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in the end we go to poetry for one reason, so that we might more fully inhabit our lives and the world in which we live them, and that if we more fully inhabit these things, we might be less apt to destroy both. Christian Wiman
Most people remember a poem because it reminds them of something: a grief of their own; a moment of love in their life; a decision they had to make; a time of wonder and delight; a landscape they had forgotten; a pain they carried.
Poetry is about the human condition: everything from the kitchen drawer to the state of the world can be subject matter for a poem.
All the poems are a testament to the process of noticing. A single moment can open a door to an experience that’s bigger than the single moment might imply. Sometimes that opening is a challenge, sometimes it’s a comfort, other times a question. Very occasionally it’s an answer.
But deeper than the craft of poetry is the why of poetry. Why did the poet write this? Or, perhaps, why did the poet need to write this? The poet needed to make a record. It’s evidence of their existence: like our ancestors’ handprints on the wall of a cave, an ‘I am here’.
Your reading of the poem might change with repeated readings. My advice? Write notes in the margins.
i do this, and i find that different poems in a book have different meanings based on where i am in life.
Anybody who has lived with chronic illness will know that not only must you learn to live with your own symptoms, but you must also learn to live with other people’s opinions about your symptoms: whether your illness is valid or not; whether you should or shouldn’t take this medication or that; what will help; what will not help; whether the illness is your fault; whether you’re believed or not. This is a burden on top of your body’s burdens. Living with people’s readings – people’s moral readings, really – about your pain can make everything worse.
Important to remember is that a myth is not something false, rather a myth is something with so much truth that it needs a fantastical container.
Compassion is more creative than contempt. Forgiveness – at its best – seeks to make space for surprise and the unexpected.
Forgiveness isn’t the destination of the poem, life is, and the poet is aching for the capacity to forgive herself enough in order to be present for life without a litany of failures, hatreds and comparisons piling up around her.
In his memoir My Bright Abyss Wiman writes that when he began to be more open to belief, he began, also, to become more open to doubt. Belief and doubt are part of the same thing.
But eventually, grief makes space for other feelings too. Gratitude returns: the gift of having loved someone – and having been loved back – doesn’t replace grief, but it does accompany it.
Isn’t advice one of the hardest things to ask for, and one of the hardest things to take?
There’s a question at the heart of the poem about how a place can shape behaviour, and Capildeo is questioning the place and powers that shape the behaviours of these ‘progressive’ men.
When I turned 33 my father said, It’s your Jesus year – you’re the same age he was when he died.
Overabundance of wood, over one hundred rivers, food, and fat pastures for Spanish horses, men, and cattle; and yes, your majesty, there were some people.
Social media and contemporary economics are sometimes blamed for a weaponisation of language, but the technology of spin has been around for centuries: words like hero and exploration mask the reality of conquest and occupation.
How do the colonisers imagine they’ll take possession of these resources? Easy: murder; weapons; enslavement; displacement; divide and conquer.
However, the text of the Bible is clear: the sin of Sodom was the sin of inhospitality. Of course the entire male population
Perhaps the world needs stories of how pain can sometimes continue in order to help those of us who also carry pain.
On Receiving Father at JFK after his Long Flight from Kashmir Rafiq Kathwari As I fling my arms wide, he extends his hand.
this is the entire poem and the essay gives great thoughts on it
My formal training in literature began by reading the Bible. For years, I was in an environment of fear where all such literature had to be interpreted through one anxious question: what is the singular meaning of this text? As years went by – and as I got better teachers – I began to learn that a good text might have five or six interesting meanings. I realised that good literature lasts, not because it has one interpretation, but because successive generations of readers have given it careful attention; using their understanding, learning, imagination and lives.
i've also had this experience of the singular vs many meanings
A poem can mean different things to you at different stages of your life.
Wherever art comes from, it’s always bigger than its source.
An item can mean so much more than what it seems: and we hold on to things for so many more reasons than pure sentimentality.
Households with lots of people require the skill of interrupting, sometimes even interrupting yourself.
There is a critical distance between what a society says safety looks like and what the actual experience of safety – or the lack of it – really is.
I turned to one of my new friends. Whose side are we on? I asked him.
peer pressure at its best
What You Missed that Day You Were Absent from Fourth Grade Brad Aaron Modlin
loved this poem
We hear that the project of writing unlocks things you might have put away, lets voices you may have wished to quieten be heard, gives language to that which might have been unconscious.
