In the middle of reading some poems by one of my favorite poets, Stephen Dunn, I pause to think about the book as though I might have the skill or ambition to comment on it. I possess neither. I bought the book a few weeks ago when my father and I visited City Lights on my birthday – a small gift for myself.
The word that came to mind as I thought about my relationship with this text was rooked. I felt a little rooked. I had to look the word up to make sure it meant what I thought it meant: duped, deceived, cheated, swindled. The book, a new and selected collection of poems published posthumously, contains only nine new poems. I guess I knew this when I bought it… and it has poems from books that I don’t own or haven’t read. Maybe rooked is too strong of a word. It says nothing about my level of enjoyment in reading (or re-reading) the poems.
An old favorite, “Bad,” is one in which the speaker is interrupting his wife – mostly because he’s bored and wants attention.
My wife is working in her room,
writing, and I’ve come in three times
with idle chatter, some not-new news.
The fourth time she identifies me
as what I am, a man lost
in late afternoon, in the terrible
in between–good work long over,
and good drink not yet
what the clock has okayed.
Later in the poem, he describes the “Men Least Wanted” poster of himself that should be hanging on the post office wall – the small print of which reads, “Annoying / to loved ones in the afternoons, / Lacks inner resources.” I think I like this poem because it illustrates the tension, grace, and playfulness of cohabitation with another. And “lacks inner resources” is precisely the clinical and funny self-effacing humor that I love and try to practice. Maybe I’ll make that the answer to one of the dating prompts: How my third grade teacher would describe me… lacks inner resources.
Before reading the Dunn book, I was reading another book of poetry I had bought on my birthday, Summer Snow by Robert Hass.The series of poems I read were all about death: “Those Who Die in Their Twenties,” “Planh or Dirge for Those Who Die in Their Thirties,” “Harvest: Those Who Die in the Middle Years.” I thought about my friend Tim who passed away a few months ago at age fifty. I remembered my dream from last night in which I survived a heart attack. I thought about legacy – a sometimes foolish pursuit to outlive death through what we leave behind. I thought about Tim’s kids being his legacy. I thought about an ex who wanted to be a mother but couldn’t and was trying to figure out what her legacy would be. I thought about my own legacy – which I worry will be more of a burden than a legacy… what happens to all of this crap I own, all of these words I’ve written? Thinking about legacy makes me want to write more and also give up writing entirely.
I pulled out my journal from yesterday. I re-read my description of the pigeons warming themselves on the cement by the bay, the woman flicking a lighter and the candy-apple red color of her long and curving nails. I re-read my descriptions of the sun emerging from the eclipse of a downtown skyscraper and how I’ve been tracking this late day light (5pm ish) for months – June’s apex, and before that, April’s ascent, and now the fading glow of August. None of this is terribly meaningful. It certainly doesn’t feel like the stuff of legacy. Perhaps this is why Kafka urged Max Brod to burn all of his manuscripts.
I began my morning wanting to write and found myself with nothing to say. I had turned to reading poetry as a way of greasing the wheels – hoping for inspiration. What I managed was to identify and re-identify my mental block with creativity… my mental block with life – which has something to do with hierarchy and meaning; purpose and not being able to let go. I struggle to create for the sake of creating. Or perhaps more accurately, I can write, I can blather, I can vomit words – I don’t think of it as art or having much value.
This is when I tell myself I would do well to care less. I would do well to let go of this notion of value. The thing is, I scribble down lots of things without giving any thought to value. I have a sprawling blog full of words that carry little meaning beyond the walls of my own thinking. It’s only when I think about art as something to be shared and consumed by others that I get tripped up. In some respects, I’m jealous of the people who pump things out, the people who believe life is too short to revise or edit or try to extract or infuse deeper meaning or purpose. Be here now, and be at the next place when you’re at the next place. Let others sort out value. Let them come and go as they please… build the inner resources that will dull if not deaden the inner critic. Or at least make a joke of it and move on.