National Poetry Month
When it comes to poetry, I'm a dabbler. I don't write poetry. I am far below the "dabbler" level when it comes to that. I dabble in reading. When I pick up an anthology or edition of a poetry magazine, I often set it aside after attempting to scan a page or two. But I occasionally light on an author with whom I really connect, and I hold on tight to a handful of verses--paste them on bulletin boards, copy them into a journal, try to commit them to memory.
I appreciate National Poetry Month (April) because it opens the gate a bit more and allows more poems to wander into my field of vision. In hope of aiding your wanderings, this week's Friday Five features five recent stops on my poetry journey.
Jane Hirshfield
If you are a dabbling poetry reader as I am, a teacher helps--someone who can sit with you and a poem in a way that spawns interesting conversations. Jane Hirschfield, in Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry and Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World, shows herself to be such a teacher. Here's a bit of wisdom from Nine Gates.
"Poems, despite the ways they are sometimes taught, are not crossword-puzzle constructions; first drafts, and many stages of revision, take place at a level closer to daydream. But daydream with an added intensity: while writing, the mind moves between consciousness and the unconscious in the effortless effort of concentration. The result, if the poet's intensity of attention is sufficient, will be a poem that brims with its own knowledge, water trembling as if miraculously above the edge of a cup. Such a poem will be perfect in the root sense of the word: 'thoroughly done.'"
Ada Limón
Ada Limón (Photo by Tony Gale)
Ada Limón was named the United States Poet Laureate in July. If her work is new to you, this Krista Tippett On Being interview is an excellent introduction. Listen to it in its entirety (link below). Or ponder this taste of her insight and quiet wisdom.
I think that there is a lot about trying to figure out who we are with ourselves. That’s the work of poetry in general, right? We just ask questions. We get curious, we interrogate, and we ask over and over again. We say, “Oh, I want to write about this flower.” And then we say, “Why this flower? Why that color? Why not that weed?” Our entire world is spent that way. And then to do it on top of really global grief, that is a very kind of different work because then you think, “Well, who am I to look at this flower? Who am I to live?” Right?
It comes back to these questions of like, “Why do I get to be lucky in this way? And is it okay for me to spend time looking at this tree? Is it okay?” The danger of all poets and I think artists in general, is it some moment we think we don’t deserve to do this work because what does it do? And I feel like the thing that always kept coming back to me, especially in the early days was, “What does it do?” Well right now it anchors you to the world again and again and again. And it says, “You are here.” And I felt like every day I’d write a poem was literally putting that little, “You are here” dot on a map. And then I would be like, “Okay, I was there.” And the next day I’d wake up and be like, “Well, I was there yesterday. I wonder if I’m here again today or in a new place.” And that was really essential to my practice of who I was as a creative person in the middle of such an enormous tragedy.
Go here to hear or read the complete interview.
Tony Hoagland
Tony Hoagland died of cancer almost five years ago, but his last collection of poems, Turn Up the Ocean, was published in 2022. As you might guess from someone who wrote a poem called, "What Narcissism Means to Me," his work leavens the occasional gut punch with playful wit. Turn Up the Ocean’s poems were obviously written when he was ill, and it offers high spirited observations from the most harrowing places.
In the Beautiful Rain
Hearing that old phrase “a good death,”
which I still don’t exactly understand,
I’ve decided I’ve already
had so many, I don’t need another.
Though before I go,
I wish to offer some revisions
to the existing vocabulary.
Let us decline the pretense
of the hyper-factual: the
myocardial infarction; the arterial embolism;
the postoperative complication.
Let us forgo the euphemistic:
the “passed away”
and “shuffled off this mortal coil,”
as worn out and passive as an old dildo.
Now, if poetry can help, it is time to say,
”She fell from her trapeze at 2 a.m.
in the midst of a triple backflip
in front of her favorite witnesses.”
Let us say, “in broad daylight,
Ms. Abigail Miller
conducted her daring escape
before life, that crook,
had completely picked her pocket.”
It is not too late for some hero
to appear and volunteer
in the name of setting an example:
Let us say, “He flew with abandon,
and a joyous expression on his face,
like a gust of wind
or a man in a necktie
from the last dinner party he would ever have to attend.”
To say, “He was the egg
that elected to break
for the greater cause of the omelet;
the good piece of wood
that leapt into the fire.”
Though grudging at first,
he fell like the rain,
with his eyes wide open,
willing to change.”
—Tony Hoagland, from Turn Up the Ocean, published in 2022.
Joni Mitchell via Fred Hersch
You've probably seen the moving viral video of a Joni Mitchell, Brandy Carlile and friends singing "Both Sides Now" at last year's Newport Folk Festival. There are many versions online, including a transcendent version (with full orchestra) from a New York City tribute concert in 2000. It's hard to think of a more beautiful, profound, and perfectly constructed song. But instead of printing the words--which you probably know--I want to offer the music as poetry. I once heard a great jazz saxophone player lead a master class in playing a ballad. His number one advice: play the lyrics. Never try to play a song without knowing the words. When pianist Fred Hersch plays Mitchell's song, you know he is "playing the lyrics." In this solo recording, the verses are tentative, probing, seemingly unresolved until the chorus exerts the one certainty of the poem/song. "I really don't know clouds/love/life at all."
Brecht on Hard Times
A final thought from Bertolt B.: Why we need poetry now more than ever.
In den finsteren Zeiten,
wird da auch gesungen werden?
Da wird auch gesungen werden.
Von den finsteren Zeiten.
In the dark times
Will there also be singing?
Yes, there will also be singing
About the dark times.
Bertolt Brecht, Svendborger Gedichte, 1939
Have a good week.