Category: poetry

National Poetry Month: sense records of our humanity

Tomorrow is the beginning of National Poetry Month. Though I already post quite often about poetry, I’m considering posting some more significant poems during the month of April.

Jennifer Benka, the director of the Academy of American Poets, discusses the benefits of reading poetry. 

The benefits of reading any literary work are immeasurable and life enriching. Reading is reflection—contemplative time. I think poetry, especially, requires that you step outside of the daily rush. Each poem is an art object that’s only activated when a person engages with it. And when you let words with their jagged edges, sharp music, and visual prompts assemble in the mind—when you exercise your imagination and allow language to elicit an intellectual and emotional response—you are more actively participating in your life. Audre Lorde said, “Our feelings are our most genuine paths to knowledge.” Poetry requires feeling, offers personal insight, and increases empathy. In speaking about the role of the art form, Mark Doty once said, “The project of poetry, in a way, is to raise language to such a level that it can convey the precise nature of subjective experience.” In this way, poems are sense records of our humanity, mapping ways in and ways out. 

Sing the names of the dead who brought us here

I am struggling to find the words to describe how I feel about the events of the past 48 hours.

My parents immigrated to America in the 1970s. I feel hot tears build up as I think about the freedom that this country represented for them, for their entire families that depended on them, for the hope they upheld by investing every last penny in a one-way-ticket to get here. Everything, for the dream. They lived in trailers in South Carolina for years. They borrowed utensils from each other, made home-cooked food for their neighbors no matter the color of their skin. They didn’t speak a lick of English, yet found ways to wade through textbooks of technical and medical language. They overcame discrimination, shame, fear. They thought they could be safe here. Many others did, too. What is happening to that dream? How can we forget the freedoms our country was founded upon, how can we lose ground in our path of progress towards the fundamental truth that we are all created equal?

We cannot, we will not.

Here I am, born and raised as an American. Here I am, feigning fluency. Here I am, speechless and appalled at the events, yet ready to speak loudly in the ways I can. Donating, calling, writing, conversing, collaborating with friends to create art and dialogue. (Kristan sums it up well in her post from today.)

I’ve referenced this Elizabeth Alexander poem a couple of times on this blog and on Twitter, but here it is again. I hope we can continue to march together, into the light.

Praise Song for the Day
by Elizabeth Alexander

(A poem written for Barack Obama’s Presidential Inauguration)

Each day we go about our business,
walking past each other, catching each other’s
eyes or not, about to speak or speaking.

All about us is noise. All about us is
noise and bramble, thorn and din, each
one of our ancestors on our tongues.

Someone is stitching up a hem, darning
a hole in a uniform, patching a tire,
repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere,
with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum,
with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.
A farmer considers the changing sky.
A teacher says, Take out your pencils. Begin.

We encounter each other in words, words
spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed,
words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark
the will of some one and then others, who said
I need to see what’s on the other side.

I know there’s something better down the road.
We need to find a place where we are safe.
We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain: that many have died for this day.
Sing the names of the dead who brought us here,
who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges,

picked the cotton and the lettuce, built
brick by brick the glittering edifices
they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle, praise song for the day.
Praise song for every hand-lettered sign,
the figuring-it-out at kitchen tables.

Some live by love thy neighbor as thyself,
others by first do no harm or take no more
than you need. What if the mightiest word is love?

Love beyond marital, filial, national,
love that casts a widening pool of light,
love with no need to pre-empt grievance.

In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air,
any thing can be made, any sentence begun.
On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp,

praise song for walking forward in that light.

For it is important that awake people be awake

This morning, B. gave me my first hug when I walked in. “It’s going to be ok, because we have each other.” I could not cry last night, but I felt that her words gave me permission to.

Below, excerpts from “A Ritual To Read To Each Other” by William Stafford. Line breaks and boldface are my own. Full poem can be found here.

***

If you don’t know the kind of person I am
and I don’t know the kind of person you are

a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:

though we could fool each other, we should consider—
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;

the signals we give—yes or no, or maybe—should be clear:
the darkness around us is deep.