The Art of Losing Edited by: Kevin Young

My love for blogging comes from my need to express and share all the things I love with others. To inspire others as I am inspired and to celebrate the things I love with the importance they deserve.

I went to my public library yesterday with the intention of just returning two VHS tapes my brother and I had rented however I couldn't help myself so I left with two unique books in hand. One is called I Would Be Prettier If... and the other is The Art of Losing and thats the treasure I wanted to mention today. The Art of Losing is a collection of contemporary classical poems written in the twentieth century and after. Now there is one thing I love even more than the actual poems in this book and it is the beautiful introduction written by Kevin Young.

Now I must insert an excerpt of that here:

"I have begun to believe in, and even to preach, a poetry of necessity. This is a recognition not just of necessity of poerty to our lives, but also the fact that necessity is what drives most of the poerty that matters, or that way it matters. The best poems, it seems to me, evince their origins in the need to speak, or to write; to render a complex fate simply: to render chaos as chaos; or to examine the unseen complexities of seemingly simple, even everyday, experience. A poem must be willing to be unwilled, beckoned by need."

I hope you are all enjoying your summer and the wonderful literature of our times.