Can you name the great English and American poets? Who comes to mind? Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Whitman. Perhaps Carl Sandberg or Robert Frost? Can you name one from the last 50 years? Is anyone still writing poetry? More to the point, does anyone still read it?

Poetry at its best is the most artful form of language, meant to elevate the mortal to sublime. We have all been elevated at some point by mood, or worship, or budding love, to a point where our being feels greater than the sum of its earthly parts. Art attempts to recapture, or recreate that experience, providing if not a road map, at least a signpost pointing toward an elevated, spiritual consciousness. Not all language is art. Most is more mundane (though not necessarily less important) communication. Not all verse is art. That which tears down, or degrades to no purpose is not art. That which does not attempt to rise above the common is not art. That which seeks merely to convey information, even the most important information, is not art. Only that which works to move us toward a better sense of ourselves and our beings is art.

Readers are not fools. They do not need an essayist to tell them what moves them. They will not believe that verse which does not move them is art because a panel of judges has awarded it a prize, any more than they will believe a colored rectangle on a white canvass is art because it hangs in a museum.

For art to inspire it must seek for truth, and strive to relate that truth. I chose a sonnet form for THE BIRTH OF CHRISTMAS because the story of the birth of God as man deserves all the pomp, circumstance, style, and respect that language can provide. Regardless of whether or not you share the Christian faith, you surely understand the search for meaning, and truth, and our place in the cosmos. Ultimate expressions of how we relate these questions, and our understanding of the answers, whether they be secular, or religious, are worthy of the highest respect, and deserve the most stylized form to acknowledge and buttress that respect.

And so this is my plea for poetry, for art. Allow yourself the guilty pleasure of believing in absolute right and wrong, even if we cannot always distinguish a thick, dark line between the two with our necessarily limited human understanding. Allow yourself a moment to grasp at something greater than yourself, greater than your earth and sky, regardless of whether or not you believe you will reach it. Seek to understand the unknowable, and enjoy the expression of another who has asked his God to empty him of all but God’s word, to allow him to express that word as God has willed. Laugh if you find it silly. Smile if you find it foolish. Share it if you find it beautiful. And by all means, pick up your pen if you feel you can do better.

We need you. You’ve been too long gone.