August 16, 2018 Poetry Rx Poetry Rx: Nevertheless, Live By Claire Schwartz 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, Claire Schwartz is on the line. © Ellis Rosen Dear Poets, Is there a word for the feeling when you know the wise thing to do, but you, always a fool, do the opposite? I wish I knew the word—I would have said it when this boy slept a night by my side. I would have said it when I first lost him, and then six months later, he came back for me. I would have said it, even if only a whisper, when I fell for him all over again, even harder than before. And now I would repeat it to myself, like a benediction, as I face the possibility of him drifting away. That is the feeling for which I need a poem. The feeling when you know that he’s going to leave, and you’re remembering how hard it was to lose him the first time, and this time you’re in deeper, and you know you should cut it off now to reduce the heartache a little, but you foolishly continue to hope. The feeling every lover has, before sadness makes them wise. Sincerely, A Hopeful Fool Dear Hopeful Fool, I love your letter. What you’re seeking—a word for a feeling you know but have no language for—gets exactly at one reason I hold poems close: not necessarily to choose differently but to experience differently. For you, Mary Szybist’s “The Troubadours Etc.”: Just for this evening, let’s not mock them. Not their curtsies or cross-garters or ever-recurring pepper trees in their gardens promising, promising. At least they had ideas about love. I think one word for what you describe is the one you use: hope. But hope’s wisdom buckles when the vision it was pinned to dissipates. So here is a sturdier word: faith. Faith’s intelligence is not bound to the outcome of any single situation; faith is something surer that you build when you choose the not-knowing. Faith marks an interior constitution, a way of being that says more about the self than it says about any external event. “At least they had ideas about love.” Read More
August 2, 2018 Poetry Rx Poetry Rx: Listen I Love You Joy Is Coming By Sarah Kay 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’m in the closet for the sake of my parents. We come from a society where it’s impossible to be gay or queer. They have already faced a lot of disappointment, and though I feel alienated from them at times, I want to spare them any further heartache. They probably wouldn’t disown me, but I know they could never be happy. You might say I have a duty to myself to pursue my own happiness, but I feel as if any happiness I could get would still be bitter and pale. Unlike in Hollywood, there’s no tearful reconciliation to be had here, just endless recriminations and seeing them beaten and bewildered. Do you have a poem for this thorny feeling? Call it love or filial obligation or resentment or pity for my poor, flawed, all-too-human parents. Yours, A Wayward Son Read More
July 26, 2018 Poetry Rx Poetry Rx: There Is a Line That Could Make You Love Me Really By Kaveh Akbar 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 little sister is in the throes of an eating disorder. She is quite literally wasting away in front of me, and she has always looked to me for advice. I feel like I should be able to be supportive and strong for her, especially since I have been dealing with an eating disorder for more than five years now, but I find myself obsessing even more over my own issues and am a little afraid to spend time with her. Is there any poetic advice that might give me courage to help my sister fight back the same demons that threaten me? Sincerely, Skinny and Scared Dear S & S, I want to begin by saying that if you or anyone is struggling with an eating disorder, you should be talking to a professional, not a poet. The National Eating Disorders Association help line is 1-800-931-2237, and I encourage you to use it—it’s available 24-7. I don’t think I can give you a poem that will offer practical advice about how to move forward—or through or around your or your sister’s illness. What I can give you is one that might offer a flicker of recognition, a moment of “there we are.” Lo Kwa Mei-en’s “Pinnochia On Fire” is a fugue of searing language, a speaker’s meditation on compulsion, embodiment, and hunger. One section reads: Read More
July 19, 2018 Poetry Rx Poetry Rx: I Loved My Friend By Claire Schwartz 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, Claire Schwartz is on the line. © Ellis Rosen Dear Poets, What do you do when the person you thought would be your best friend forever and ever and ever no longer feels the same way? Or perhaps never even did? Is it just time to move on? What do you when you’ve promised yourself, and her, that you would love her forever and ever, no matter what? Was that a ridiculous promise? Thank you, Lost Dear Lost, I’m sorry that you’re experiencing this heartbreak. It is both an exquisiteness and a challenge that friendship is not governed by the regulation of other relationships. Friendship is not afforded the same social (or legal) recognition as blood ties or romantic partnerships. How we love our friends has few rules, and that means we get to be gorgeously creative with that love. It also means that how we work through conflict—how and if and when friendships end—has few models. In my experience, this confusion has made the end of close friendships all the more painful. For you, “Poem” by Langston Hughes, which cuts through the haze to say it plain: I loved my friend. He went away from me. There’s nothing more to say. The poem ends, Soft as it began— I loved my friend. Read More
July 5, 2018 Poetry Rx Poetry Rx: There Will Never Be More of Summer Than There Is Now By Sarah Kay 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 still thinking of spring and the way rains wash away the neighborhood children’s chalk drawings. Do you have a poem for that never-ending spring? For the new opportunities I can almost taste in these upcoming months? My partner finally moving to the city where I live, a trip to Europe, a new job—is there a poem that holds all the hope I hold for the future? Yours, Spring Things Dear Spring Things, I love that you are still thinking of spring when summer is so muggy! Personally, I can’t stop sweating, and spring couldn’t feel further away. And yet I think I understand what you are looking for. I like that it is an inappropriate season to be thinking of spring. I want to give you “June,” by Alex Dimitrov, which is also inappropriate, since now we are sitting squarely in July’s armpit. No matter. Alex writes, There will never be more of summer than there is now. Walking alone through Union Square I am carrying flowers and the first rosé to a party where I’m expected. It’s Sunday and the trains run on time but today death feels so far, it’s impossible to go underground. I would like to say something to everyone I see (an entire city) but I’m unsure what it is yet. Read More
June 21, 2018 Poetry Rx Poetry Rx: A Poem Not About Sex By Kaveh Akbar 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, I have finally settled with the great love of my life. I have been with him through joys and losses, both in my life and his, and we have reached the place where our paths merge and become one. We have a home together. We have made promises to each other—long-term promises that I would never have thought possible to fulfill. I feel full, overflowing, for possibly the first time in my life. Is there a poem for this feeling, like the road ahead is paved in gold? Like a large piece of the puzzle of my life has finally clicked into place? Yours, Love Is Wonderful Dear LIW, Congratulations to you on your glorious fullness, the impossible luck that has found you. I just got married last weekend and can very much relate to the feeling of “a large piece of the puzzle” finally clicking into place. It’s a load-bearing gratitude in my life, as it sounds to be in yours. For you, I offer “Errata” by Kevin Young, a poem I’ve been reading and rereading since my wedding. It begins, Baby, give me just one more hiss We must lake it fast morever I want to cold you in my harms In the speaker’s great love fugue, “You make me weak in the knees” becomes “You wake me meek / in the needs.” It’s a deeply clever, desperately hopeful love poem that shows language buckling under the weight of desire. In A Year with Swollen Appendices, Brian Eno writes, “The blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them.” For Young’s speaker, the gravity of desire is strong enough to pull apart his medium, creating a new constellation of private language native to his specific love. Great affection often produces this: invented vernacular to accommodate unprecedented love. In this way, “Errata” exemplifies Horace’s pronouncement that a great poem should delight as well as instruct. I hope it might do a bit of each for you and your partner. —KA Read More