Hunter Reeve Poetry

How Do We Become Stewards of the Sacred?

In this episode, Professor Hunter Reeve and Dr. Paul Hamilton explore the way that poets, teachers, and artists balance their role as stewards of the sacred with the problem of living in a world that is "too much with us". We discussion Dr. Hamilton's involvement in the sale of his mother's house after her death; the letter from Chief Seattle on the sale of sacred land; the poetry of Wordsworth; William Carlos Williams' dictum "No Ideas but in Things" . . . Underlying our discussion is King Lear's "reason not the need" speech and Walter Benjamin's notion of the "aura" in his famous essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction". We also discuss the way that the great romantic tradition starting with Wordsworth invented a language that showed us how to cherish the wilderness . .. and ultimately led to the national park movement and the preservation of nature for future generations. Ultimately, poets and teachers, we argue, are stewards of this tradition and our legacy is this language that shows us how to cherish the sacred.