A Poetics of “Radical Caring”

Reviewing Ann Lauterbach’s new collection of poems, Under the Sign, Jo Ann Clark argues for a new poetics of “radical caring.”  The collection shows Lauterbach struggling with the demons of world where people grow increasingly alienated from one other: drone strikes, school shootings, environmental destruction. If, as the poet claims, “to make something is to care for it,” Clark suggests art-making as a way to claim authority as a viewer of—and participant in—difficult material, and poetry itself as an inoculation against indifference.