The Love of Poetry with Richard Blanco

Added: 2026-05-17

[00:00:00]Yeah, and and listen, to tie a few threads together, like we've talked about the the research, we've talked about the emotional honesty, um we've talked about bearing witness, all of which poetry does, but I think your poetry does in particular. The one word I don't think either of us have mentioned yet cuz it's it's very it's a given, but I I would say what poetry does that we find lacking in in historical research or reporting or or so many other forms of both art and nonfiction is this notion of empathy.

[00:00:30]And I think that's ultimately, right, what ties together the hard-hitting truths or the research and the facts or or the showing, right, of I I want you to see this because it needs to be seen, but done with empathy, that's where the the again, implicit or explicit invitation to to share that moment as humans, which only human beings can do in the way we do it by the way we communicate, but this this empathy that runs through, I think, does separate and elevate poetry as an art form because that, to me, is how it can do the things it does that we can't quite explain, but how does it do it so forcefully? And it's the combination of everything we've talked about least through with empathy.

[00:01:12]Yeah, that's uh I wish there were a better word than empathy in in our English language because it's it's uh at least, you know, it's it's got so many different connotations cuz it's so close to sympathy, right? Right? Um I've thought about that a lot and and I think not just poetry, but the humanities, if they teach us anything, it's one thing. Is first first also have empathy with ourselves, right? But also empathy in the sense of the ability to think to place yourself in someone's shoes.