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“We Shall Be Changed”

"You must change your life." Rainer Maria Rilke.

” Did they change your life?”  Jack Foley asked me, commenting on someone’ s poetry.  I never thought of poems being life-changing.  At least it is not what I think about when I attend a reading or pick up a collection of poetry.  “Life-changing” is a tall order.  Do poets set out to change lives when they write?  If not to change others, does the poet’s writing change the poet?  If a poem is to have a place in the universe, what part of the alchemy does it play?

There are poems that I remember.  I remember them because they are meaningful to me.  They are meaningful because they touch a part of me that was not touched before.  If I get a glimpse of something unknown, I have already changed.

“…but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye.”  (1 Corinthians 15:52)

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