Poetry Rising Up from Sadness

In his newest volume of poetry, Michael Heffernan, creative writing professor at the University of Arkansas, often mixes the lofty and the wacky. The resulting “mildly irreverent” poems rise up from the sometimes-sad circumstances of life.

The Odor of Sanctity was published by Salmon Poetry of County Clare, Ireland, the publisher of two earlier volumes by Heffernan. The poems in The Odor of Sanctity often start at a difficult place — the loss of love or a loved one, for example — and end with a hint of hope.

“The idea of rising up out of a sadness seems to be something I seek,” Heffernan says. “It’s something the poem wrestles with and is not a tacked-on happy ending. It’s a rising up.”

Heffernan describes poetry as a vehicle of communication that uses language to engage with the circumstances of life.

“Language is our salvation,” Heffernan says. “It is itself the age-long record of how people have dealt with problems and passed on to us what it is all about, that it’s going to be okay.”

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