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Jan 16, 2021

"We cannot, of course, save the World because we do not have authority over its parts. We can serve the world though. That is everyone's calling, to lead a life that helps." --Barry Lopez

Writers & Artists on the Influence of Barry Lopez

"In 2015 Barry and I were invited to do an onstage conversation at the Key West Literary Seminars. We loved the idea of it but hated the given title, and ended up talking on the phone for most of an hour, trying to arrive at a word that felt home-language to us each. The suggested word, spiritual, we felt utterly threadbare. Barry's preference was reverence, a quality that ran deep in his life and words. But mine was not. We arrived, at last, at numinous. A word whose linguistic root is the act of nodding, a physical, embodied yes. What his life was." So begins poet, Jane Hirshfield's tribute to Barry Lopez. What follows is a compilation of moving messages from Pico Iyer, Margaret Atwood, Sharon Olds and several other luminaries, that shed light on a remarkable human being and his legacy.