December 2004

Chapel Hill Herald, Saturday, December 25, 2004

Through all the focus on state and national political matters over the past few months, an important event in the life of Carrboro received inadequate attention. I refer to the August (and august) reappointment of Carrboro's poet laureate, Patrick Herron.

With all the decidedly non-lyrical voices coming over the TV and radio during election season and its aftermath, it's refreshing to be able to step back and reflect on the significance of poetry to our lives and culture.

Although we often don't credit it today, poetry has been a key factor in marking the changes that accompanied what we consider the development of modern society.

One seminal work in defining that relationship was the French poet Baudelaire's 1865 prose poem "Loss of a Halo." Given Carrboro's current focus on downtown traffic flow, it is appropriate to consider Baudelaire's poetic look at a prominent poet who has crossed one of what were then the still recently constructed boulevards of Paris.