Grant Wood, New Road, 1939
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC
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HUMAN AFFAIRS
Dialogues on events
that shape our world
MEMORY AND
IDENTITYExploring our
heritage
Testing our tradition

BEAUTY WILL SAVE THE WORLD

CAN POETRY MATTER?
A dialogue on the role of the poet in today's world
Readings of American and Italian poems



























Friday, May 5, 2006
George Washington University

FROM THE OPENING REMARKS:  

We  have a somewhat ambitious plan to make a fresh start, where a fresh start is
not a matter of new ideas, but rather a matter of a  renewed curiosity and interest
in what surrounds us, yielding to that  mysterious thirst for knowledge and
meaning that marks us. We are especially interested in reaching out  to the young
and to anybody who shares a  love of knowledge.  If we had to summarize our
"mission statement," it might be "Test  everything, retain what is good"—people,
events, our heritage. We also  want to pay particular attention to beauty and the
world of arts  because these are such an essential and necessary dimension of
being human.  

This focus on reality as event, rather than on ideas, really determines  the "style"
of our cultural work. We believe that the reaffirmation of  the positive value of
reality, and especially of the human person, is  crucial to any attempt to promote
educative and cultural work at this  point in time. In fact, Crossroads aims to be,
above all, a place where  education takes place; that is, where we may learn to  
look with  openness, curiosity and critical judgment at every aspect of  reality. And,
if there is a method to this rather general and basic  program, it is friendship, i.e.
the coming together of people who share  the same curiosity and desire,
regardless of their ethnic, social or  religious backgrounds.
The poet Ezra Pound once stated, “Poetry is news that  stays news.”  Tonight our
theme is, Can  Poetry Matter?, a title we borrowed from a book by one of our  
distinguished speakers.

In  a world of cell phones and cyberspace, one might pose  the question of  
whether a time-honored art form that has perennially expressed the  human
desire to reach for what lies beyond what we see, feel, and touch  can hold sway
any longer; that we no longer have time to think of the  things that are perhaps
most precious to us—the needs for truth, love, and beauty that make up what we
might refer to as the province of the human  heart.  Since the beginning of
recorded  history, every literary genius has taken these questions as the pith of  
his or her work, and literature, as Shakespeare once stated, has “held  a mirror”
up to our human nature.     

We asked our speakers to discuss whether this mirror still has  relevance, still
has a hold on us in a time of history when  poetry may  perhaps have come to be
seen as more marginalized, even irrelevant by  some.
BEAUTY WILL SAVE
THE WORLD
Discovering the world
of arts: performances
and presentations
MEETINGS AT
THE CROSSROADS
Face to face with...
A place where roads meet. A time of change.
Dana GIOIA
Poet, critic and bestselling anthologist
Chairman, National Endowment for the
Arts
Paolo VALESIO
Professor Emeritus, Yale University
Chair, Department of Italian
Columbia University
Gregory WOLFE
Publisher and Editor, Image
Director, Center for Religious
Humanism
"If thou among the
eternal
Ideas art numbered,
which the eternal
mind
Deigns not should
e'er be clothed in
fleshly form,
And in frail human
frames
Learn with what ills
our mortal life doth
swarm;
Or if some other
earth be mine of
those
Innumerable worlds
wherewith heav'n
flames,
And, brighter than
the Sun, the nearest
star
Through kinder
atmosphere above
thee glows:
From here, where
days are brief and
skies soon darken,
To this, an unknown
lover's hymn, oh
hearken"

Giacomo Leopardi
"To my lady"
BEAUTY WILL SAVE THE WORLD
Discovering the world of arts:
performances and presentations
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