In our column Poetry Rx, readers write in with a specific emotion, and our resident poets—Sarah Kay, Kaveh Akbar, and Claire Schwartz—take turns prescribing the perfect poems to match. This month, Kaveh Akbar is on the line.

© Ellis Rosen

Dear Poets,

I am at a point in my life where I have very little structure, where every day is full of small decisions and every move feels like a long shot. I am in the process of beating an addiction (I hope), but this means that I am fully sober, grounded, and often a very raw kind of awake for every long minute of the day, however brilliant, brutal, or just plain boring it is. Do you have a poem that could quiet my mind or offer me clarity?

Thanks,

Actively Awake

Dear AA,

I remember so clearly the early days of sobriety. I’d stare at my watch willing the time to pass faster, only to see, like in those old high school movies, the second hand seemingly move backward. When your whole life is predicated on feeding your addiction, and then you remove that addiction entirely, you’re suddenly faced with a lot of life. A lot of hours, minutes, seconds. It’s one of the reasons I got so into poetry; it was literally just a place to put myself. I could read a book of poems and not worry about what to do with my body or my mind for an hour, two hours. I could write a poem and somehow make four or six or eight hours just fly by. Read More

In our column Poetry Rx, readers write in with a specific emotion, and our resident poets—Sarah Kay, Kaveh Akbar, and Claire Schwartz—take turns prescribing the perfect poems to match. This month, Claire Schwartz is on the line.

Dear Poets,  

I lost my father suddenly on New Year’s Day. I have lived without him for over a year and a half now, and while I’ve found that my heart is more resilient than I imagined, I’ve started to fear the passing of time. The first of every new month feels like it’s stabbing me with the reminder that time will not slow down. I’m scared for this year to end, because right now I can still claim his death is recent, and it scares me that one day it will be in the distant past. I’m scared that I’ll start forgetting pieces of him, or that I’ll stop thinking about him as much, which would feel like letting him die again. I’m wondering if you can give me a poem about how to accept the passing of time and stop seeing it as the enemy.

Sincerely,
A Fearful Daughter

Read More

In our column Poetry Rx, readers write in with a specific emotion, and our resident poets—Sarah Kay, Kaveh Akbar, and Claire Schwartz—take turns prescribing the perfect poems to match. This week, Sarah Kay is on the line.

© Ellis Rosen

Dear Poets, 

I am writing to you for some clarity or company. At thirty, I have found myself in some kind of threshold state. I’m grappling with the tragic loss of a person I loved, mourning a future that got lost in the past, and also celebrating the births of so many of my peers’ new babies. I have been at the hospital witnessing—or on the other side of the phone hearing about—these big ends and big beginnings. I feel like I’m spinning: a compass who doesn’t know whether to point toward the exits or the entrances. Are the exits and entrances are the same? Babies come out of the holes in our bodies, surgical or anatomical, and loss feels the same way: I feel like she was torn from my body somehow, leaving an emptiness, a wound. I guess I don’t really have a question, except to say, does this seem familiar to you? Are you spinning, too? 

Thank you,
Caught in A twirl

Dear Caught in A Twirl,

So much of your letter does indeed sound familiar. During a bout of despair I once asked my mother whether growing older was just one wound piled upon another until we are just a collection of hurt, and she answered, unironically, “No, sometimes someone gets married or has a baby!” At the time I probably rolled my eyes or laughed at her stubborn optimism, but I have since grown to take her answer quite genuinely. My best friends are also having babies or getting married, big beginnings I am grateful to witness. And at thirty we are both already starting to encounter some big endings, too. I am very sorry for your loss. I want to share with you Robin Beth Schaer’s poem “Holdfast” which begins, 

Read More

In our column Poetry Rx, readers write in with a specific emotion, and our resident poets—Sarah Kay, Kaveh Akbar, and Claire Schwartz—take turns prescribing the perfect poems to match. This week, Kaveh Akbar is on the line.

© Ellis Rosen

Dear Poets,

My niece is about to graduate high school. She has had to deal with a lot the past few years, including the death of her mother. I’ve watched her grow from an infant into the amazing young adult that she is today. I see how she’s getting ready to navigate all the complexities of life after high school. She is a talented artist and poet, and I’m so excited to discover what she does with the rest of her life.

I wish that I could protect her from any unhappiness or difficulties, but I know that I can’t, and I realize that our challenges help us grow. Can you please share a poem to remind her that even though the world can be scary and contains pain, she is strong and resilient?

Thank you,
Proud Aunt

Read More

In our column Poetry Rx, readers write in with a specific emotion, and our resident poets—Sarah Kay, Kaveh Akbar, and Claire Schwartz—take turns prescribing the perfect poems to match. This column has run weekly for over a year, and now, our dear and busy poets must slow it down to once a month. Never fear — they’ll still be here, just a bit less often. This month, Claire Schwartz is on the line.

©ELLIS ROSEN

Dear Poets,

Two years ago, I came out of the closet to my family by introducing them to my girlfriend. They responded fairly negatively, expressing their disbelief (“we would have known if you were gay”) and disapproval (“it’s not something we believe in or support”). I have pushed back in many ways—bringing my girlfriend to family functions, being hypervisible online, and proclaiming the steadfastness and validity of my relationship in frequent and intense fights. In the wake of this, my relationship, which did not have a strong foundation to begin with and shouldered the normal fears and anxieties that accompany any romantic partnership, suffered greatly. The more unstable my relationship became, the more strongly I held on to it—I fought for her so hard in the public arena that I didn’t know how not to in the private one. At times, it was volatile and abrasive, yet I fought for it still. 

After two years of what felt like pushing the boulder of “us” up a mountain, we decided to call it quits. Now I am both heartbroken over losing her and losing myself. In her absence, I am struggling to find mooring. How do you mourn a relationship whose primary purpose was to validate your queerness, both to yourself and others? How do you maintain an identity in the absence of the person it was formed around? Perhaps most of all, can I keep her in my life without making her my compass?

Sincerely,
Broken Heart, Broken Self  Read More

In our column Poetry Rx, readers write in with a specific emotion, and our resident poets—Sarah Kay, Kaveh Akbar, and Claire Schwartz—take turns prescribing the perfect poems to match. This week, Sarah Kay is on the line.

©Ellis Rosen

Dear Poets—

People say you can’t know a certain kind of love until you have a child. I hated when people said this before I had a child, but now I know it is true. My love for my daughter sometimes feels terrible and desperate and weighty with responsibility. But also sweet and tender and silly. I’m frequently irritated, sometimes infuriated, but nothing she could ever do or say would stop me loving her. I keenly feel the reality that she will leave me one day. Hopefully she’ll be happy, she’ll call home at least weekly, but that’s the best case scenario. It’s also possible, even likely, that—at least at some point—she’ll be distant and not return my calls and will discuss in therapy all the ways I’ve hurt her. And even that’s not close to worst case scenario. I just LOVE her. Even when she screams with all the vehemence her wild four-year-old self can muster that she doesn’t love me … even when she wakes me up at three in the morning … even when she writhes and wails for forty minutes because I didn’t have a quarter for the gumball machine …  This love is exhausting. It’s so ordinary yet extraordinary. Is there a poem for a mother’s love?

Thank you,
Exhausted Read More