Nancy Huntting, Aesthetic Realism consultant, writes:

The new issue of TRO has an irresistible and urgent title: “The Kindness of Art.” What does it mean to see in a way that’s kind—solidly kind? Does art show that kindness is not some soupy thing but is powerful, terrifically accurate self-expression? Yes! In this issue you’ll meet instances of the difference between writing that’s just to things, people, the world itself—and writing that’s not. There’s nothing more needed now than for people to see that real kindness is keen and ever so strong. What we most need to know is in this current issue of The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known.

The commentary by Ellen Reiss begins:

Dear Unknown Friends:

Here is the fourth section of These Speak of Poetry, a 1973 lecture by Eli Siegel that is great, definitive—even as it has casualness and humor. Mr. Siegel is discussing poems included in the Louis Untermeyer anthology Modern American Poetry. And he is showing this all-important thing: what differentiates a poem that’s really that—a true poem—from something that is in line structure and may have been much praised yet is not authentic poetry.

Eli Siegel is the critic who has made this distinction clear. Poetry, he showed, “is the oneness of the permanent opposites in reality as seen by an individual.” And the sign that a poem is the real thing is a certain kind of sound, which is poetic music.

All this has to do with us, because we want—with the very depths of ourselves—to be like an authentic poem. We want our logic and feeling to work together, as one. We want to be simultaneously exact and free. We want to have a oneness of strength and sensitivity. We want to have clarity of thought, and also nuance. We want to have a sense of wonder and also be down to earth. In a good poem these opposites are one. And so we need to see and feel what poetry really is—because if we take something false for the real thing, we’re cheapening our own largest hopes….Read more