To gather Paradise

I dwell in Possibility—
A fairer House than Prose—
More numerous of Windows—
Superior—for Doors—

Of Chambers as the Cedars—
Impregnable of Eye—
And for an Everlasting Roof
The Gambrels of the Sky—

Of Visitors—the fairest—
For Occupation—This—
The spreading wide my narrow Hands
To gather Paradise—

Emily Dickinson

On Friday night when I was wrapping up a draft of my sledgehammer poem, I told myself, "dammit I get it. I don’t need a metric like money to measure my worth--this poem, this feeling right now, is enough. I've already paid my dues. My only job is recovery and poetry. Showing up every day is the only thing I have to do."

But then on Saturday I wrote my therapist a note, but I didn't hit send; it was too pathetic. On Sunday I could have written it as well. On Friday afternoon I could have written it.

John every day I have these hours of real pain. Today it was after my poetry workshop. I know I'm going to a movie with a friend this afternoon. So Saturday is filled with positive activity. I should be resilient but I hurt so much.

On Sunday a different friend asked if I'd considered medication. (I have friends!)

This idea that I've already paid my dues, and showing up is enough, is abstract. I haven’t found a way to have it hold me, calm me, quiet my demons(?) (I’m afraid of that "demons" word because many psychiatrists/psychologists used it when describing Denise going crazy--her demons let loose like the dogs of war.)

In Dickinson's poem, I interpret her dwelling to be the land of poetry and her task to spread wide her narrow hands and gather paradise. When I read the poem, I have no idea if she is like me, knowing this only in an abstract way, or if she really feels it and her occupation provides her solace. In paradise, surely we feel no pain.

Sledgehammer

Sledgehammer

I confided to my friend another okcupid faux pas.
Still about Jack--
Still disclosing the crime that killed him.
She said it was manipulative.
That I had to stop it.
That I was selfish.
That I wanted to recruit new mourners to my side.
It prevented the woman, ever, from revealing herself.
I had to get past this she said.
So,
I’m walking down the street completely self-absorbed,
looking for a new spot to get my haircut.
Her lecture finds an appreciative audience
who sits for hours in coffee shops replaying her withering lines.
I'm barely aware I am not performing my daily observations
of Rome and her cats,
of a bruised banana peel
on a pedestal
supporting a massive granite column, and bam!
sledge hammer!
bam!
breaking through from the out there,
bam!
throwing me up against the squad car,
bam!
kicking my legs apart.
cuffing my dithering thoughts behind my back.
See the stop sign, bam!
See the white enameled crosswalk, bam!
See silhouetted branches
like a nest of snakes
against the mottled woolen sky!
See the web of hemorrhaged capillaries
blossom on her face our first mother's day.

Stop and smell the roses.

as if they were carved in latin

Dammit Stop and Smell the Roses!

I'd been hearing this advice from various quarters (The Joy of Living, John, my Saturday poetry workshop even gave us homework to observe daily the world around us) yet yesterday I could still be walking downtown completely self-absorbed. Until this.

the noisy set ... the martyrs call the world

Towards the end of our session, John miraculously pulled these lines out of his mind, recalled from his college days, about the labor of poetry:

Better go down upon your marrow-bones
And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones
Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;
For to articulate sweet sounds together
Is to work harder than all these, and yet
Be thought an idler by the noisy set
Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen
The martyrs call the world.’

We were talking about how writing poetry makes me happy. When I'm making a poem, I allow myself to be free of judgment, of yardsticks, of rules of right and wrong.

With poetry, I am completely happy if in one day I only improve a poem by 1 word. Or, quoting Oscar Wilde, "I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again."

With poetry, I don’t have expectations or place demands on myself for success. I know there is no money. I’m not looking for acclaim. Yes, I’m happy to workshop a poem ... happy to hear what readers think … but that criticism doesn't feel like I’m being scolded by the “noisy set of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen, the martyrs call the world.”  Or like feeling scolded by my parents if I get something wrong.

With poetry, autobiography and fiction become irrelevant. Truth doesn't fit neatly between the gold-leafed pages of a bible.

With poetry, life is slow, no clock is ticking. With poetry, I can spend time watching leaves move branches around.

There is something about writing a poem that is the same as being around children. It is, in part, that when doing both I don't feel judged.

So I had a good cry. It was about Jack and Libby of course, And how I feel like a good daddy when I pick up my four year old friend. He asked if I could not find a way to make a relationship with someone, the way I would make a poem.

I have to get over feeling judged by the world, feeling guilty for letting people, friends, lovers … down … for not living up to the task of life.

John started our session by quoting a friend. The friend's last words were that he’d been listening to people all his life. John interpreted that to mean, listening to the friend's very demanding mother. My mother was demanding. And as I type this I realize she wasn’t just demanding of me, I watched her, all the time, be demanding of her husband … defining in part the father and soulmate I should become. I could not live up to her measure of being a good man. I tried. I tried so hard. Came so close. Denied so much in reaching for that. (My mother would disagree. She would say I had. I was a good man. She would console me, and I wouldn't hear her.)

So here’s Yeats poem on poetry, and the fall of man that seems to get in the way (makes hard work of) love.

Adam's Curse
BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

We sat together at one summer’s end,
That beautiful mild woman, your close friend,
And you and I, and talked of poetry.
I said, ‘A line will take us hours maybe;
Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought,
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.
Better go down upon your marrow-bones
And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones
Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;
For to articulate sweet sounds together
Is to work harder than all these, and yet
Be thought an idler by the noisy set
Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen
The martyrs call the world.’
                                          And thereupon
That beautiful mild woman for whose sake
There’s many a one shall find out all heartache
On finding that her voice is sweet and low
Replied, ‘To be born woman is to know—
Although they do not talk of it at school—
That we must labour to be beautiful.’
I said, ‘It’s certain there is no fine thing
Since Adam’s fall but needs much labouring.
There have been lovers who thought love should be
So much compounded of high courtesy
That they would sigh and quote with learned looks
Precedents out of beautiful old books;
Yet now it seems an idle trade enough.’
We sat grown quiet at the name of love;
We saw the last embers of daylight die,
And in the trembling blue-green of the sky
A moon, worn as if it had been a shell
Washed by time’s waters as they rose and fell
About the stars and broke in days and years.
I had a thought for no one’s but your ears:
That you were beautiful, and that I strove
To love you in the old high way of love;
That it had all seemed happy, and yet we’d grown
As weary-hearted as that hollow moon.

memorize a poem homework

I committed to Stephen Mitchell's translation of Rilke's:

Archaic Torso of Apollo

We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low

gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.

Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast's fur:

would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: from here there is no place
that does not see you. You much change your life.

Short talk on happiness

According to Yongey Mingyur, who quotes other Rinpoches authoritatively, emptiness is absolute and pregnant with infinite possibilities. He writes that happiness is possibility. That achieving nothing, ever, even a single line of poetry, makes you happy.

(Thanks to Anne Carson & Sierra Nelson & Candy Shue.)