Notes from Underground

The writer Dostoevsky went into the White Russian Czar’s prison camp a strong, young man.  He emerged two years later, a broken, hobbled, prematurely white-haired shell of a man, beaten in body, but not yet in spirit.  He also brought with him the classic “Notes from Underground.”

In our time, a messenger from the north, Bruce Cockburn, brought us “Maybe the Poet”: “Maybe you and he will not agree, but you need him to teach you new ways to SEE …”  I often have disagreed with Bruce, but he could not have been more on the mark there.