I've been thinking this week about poetry's role within a community. If lyric is sometimes an expression of inwardness, after all, it also anticipates an audience, and even sometimes engages with that audience directly. This engagement, in turn, can foster a sense of community--particularly among absent friends, connected by the lyric and its material/remembered presence. Here, as an example, is Jonson's CXXVIII, "To William Roe":
Roe (and my joy to name) th'art now, to go
countries, and climes, manners, and men to know,
to extract, and choose the best of all these known,
and those to turn to blood, and make thine own:
May winds as soft as breath of kissing friends
attend thee hence; and there, may all thy ends,
as the beginnings here, prove purely sweet,
and perfect in a circle always meet.
So when we, blest with thy return, shall see
thyself, with thy first thoughts, brought home by thee,
we each to other may this voice inspire;
This is that good Aeneas, passed through fire,
through seas, storms, tempests: and embarked for hell,
came back untouched. This man hath traveled well.
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