Poems that Tell Bad News with Rachel Hadas

A Jewish pessimist says, "Things can't get any worse."
A Jewish optimist says, "Oh, yes they can."

We’re inundated with bad news—local, global, political; climate change, war. There’s a widespread, exhausting sense of dissolution, of rage, and of perpetual crisis that feels as if it’s been going on forever. At the same time, each day’s news is a fresh assault.

In the face of all this, what can poetry do? The sense of crisis is a human constant—but so is poetry. Poems can lament or rage, mourn or pray, narrate or describe. They can help us to understand our feelings and to share them with others. They can bear witness; in Carolyn Force’s phrase, they’re against forgetting. Maybe they can do more—we hope to find out.

In this four-week critique workshop, we’ll examine a few poems (I’ll provide a list) that tell or respond to bad news, and we’ll workshop the poems students will bring in. I expect to learn more about the relation between the situations we are coping with and the art we love and try to practice.

Please note that this workshop is capped at 12 participants.

*Ticket Price: As we want our events to be accessible to all, our tickets are offered free of charge. Yet if you're able to donate—perhaps $18, or some multiple of 18, which in Jewish tradition signifies wishing long life and good luck to the recipient of the gift—all proceeds will go directly to supporting Yetzirah, making more events like this possible.

** If this fee is a hardship, Yetzirah offers a pay-what-you-can option for workshop participation. No one will be turned away for lack of funds, but please contact Program Coordinator Kyra Lisse at klisse@yetzirahpoets.org if you would like a sliding-scale ticket. 

Yetzirah is a nonprofit organization, and any gift you make is tax-deductible to the extent allowed by the law.