. When I read about Ukranian mothers sewing their children’s names and blood type onto children’s clothes, I start to think of other kinds of sewing they will need to do As a poet, I’m often asked ‘What can poetry do in such a time?’ Then I hear about people singing in war time to empower their spirits, and I’m moved to try, again, to see what a poem, a little song, could do. In the terrors of the current war in Ukraine, the idea of a soldier on the battlefield calling his mother at home struck me to the heart. What would he say, and what could he ask of her?” (web)
