John Keene's 'Beatitude': A Poetic Antidote to Modern Despair

7 hours ago7 min read1 comments

In an era defined by relentless headlines and digital noise, the search for grounding has never been more urgent. While many find solace in music, there exists a literary counterpart of equal, resonant power: John Keene’s poem “Beatitude.” More than mere verse, it functions as a lyrical incantation—a deliberate counter-spell to the cynicism and fragmentation of our time. Keene, a master of form whose work interrogates history and identity, crafts here a complex liturgy for enduring with grace.Through its mantra-like repetition, the poem builds a rhythmic fortress against chaos, yet it also stands as a profound manifesto. It challenges us not to turn from brutality, but to perform the revolutionary act of acknowledging beauty and suffering within a single, unwavering gaze.The directive to thank the world for its “unbidden everythingness” is both a monumental and intimately personal command. This is the poetic parallel to a seminal protest album—a work of deep social consciousness that ascends into a call for radical, active tenderness.The sustenance Keene offers is permanent, demanding a fundamental reorientation of sight. It asks us to shed “the armors of certainty” that define so much of public discourse and instead become “more tenderly entire with one another.” In a climate of performative conflict, this pursuit of complicated empathy is itself a political stance. The poem’s genius lies in its sharpening of vision, positing that only by seeing the “variousness of the world more clearly” can we achieve a love that is deep and true.This mirrors the empathetic precision of great singer-songwriters, who universalize pain through specific, unflinching detail. “Beatitude” achieves a similar effect not through story, but through symphonic accumulation, each line a movement building toward transformative clarity.For the weary, for those worn thin by the relentless news cycle, engaging with this poem is an act of recalibration. It leaves the reader not with anger or escapism, but with the quiet, persistent frequency of resilient grace—a necessary tuning for the soul.

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