Tuesday night I had the immense privilege of attending a reading by the Chilean poet Raul Zurita. His use of words & images to bear witness to the 1973 Chilean coup (supported by the US govt) & the terrible repression that followed blows open my sense of the possibilities for deep empathy in poetry.

It is always sobering to meet a torture survivor. Both Sr. Zurita & another survivor I know, a Colombian man, have chronic hand tremors, probably long-term effects of the torture, but manifest amazing gentleness & love.