Prelude
Hello Feelers,
Welcome to December. The past two weeks have felt exceptionally difficult for seemingly no reason at all. There certainly are reasons (car breaking down in middle of nowhere on Thanksgiving isn’t even the top contender). But everyone I talk to lately is feeling a similar type of way and I don’t really think it needs to be fleshed out. It’s already being felt on an intimate level. Holidays are hard (for some, for others it’s the best time of the year? Would love to talk to those folks), money is tight, expenses keep rising even as inflation falls (imperceptibly), and no one can hold a damn conversation with someone who thinks differently. Every scroll on Instagram is another useless infographic that makes me feel like I’m failing in 4-D, that I need to work on my pelvic floor and my attachment style and my skincare and my gut health and my toe spread and my tongue. The public square, along with every other institution, is in shambles, crumbling as we speak. The metaphorical table we used to sit at with one another— hacked apart and carted off. I’ve barely had a poetic thought hit me all week; even the little glimmers failed in exciting me. Anyone down here in the trenches with me?
Here’s what I succeeded in writing:
I don’t want to write a poem this week because I am empty. Dust bunnies down to my feet. Tumbleweed torso. Windsong through the circle of Willis. And then some.
(The circle of Willis is a structure in the brain, which is cool, but I think it would make an amazing band name. Great, now I’m rhyming).
I thought, instead of writing some wordy reflection on our common predicament, or forcing a terrible poem of out myself, that I would instead share a few of my very favorite poems in the world. Poems that saved my life. The poems that stick with us over time provide insight into what makes our individual hearts tick and sing. They serve as life rafts in times such as these, when there appears to be no light or air, no hope or joy. These are the poems that remind you Why. Why you love what you love. Why you do what you do. Why the world in beautiful. Why people are beautiful. Why a set of ordered words can burrow itself inside your chest cavity and inform the person that you are. Poems, songs, paintings, pieces of music— they all have this undeniable power.
Today, I’m sharing four poems that saved my life. I would be so interested and curious to see your poems, or songs, or whatever little bit of art illuminates the darkness when nothing else can. Remember, a poem is a candle. Thinking of you fondly, Feelers. XO, HW.
Poems That Saved My Life
First up, one of the nearest and dearest. The Simple Truth, by former (18th!) poet laureate Philip Levine. This poem blew my head off in college. One of my favorite professors asked me to read it aloud to the class because he couldn’t make it through without crying. He lent me his copy of The Simple Truth, Philip Levine’s Pulitzer-prize winning chapbook of the same name, and I never gave it back. He never asked for it back. I have carried it with me for 11 years now, and just recently sent that same professor a copy of Tenderness, because his sharing of The Simple Truth changed me profoundly. Philip Levine died in 2015.
The Simple Truth
by Philip Levine
I bought a dollar and a half’s worth of small red potatoes, took them home, boiled them in their jackets and ate them for dinner with a little butter and salt. Then I walked through the dried fields on the edge of town. In middle June the light hung on in the dark furrows at my feet, and in the mountain oaks overhead the birds were gathering for the night, the jays and mockers squawking back and forth, the finches still darting into the dusty light. The woman who sold me the potatoes was from Poland; she was someone out of my childhood in a pink spangled sweater and sunglasses praising the perfection of all her fruits and vegetables at the road-side stand and urging me to taste even the pale, raw sweet corn trucked all the way, she swore, from New Jersey. “Eat, eat” she said, “Even if you don’t I’ll say you did.” Some things you know all your life. They are so simple and true they must be said without elegance, meter and rhyme, they must be laid on the table beside the salt shaker, the glass of water, the absence of light gathering in the shadows of picture frames, they must be naked and alone, they must stand for themselves. My friend Henri and I arrived at this together in 1965 before I went away, before he began to kill himself, and the two of us to betray our love. Can you taste what I’m saying? It is onions or potatoes, a pinch of simple salt, the wealth of melting butter, it is obvious, it stays in the back of your throat like a truth you never uttered because the time was always wrong, it stays there for the rest of your life, unspoken, made of that dirt we call earth, the metal we call salt, in a form we have no words for, and you live on it.
Next, The Darker Sooner by Catherine Wing. This poem blew my head off in 2016. I have returned to it often, typically in the winter, when it really feels applicable. It’s more relevant now than ever, which I’ve said verbatim… every time I’ve revisited it. A poem like the eyes of the Mona Lisa. Beautiful alliteration. “…over this river broke the winter’s black weather,” is such a rich and telling image. Unforgiving like winter. This poem is nebulous but hardly vague.
The Darker Sooner
by Catherine Wing
Then came the darker sooner, came the later lower. We were no longer a sweeter-here happily-ever-after. We were after ever. We were farther and further. More was the word we used for harder. Lost was our standard-bearer. Our gods were fallen faster, and fallen larger. The day was duller, duller was disaster. Our charge was error. Instead of leader we had louder, instead of lover, never. And over this river broke the winter’s black weather.
Finally, I present to you September by Jennifer Michael Hecht. This poem blew my head off just last year, right after I started writing Feelings, Inc. It’s the kind of poem you read and think, well… do I press on? Or give a round of applause and see myself out? It’s good. I like poems that are simple and human, and the train of thought in this poem is so relatable— but it’s hardly commonplace or cliche. “I should not have dropped those oars. Such a soft wind,” I mean, is there a better closing line? To exist on the planet earth? Hats off to you, Hecht. This poem speaks directly to my insides. Her work is particularly brilliant because she’s a philosopher and has her PhD in the history of science. Lots of interesting references and wit in her work.
September
by Jennifer Michael Hecht
Tonight there must be people who are getting what they want. I let my oars fall into the water. Good for them. Good for them, getting what they want. The night is so still that I forget to breathe. The dark air is getting colder. Birds are leaving. Tonight there are people getting just what they need. The air is so still that it seems to stop my heart. I remember you in a black and white photograph taken this time of some year. You were leaning against a half-shed tree, standing in the leaves the tree had lost. When I finally exhale it takes forever to be over. Tonight, there are people who are so happy, that they have forgotten to worry about tomorrow. Somewhere, people have entirely forgotten about tomorrow. My hand trails in the water. I should not have dropped those oars. Such a soft wind.
Okay Feelers, what did you think of the poems? I’ve got plenty more. Every poet can trace their particular lineage and those touchstone poems create a kind of self-portrait. This is a fraction of my self-portrait. What do you look like, in poems? Or songs? Let me know…
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Dearest friend, sister, daughter, and momma to your Feelings-Baby, you always speak to me, to my heart, to the way we (I) take in life aesthetically. There's lots of dirt down here but the hope that we allow to linger in our breasts tastes sweet, like salt and pepper sweet, right? LoVeYoU