"We speak, we write, we do language."

--Toni Morrison

In a recent interview, the Palestinian-American poet Fady Joudah says: 

“I often think that the responsibility of the poet is to strive to become the memory that people may possess in the future about what it means to be human: an ever-changing constant.” 

It is the enduring question in this line of work. What is the function of poetry in the face of horr…