The Beauties: Diriye Osman on the Work of Kwame Dawes

Diriye Osman writes for The Huffington Post about "one of the most consistently thrilling poets at work today," Kwame Dawes. Osman looks at Dawes' 2013 volume of selected poems, Duppy Conqueror (Copper Canyon), and reflects on Dawes' response to "whether the business of writing poetry calls for solitude and introspection." "The secret is to have the capacity for introspection while being around others," says Dawes. And:

Duppy Conqueror ... includes pieces that date all the way back to his Forward Prize-winning turn in 1994 with Progeny of Air, is a stunning, clear-sighted affair that examines historical wounds and the sense of community, love, friendship and appreciation of art, music and language that arises out of everyday living. There's an electric energy to all these poems and Dawes is, in my opinion, one of the few contemporary writers whose work hits new heights with each new book.

"I do strive for elegance," he says, "because I believe that poetry is about what Marley called "the beauties" -- a quest for the beauty of language used rightly to capture the range of the imagined and the observed and lived. And here beauty may well be decidedly horrific, frightening, and downright ugly. This is the grand alchemy, to use a cliché. At the same time, it is the way we survive, the way that art helps us to survive."

Read on at The Huffington Post!