It’s been three weeks since I started this blog and for three weeks I’ve been very glad to try to bring something new, perhaps something a little beautiful, to the blogosphere. But something else has started to happen. While I’ve decided it’s not easy to write a new poem every day, (sometimes not even a bad poem every day), this space has re-tuned the antennae in my ears back into their rightful place—the sides of my head that tilt, listen, and learn from what wise people have to say.*
*(NPR, I apologize for the massive reduction in WAMU/WETA listenership due to my newfound passion, but I put my pledge check in the mail to make up for it).
The discovery of old voices, new words or ancient forms of expression is beginning to revitalize the connection I have with poetry, and I think life itself. And that alone makes me happy. Exploring the thoughts that emanate from someone else’s mind is my favorite experience and these days, I’m more in tune with what others have to say. The beauty of other’s writing is that you immediately gain access to people dead, alive or walking the precarious tightrope in between.
Today I had the pleasure of reading a poem by May Swenson, a contemporary of Elizabeth Bishop (a favorite of mine previously referenced: http://treegappoets.blogspot.com/2009/09/art-of-losing.html). May writes a great poem about the body…or is it about a body?
Question
By May Swenson
Body my house
my horse my hound
what will I do
when you are fallen
Where will I sleep
How will I ride
What will I hunt
Where can I go
without my mount
all eager and quick
How will I know
in thicket ahead
is danger or treasure
when Body my good
bright dog is dead
How will it be
to lie in the sky
without roof or door
and wind for an eye
With cloud for shift
how will I hide?
I love this poem because as I get older I really feel that my spirit, that enduring thing that keeps me alive and able to start this blog, exists within a body that is turning into something foreign. But I’ve never felt fully comfortable in my skin and therefore I like this idea of transcendence because to me, the body I inhabit is just a vessel. It’s the epidermis, bones, veins and muscle, but it’s not me unless it has the poetry. Here is a terrible attempt at a poem after a day spent writing more than 5 versions of a questionnaire I was paid to write, for a living:
Punctuation
Why can I only write
between question marks?
Porque solo escribo
entre puntos de interrogacion?
Why can I only write
within question marks?
I want to get back to that place
where the written word
holds calmwater stillness
a sanctuarial infinity,
consciousness in aquamarine.
Yet questioned postulations
hemorrhage the status quo
and I wonder if some expressions
were born to be unknown?
Although...
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