the times are never propitious for writing and reading. it is miraculous that good, and even great, writing gets done and even read. but how does writing affect current politico-socio-economic darkness. everyone can quote Auden's "For poetry makes nothing happen." sure it makes nothing happen in the very real sense that what any poet writes will not change this administration's foreign policy.

but writing is made from our collective conscious/unconscious: language. and it is language that arguably creates the body politic, our cities, our culture, our history. by changing language, by different modes of writing, by including vastness and minutiae in our shared grammars, then we might be able to change consciousness. for the better?

I'm with Tom Beckett at his blog that it is important to write and read for pleasure and change: I like to read writing that makes me/want to write is a great place to begin to change, perhaps, for the better.