I haven’t written or attempted a new poem in a while – probably going on close to two weeks. Perhaps not coincidentally, I’ve also been spending more time looking for jobs and learning and thinking about how I might be able to eek out a living as a freelancer or a consultant or both. I offered to do some volunteer freelance work for a nonprofit organization in Camden, NJ. Their focus is on nutrition as it relates to poverty and health and they want someone to review and modify their sponsorship solicitations. I also made it to the next round of interviews for the organization that fights human trafficking – there’s a homework assignment, which is to review one of their programs and their last solicitation.
Perhaps the lack of poetic verve is a result of reading essays about being a poet and not reading more poetry. I also can’t rule out that writing on this blog might steal my inspiration. If I’ve already talked about it, whatever it is, I might just get bored with the subject?
This morning I read an essay on poems of affirmation – how they need to come from somewhere other than the simple affirmation if they hope to go beyond Hallmark sentimentality. Having re-read some of what I written over the past year, especially the poems, I need to work a little harder at getting to the core of things and going beyond surface observations. The essay gave two contrasting examples… Hallmark vs. something a little deeper. “Love is forever. / Love is you.” vs. “To love is to be led away / into a forest where the secret grave / is dug, singing, praising darkness / under the trees.” Dunn, the essayist, writes, “With a few exceptions, in order to be credible the poem must signify that its author is sufficiently cognizant that the world is difficult, harsh, often disappointing.” Later he states, “Poets often are driven or drawn to what’s of value by the absence of it, specifically in their own lives.” This is pretty bleak stuff, and sometimes I wonder if I have it in me to be this bleak all the time. And maybe that’s where the fiction comes in. Maybe that’s the deeper exploration… the “I love you but…” moment or it’s opposite, “I hate you but…”
Dunn concludes his essay by sharing the story of a friend who in his 70s joined the peace corps. He had written a letter telling of the work he is doing with lepers and how initially he would avert his eyes… once he was able to stop doing that, he realized he avoided touching them. He was still working on that part when he wrote to Dunn. Dunn’s response was to share a poem he had read. In it, the narrator is caring for a mare, washing the horse’s wounds. “As I sooth you I surprise wounds / of my own this long time unmothered. / As you stand, scathed and scabbed, / with your head up, I swab. As you / press, I lean into my own loving / touch for which no wound / is too ugly.”
I’ve sometimes thought about this strange psychological dynamic of what we put out vs. what we want and how we live vs. our own capacities and expectations. When we care for someone else’s wounds, is it because it’s easier than caring for our own? When we refuse help or praise from someone else, is it because we feel incapable of giving it back?
Dunn began his essay by taking on the platitude “Have a nice day.” (For a slightly different take on this – check out David Foster Wallace “This is Water”). I suppose I’ve grown numb to the have a nice day sentiment. The one that gets me (makes me uncomfortable) every time is the hollow sentimentality surrounding death. I know it’s appropriate to say “sorry for your loss.” I feel like such a fraud almost every time I say it. In most cases, I barely know the person who lost someone, and I almost never know the person who passed.
Years ago, within a month or two of starting my job at United Way, a colleague lost her husband to cancer. She’s a smart and very sensitive woman – thoughtful in nearly everything she did. The entire office took a half day to attend the service. I had been avoiding her because I didn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry for your loss” felt inadequate and insincere. The celebration of life was very touching. The stories that were told made it sound like they had a wonderful and loving marriage. It gave me a sense of the type of life I aspired to. I drove home in silence (about half an hour) thinking about this man and his family; thinking about the light that existed between them. I felt deeply sorry for her loss. For the life of me, I can’t remember what came next. A good man would have come home wanting to touch everything, wanting to hold his own life a little closer that night. This was 2012, and my wife and I were already a year or two into our long slide apart. What I do remember was writing an email to my colleague. I told her that I was deeply moved by the service and that he sounded like a wonderful man and father, and that the times they had together sounded loving and carefree. It was the type of life I aspired to. I’m sure I said some other things. She wrote back and said what I told her was one of the most heartfelt condolences she received. I still get choked up when I think about it. How much of that was mourning her loss, how much of that was my own?
A few years later, right around the time I got divorced, I started the habit of reading one obituary every day. I can’t remember what got me started. I remember thinking that here is this person who lived a life – one full of all of the things a life is full of. And also, here is a person, the writer, who is left behind and has taken some time, perhaps many hours to try to encapsulate this other person – a life distilled and shared publicly. Surely, that was worth a moment or two of my time. I kept this habit up for a while, though probably not much more than a year (maybe less). I think I was trying to develop a more thoughtful side to myself – one who could hold a stranger in my own mind and care for them for a few uninterrupted minutes. There were more than a few that were touching and made me cry. On those days, I thought – why do I choose to start my day this way? The majority of the obituaries stated facts. So and so worked here. They are survived by x, y, and z. They loved the local sports teams. I’m not sure when or why I stopped. I think I was getting numb to the original purpose. Or maybe I was looking to develop some self-compassion and had gotten where I needed to be?
I haven’t written much poetry lately. Instead, I’ve posted these longer forms. This is a lazy mind at work. Any of the above subjects (psychology, platitudes, care for other as a way of self-care) are all subjects worthy, deserving, perhaps demanding of poetry. I try to remind myself that this space is a type of canvas for me. A place to work through ideas and arguments.
As often happens, I’ve gotten to a point in a post where I no longer feel propelled in any direction. I’ve worked my way through a number of paragraphs and where I ended was not anticipated nor were the stops along the way. I suppose it’s there in the subtitle of the blog, slow meanderings.