Word: sorrowful
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...poetry does. I'm not exactly sure what that job is, but I know, at least for me, that I need it done. Poetry offers a verbal form, an object made out of words, as compensation for urgent, but amorphous dilemmas: the "mess" of remembering joy amidst sorrow or of loving the wrong person or of grief. Of course it knows that its kind of compensation is immensely limited and circumscribed, that no mere poem will bring back childhood or a dead friend; such knowledge forces it back, time and again, on the only trick it knows: namely, constructing...
...real-world pressures that await me (particularly the job that I don't have yet) are nauseatingly worrisome. But these concerns are nothing compared to what the survivors and relatives of the slain in Littleton, Colo., are going through right now. For them I offer up all of the sorrow, sympathy and understanding my human heart can muster...
...white lace scarf is an emblem of the nation's sorrow. Day after day, as she received the thousands of Jordanians who came to pay their condolences, the yanis, as it is called in Arabic, framed a spirit for which her husband was renowned: courage with an admixture of warmth and charm...
...sorrow seems to play little part in Jay's decision; sadism and selfishness are more like it. In between bouts of intense sexual nostalgia for another woman, he thinks, over and over, This is our last evening together, and she doesn't know. When a tender thought creeps in, he instantly stomps on it. Going upstairs to watch her sleep, he thinks, "I can make out your hair in the jumble of blankets and pillows. I stand looking at you. I wish you were someone else...
Some might argue that these people could make the same contributions without enduring the same amount of pain, that their "illnesses" are unconnected to their talents. I think it unlikely. Untamed misfits are more inclined to buck existing conventions, pariahs have more opportunity for productive introspection, and great sorrow has always been a fertile source of inspiration. If you eliminate the unpleasant formative experience, you eliminate the greatness that is so often born out of coping...