In an emergency, some people turn to drink, while others rely on prayer, but for a small and committed group at the University of Virginia, there’s nothing better in a crisis than poetry.
It was a warm spring night on the University of Virginia campus, and dozens of students and faculty members had gathered outside to celebrate Humanities Week and the power of poetry to soothe and console in a crisis.
Professors Lisa Russ Spaar, Michael Levinson , Clare Kinney and Stephen Cushman organized the event and offered personal definitions of the emergency poem.
Humanities week also featured poetry in a physical form with an hour-long yoga class accompanied by readings of John Keats.
