Perspectives

Drawing from an interdisciplinary career based upon sociology, Jim Hanson employs poetry to provide perspectives upon the humanities and sciences established in curricula of high education. He starts with ancient empires of history, then works through theology, Christianity, Buddhism, Taoism, philosophy, language, the sciences, and poets such as T. S. Eliot and Walt Whitman. His poems sparkle with humanistic insight about the issues of these disciplines and their applications to modern society, such as theological and religious speculation, callings of Buddhism and Taoism, contending philosophies of Sartre and Heidegger, and the environmental crisis. His style varies, from long poems of blank verse narrative to short poems of standard rhyme and meter, in order to use poetry's power to enlighten through figurative language and minimal wordage. Heeding Shelley's proclamation that poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world, he revives the interdisciplinary practices of the ancient poets who speculated about the world through the exclusive use of poetry.