Poetry...why does it speak to some of us and not to others? A particular, or peculiar, wiring in the language center of the brain, perhaps, that gains satisfaction and pleasure from words being applied slantwise to ideas, or to forms that have concrete shapes but stand for other things?
Poetry has accompanied me my whole life, maybe because so much of it was read to me when I was young by my grandmother and aunts and mother, maybe also because I grew up with the language of the Book of Common Prayer in my head, plus innumerable lyrics and hymns and songs. Poetry and Music are sisters, and I've turned to them in all the difficult times and sleepless nights of my life. I read a lot of poetry and write very little; I accepted the fact long ago that I'm a prose writer with lyrical tendencies. Over the years I've become an experienced editor of poetry, which requires a different set of skills.
During this crisis I've been pulling one book at a time from my poetry shelves and delving into it over a period of days. Searching might be a better word -- for kindred spirits, and expressions of emotion and lived experience that feel resonant with my own. There aren't going to be literal parallels because this particular crisis is unprecedented, and that's not what I'm looking for. It's more a search for people who also walked in some sort of darkness but faced it squarely, and found meaning in it, or in spite of it.
That's different than looking for naive hope, or painting pretty pictures as a distraction. I'm grateful for all the beauty and hopefulness I see or am able to create, don't get me wrong. As a writer and thinker, I just don't seem to be able to avoid talking or writing or reading about the ignorance, cruelty, heartlessness, and sheer evil that are going on, especially in America; or the risks and sacrifices of the largely anonymous and often poorly paid people providing critical services; or the immense sadness that comes from this massive worldwide loss of life -- life in every sense of the word.
I wish it were different, but I'm not particularly optimistic about the future; we humans don't learn very well from history or our own mistakes, and most of us are primarily selfish and focused on the short-term. Nevertheless, love is always present, and where there's love, we can also find light and hope. Naive liberalism will get us nowhere; the forces arrayed against it are too great, and too entrenched in most of our societies and governments. I think it's actually more hopeful to avoid wishful thinking and instead see things as they actually are -- and find ourselves and our way forward centered within that reality. As Thomas Merton wrote, we need to cultivate the capacity to hold the darkness and the light together, simultaneously, because that is the way the world actually is. Certain poetry does that, and music, and some people also do it -- usually very quietly -- in the way they live their lives.
During these weeks of isolation I started out reading some Renaissance poetry -- Shakespeare, John Donne. Then fast-forwarded to recent decades, especially Seamus Heaney, Tomas Transtromer, and Derek Walcott. Lately I've been reading from my collection of post-war Polish poets: Zbigniew Herbert, Tadeusz Rosewicz, Czeslaw Milosz, Wislawa Szymborska, Adam Zagajewski. After this maybe I'll turn back to the Russians: Akhmatova and Mandelstam and their compatriots who wrote under Stalin, and their heirs, like Joseph Brodsky. Or go all the way back to the Greeks.
Here's Czeslaw Milosz, writing after the death of his fellow poet Tadeusz Rosewicz. It's not the most cheerful elegy. I apologize. But it gets at what I'm trying to say.
Rosewicz
he took it seriously
a serious mortal
he does not dance
he lights two thick candles
sits before a mirror
amused by his face
he does not indulge
in the frivolity of form
in the comic abundance
of human beliefs
he wants to know for sure
he digs in black soil
is both the spade and the mole
cut in two by the spade
Marvellous poem and well chosen for these times, Beth, as is your meditation.
I have a hard time looking at the news on TV at present, especially when the screen is taken up by our government ministers who seem more and more to be programmed robots, badly programmed at that, endlessly repeating platitudes or outright lies which they insist are true. As for the news from America....no use to talk about it, it's beyond words.
Sending you love. Keep well and keep on keeping on.
Posted by: Natalie | April 22, 2020 at 01:43 PM
Yeah the Poles, what is it with Poles and Poetry? This post made me go back to Czeslaw Milosz to reread some. This time ‘Yokimura’ on her unborn dead baby and Wislawa Szymborska and the great ‘ Love at first sight’
Posted by: John | April 22, 2020 at 08:32 PM