Natasha Trethewey on Poetry

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/natasha-trethewey-poetry-showed-me-that-i-wasnt-alone/2013/01/01/cc1a96da-5384-11e2-a613-ec8d394535c6_story.html?wpisrc=nl_headlines

I found myself turning to poetry in the way so many people do — to make sense of losses...it did feel that the poem was the only place that could hold this grief...That poem showed me that I wasn’t alone in feeling that way. That’s what poetry can do for us — to remind us when we feel most alone, we are not at all.
-Natasha Trethewey

I don't know if poetry can ever completely "make sense of losses..." I don't know if anything, really, can do that - not religion nor music nor other people nor love. But I think poetry can be a refuge. And in a shining moment, it can remind us, beautifully, that we aren't alone.

To poetry. To the knowledge that "when we feel most alone, we are not at all."