Millions Millions • Let me put it this way: the expectation to be...

Let me put it this way: the expectation to be funny when you’re presenting a book about the Titanic can be awfully daunting. There’s also the pressure to satisfy the folks who expect Celine Dion to appear in the poems, but I’ll save my comments on that for another day.

I think I now understand how Whoopi Goldberg felt years ago when folks questioned how she, a sketch comedian, could play a role as serious as Celie in the film adaption of Alice Walker’s A Color Purple. What many folks fail to realize is the sensitivity that it takes to realize the happier parts of our psyches, is often the same sensitivity it takes to fully get the sadness.

The poet Billeh Nickerson, on his new collection of poems inspired by the Titanic, Impact.