Into the Ruins, Preface, Frederick Glaysher, Poems

From Preface

Now at the end of the twentieth century, far from withdrawing further into the self and into an obfuscating use of language, poets must turn to viewing and contemplating the real world, where men butcher and kill, love and hate, aspire and sometimes achieve. For out of our experience and contemplation of the past and present, a deeper understanding of history and of what it means to be a human being is now beginning to emerge, opening the way to a new future, in a new century. W. H. Auden once wrote that radical change in artistic style is contingent on "radical change in human sensibility." The unrelenting movement of modern times toward the oneness of humankind has sufficiently been made explicit--an epic movement that allows, produces, and requires a fundamental change in sensibility.

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