Poetry of Hope

Photograph by Kathleen Tyler Conklin

The third week of February teased us with warmth.  The cold temperatures have returned, but they don't feel quite as bleak.  The springlike days gave us hope that living will become easier soon.  No more heavy coats, icy sidewalks and roads to maneuver or freezing fingertips and toes. Light has nudged aside the early dark afternoons. We trust more light, warmth and color will soon surround us.

Yet, there are times when we feel this will never happen.  We fear that we will be confined to a life that is cold and dark, drained of color and warmth.  In tough times, despair can take up all the space in our psyche.  We can barely take the next breath.

Most of us have experienced this feeling, whether through personal losses and suffering or from witnessing the conflict, violence and misery that afflicts our world today. Likely both. Life is tough. To be alive is to feel despair.  It is part of being human.  It is at our core a longing that will always be there…whether you feel it as a longing for completion or a union with the divine.  I cannot define what it means for you, but I can suggest one antidote…turning to the mystical poets for help.  Their words may bring you to a better place for awhile.

Rumi, a well known mystical Persian Poet writes "The wound is the place where the light enters you."

Hafiz(Hafez), another great  Persian poet, has left the following words of encouragement.

"I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in darkness the astonishing lightness of your own being."

May the light of hope be with you.

Poetry Doesn't Howl Anymore

Allen Ginsberg

Another blow against contemporary poetry surfaced in Mark Edmundson's essay "Poetry Slam" in the July issue of Harper's Bazaar.  He complains that today's poets  are not ambitious enough.  Ambitious in the sense that they lack a big vision and are concerned only with small themes. They are writing in the sound of their own voices---their own uniqueness, rather than speaking expansively. He bemoans the missing 'we and our' in poems.

 

I think, to a degree, he has a point.  Art does reflect the times in which it lives. The times they are narcissistic, which causes poets to draw inward and be focused on their own experiences, rather than facing outward.  It is easier to ruminate and stay in a circumscribed comfort zone, rather than take on the world and the future.

 

Edmundson misses some of the 'outward facing' poets of the past like Shelley, Yeats, Williams, and Ginsberg, to name just a few mentioned in his article. This is a call for poets to speak more often about our common experiences.

 

I think there are contemporary poets that do speak to larger, universal themes, among them Natasha Trethewey (appointed for a second term as poet laureate) and David Whyte.To quote David… "A good poem, is a brave intuition of what could be or what could have been, it looks life straight in the face, unflinching, sincere, equal to revelation through loss or gain."

 

So poets…write whatever you want, however you want, but on certain days summon your courage to think big, look life in the face and howl.

 

The Poetry Of Daily Life

A friend planted an indoor rose plant in my back yard years ago. It was fragile and delicate, but has managed to survive to the present day.  I looked for it this morning, curious to see if it had survived the beating rains and gusty winds of hurricane "Sandy".  There it is, bedraggled but still standing, cheerfully showing its soggy pink blooms!

I too recently experienced a storm of my own, not as vigorous as Sandy, but one that knocked me down, but happily not out.  Follows my poem as a reaction to that experience of a not so poetic reality.  I have tried to keep a light touch.  Humor can be a lifesaver…or a least a place to rest between storms.

The Comeback Rose

The bloom is off the rose

It's a slightly different color

Whichever way you look at it

You cannot say it's yeller.

The sun has beaten it down

Turned its edges brown

It doesn't stand as straight

Its leaves are pointed down.

Ragged though it is

Its thorns are still intact

If you try to toss it out

It's gonna prick you back.

You may wish to cut it off

And throw it in the trash

I wouldn't give up on it yet

It could make a late day splash.

The bloom is off the rose

It's a slightly different color

Whichever way you look at it

You cannot say its yeller.

Speaking the Unspeakable

We have a new poet laureate named by the Library of Congress on June 6th. Natasha Tretheway is a young (46) writing professor from Emory University in Atlanta Georgia. She has written three volumes of poetry including “Native Guard” which won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize. Her fourth volume “Thrall” will be published in September 2012, the
month she will begin her tenure as our poet laureate. She will live in Washington and work directly in the Library’s poetry room from January through May 2013.

She is a versatile poet, using both traditional forms (sonnets and villanelles) and free verse to express many historical and cultural themes. As the daughter of a mixed-race marriage, that experience is an important thread found in her writing.

The catalyst for expressing herself in poetry seems to be a horrific event she experienced when only nineteen years old. Her mother was murdered by her estranged second husband. Natasha says, “I turned to poetry to make sense of what happened.” Her book “Native Guard” contains several elegies to her mother.

The poet in her own words…
“I started writing poems as a response to that great loss much the way people responded for example after 9/11. People who never had written poems or turned much to poetry turned to it at that moment because it seems like the only thing that can speak the unspeakable.”

The Merry Month Of May

Claire and Sofie

The merry month of May is on its way out. We had some authentically “MayDays”…warm and sunny, fading into cool evenings. Some other days, we were clobbered with heat and humidity. They dragged me down. I didn’t feel like dancing around the May Pole. May 2012 had lost its authenticity…its quality of Mayness. As you may have guessed, my thoughts have turned to the subject of being authentic, since I’ve used it three times in this first paragraph.

For me, an authentic poem is one that is written from the heart. Poems are stories about feelings. We have to search out that open, honest place inside of us that holds our truths. We must uncover them, let them rise to the surface and then express them. Write from the heart. It is difficult and scary. Sometimes we succeed, sometimes we come close, sometimes we fail miserably, but what a wonderful challenge. We take the chance that it may spill over into our actions, our onversations, our relationships. It is definitely worth the risk.

My attempt---

Reflection

I work hard
to wipe clean the slate
of memories
to be more present
to be here now
to know the now.

Sleep denies this desire
memories drop by
to hold me back
stick to my waking face
steam the mirror
clouding my clarity
always here
as part of me.

The Poetry of Surgery

I'm not crazy about the idea of these blogs getting too personal or straying far from the theme of poetry in all its wonderful forms...but I
think the anesthesia from recent surgery has dulled my brain, so I'm going to write a few lines about a seeming oxymoron--the poetry of surgery. When I mentioned this idea to my friend and fellow poet Helen, she replied that I would then be on the cutting edge. Indeed.I guess one could stretch and see the surgeon as an artist and not just a technician, depending on the canvas on which she's working. Some intuition must come into play.

I could go on with metaphors---the knife as a brush---the gall stone as a jewel (apparently some of them are quite luminous), but I'm going to jump to the patient as poet and write a few lines about the hospital experience, I hope for your reading pleasure. If I miss the mark, blame
it on the drugs.

Hospital Hype

Blanket fed by a vacuum hose
puffs warm air over me...I imagine
floating above 5th Avenue in the
Macy's Christmas Parade...floating
freely, bumping along giddy and gleeful

Suddenly diminished, I am deflated but
not quite
my tethered legs gasp on the bed
inhaling, exhaling
giving me hope
I will rise again.

Next month I will return to semi-sanity and continue writing some
impressions of David Orr's book "Beautiful and Pointless" {A Guide to
Modern Poetry}.

Guest reader of the month - Susan Jones

Susan Jones, of Paris, Tennessee, reads "I Should Have Known".