Unless you're getting your news from Democracy Now!, or you have family in the Middle East/Central America/Afghanistan, or you're detained in a tent at the border, the disastrous consequences of America's foreign policy may be escaping your daily life. But that news stays news in Solmaz Sharif's Look, a finalist for the 2016 National Book Award and one of the best books of contemporary poetry published in the 21st century. Look shows us how easy and seductive it is for people to see others as objects, enemies, or props to generate fear for the sole purpose of gaining a small bit of power. It shows us how governments use language to achieve those ends, and it offers a different kind of language that we might use to short-circuit that mechanism. Don't miss this Seattle Arts & Lectures event. by Rich Smith