Poems for Troubled Times: Strife

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the impulse to seek out poetry for solace in troubled times. The poems I’ve been seeing lately in my poetry feeds, on the other hand, take troubled times as their subject.

I think the poetic impulse here is wanting to believe that if we can just articulate the madness well enough, we can stop it.

So I’ll leave you with W.B. Yeats’ poem, “The Second Coming,” which for me perfectly articulates the feeling of troubled times–whether writ large or intensely personal.

The Second Coming (William Butler Yeats)