{"id":124954,"date":"2018-05-03T09:00:23","date_gmt":"2018-05-03T13:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=124954"},"modified":"2018-05-02T17:56:23","modified_gmt":"2018-05-02T21:56:23","slug":"poetry-rx-lie-to-yourself-what-you-will-lose-is-yourself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/05\/03\/poetry-rx-lie-to-yourself-what-you-will-lose-is-yourself\/","title":{"rendered":"Poetry Rx: Lie to Yourself, What You Will Lose Is Yourself"},"content":{"rendered":"

In our column\u00a0Poetry Rx<\/a>, readers\u00a0write in<\/a>\u00a0with a specific emotion, and our resident poets\u2014Sarah Kay, Kaveh Akbar, and Claire Schwartz\u2014take turns prescribing the perfect poems to match. This week, Kaveh Akbar is on the line.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Illustration by Ellis Rosen.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Dear Poets,<\/p>\n

My seventy-two-year-old mother used to wake up early every day and text me the weather so I could dress accordingly before I left for work. I\u2019m twenty-seven years old and\u2014I am proud to admit\u2014fully capable of checking the weather myself. But despite my repeated protests, my mother texted me daily anyway. She passed away suddenly in late February. We shared so many quirky traditions that feel lost to me now.<\/p>\n

I was wondering: Do you have a poem that might speak to these small gestures of love, either from the perspective of what it\u2019s like to give them or to receive them?<\/p>\n

Yours,
\nMissing the Weather<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Dear Missing,<\/p>\n

Your mother\u2019s texting was an irreplaceable gift, undoubtedly one of many such gifts she gave you. At first, my instinct was to send you Robert Hayden\u2019s \u201cThose Winter Sundays<\/a>\u201d (\u201cWhat did I know, what did I know \/ of love\u2019s austere and lonely offices\u201d being among the language\u2019s great articulations of our inability to appreciate small gestures of love in the moment they\u2019re given). But then I thought it would be better to give you something that spoke specifically to maternal<\/em> love and its associate\u2014too often thankless\u2014labors.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Toward that end, here are the final stanzas of Marianne Moore<\/a>\u2019s poem \u201cThe Paper Nautilus<\/a>\u201d:<\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 the watchful
\nmaker of it guards it
\nday and night; she scarcely<\/p>\n

eats until the eggs are hatched.
\nBuried eight-fold in her eight
\narms, for she is in
\na sense a devil-
\nfish, her glass ram\u2019s horn-cradled freight
\nis hid but is not crushed;
\nas Hercules, bitten<\/p>\n

by a crab loyal to the hydra,
\nwas hindered to succeed,
\nthe intensively
\nwatched eggs coming from
\nthe shell free it when they are freed,\u2014
\nleaving its wasp-nest flaws
\nof white on white, and close-<\/p>\n

laid Ionic chiton-folds
\nlike the lines in the mane of
\na Parthenon horse,
\nround which the arms had
\nwound themselves as if they knew love
\nis the only fortress
\nstrong enough to trust to.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It\u2019s a poem about maternal sacrifice; the female paper nautilus \u201cscarcely \/ eats until the eggs are hatched.\u201d The final lines, with the rider\u2019s arms wound around the Parthenon horse\u2019s mane \u201cas if they knew love \/ is the only fortress \/ strong enough to trust to,\u201d nod to the way the nautilus\u2019s primary weapon, its embrace, is also how humans relay maternal affection. The word \u201clove\u201d and the sentiment of its line surprise us\u2014is it, to borrow a phrase from Bishop<\/a>, an instance of emotion exceeding its cause? Certainly, the line sits in contrast to the language of \u201cIonic chiton-folds\u201d and \u201cglass ram\u2019s horn-cradled freight.\u201d<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s also an enactment of what Moore means when she says that poetry might \u201cpresent for inspection, imaginary gardens with real toads in them.\u201d Or here, imaginary oceans with real shelled octopuses in them, an aquarium of the mind that Moore fills with selfless mother nautiluses. Moore lived with her own mother for more than five decades, and it\u2019s hard not to read this poem as Moore\u2019s \u201cperishable souvenir of hope\u201d for the woman who raised her, an acknowledgement that maternal love is too often built upon years of quiet self-abnegation.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m glad you were able to appreciate your mother\u2019s quirky traditions, and I\u2019m sorry to hear that they feel lost to you in this moment. I hope that won\u2019t always be the case\u2014that soon, revisiting her messages, like revisiting this poem, might reconnect you with a bit of her \u201cfortress \/ strong enough to trust to.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014KA<\/p>\n

\u00a0*<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dear Poets,<\/p>\n

I\u2019m queer. I\u2019m queer, I\u2019m queer, I\u2019m so queer and so closeted. Help.<\/p>\n

Sincerely,
\nGay as F*ck<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Dear Gay,<\/p>\n

You\u2019re already through the hardest and most important part, which is coming out to yourself. I can\u2019t speak to whether or not it\u2019s safe for you to come out to anyone else right now, but I hope you have at least one person in your life with whom you can be fully open. For now, I\u2019m grateful that you\u2019ve trusted this space with your note. I give you Frank Bidart\u2019s \u201cQueer<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lie to yourself about this and you will
\nforever lie about everything.<\/em><\/p>\n

Everybody already knows everything<\/p>\n

so you can
\nlie to them. That\u2019s what they want.<\/p>\n

But lie to yourself, what you will<\/p>\n

lose is yourself. Then you
\nturn into them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It\u2019s a searing poem, written by a gay poet who spent his teenage years in the June Cleaver fifties. About the poem, Hilton Als writes, \u201c[Bidart\u2019s] style is marked by a kind of calm hysteria, or a calm that alternates with hysteria, as he struggles with the things that the straight world and his formerly closeted and frightened self think should remain unsaid. And then he says them twice.\u201d Bidart\u2019s poem continues:<\/p>\n

the primary, the crucial<\/p>\n

scenario<\/p>\n

forever is coming out\u2014
\nor not. Or not. Or not. Or not. Or not.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It sounds like you\u2019re already past the poem\u2019s opening couplet\u2014but the repetition of your \u201cI\u2019m queer. I\u2019m queer, I\u2019m queer, I\u2019m so queer\u201d struck me as being parallel to Bidart\u2019s repetition: \u201cor not. Or not. Or not. Or not. Or not.\u201d That\u2019s where you\u2019re stuck, that Hamlet quandary\u2014to stay in the closet or not to stay.<\/p>\n

Again, without knowing you or your circumstances, I can\u2019t speak to whether it\u2019s safe for you to be out. But I\u2019m heartened (as the speaker of Bidart\u2019s poem would no doubt also be) to read your confidence in asserting your own identity. \u201cI\u2019m queer, I\u2019m queer, I\u2019m so queer,\u201d you say. Bidart\u2019s speaker writes: \u201clie to yourself, what you will \/ lose is yourself. Then you \/ turn into them.\u201d Whichever decision you make now, you will remain resolutely and assuredly yourself. That\u2019s a kind of power, one you\u2019ll need to draw from as you continue your journey.<\/p>\n

\u2014KA<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Dear Poets,<\/p>\n

Last night I was drunk, and while I was in bed, just before I fell asleep, I wrote what I thought was a perfect sentence that would be the perfect opening to a short story. I spent most of today trying to recall what that line was, but like a soap bubble I tried to hold in my hands, it kept escaping me. This isn\u2019t the first time this has happened: sometimes I\u2019ll be at a gig and let my mind wander, and all these ideas will come to me. But an hour later, when I have my notebook with me again, I\u2019ll have forgotten most of it. Is there a poem for the grief of these stories that will never materialize?<\/p>\n

Love,
\nForgetful<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Dear Forgetful,<\/p>\n

It\u2019s funny, I spent all day trying to come up with the perfect poem for you, but somehow it kept evading my grasp \u2026<\/p>\n

Wait! There it is! Russell Edson\u2019s \u201cOf Memory and Distance<\/a>\u201d!<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a scientific fact that anyone entering the distance will
\ngrow smaller. Eventually becoming so small he might only be
\nfound with a telescope, or, for more intimacy, with a
\nmicroscope….<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You talk about letting your mind \u201cwander,\u201d which made me think of this poem\u2019s meditation on distance and its relationship to memory\u2014specifically the way they depend on each other. As you wander away from a thing, as your distance from it increases, so, too, does your reliance on memory to conjure it. As your distance decreases, your perception begins to rely more and more on senses, not memory.<\/p>\n

Of course, we know from psychologists that most of our memories are at least partial fictions, \u201cmade of paper and ink,\u201d so it\u2019s likely that your perfect opening might not have been as world-changing as you\u2019re remembering. My advice? Start writing things down, on your phone or in a notebook or on the inside of your T-shirt or wherever else you\u2019ll actually find it the next day. And if that fails, too, take heart in this bit of wisdom from Friedrich Nietzsche: \u201cThe advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014KA<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Want more? Read earlier\u00a0installments of\u00a0Poetry Rx<\/a>. Need your own poem?\u00a0Write to us<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n

Kaveh Akbar\u2019s poems have appeared recently in\u00a0<\/em>The\u00a0New<\/span>\u00a0Yorker<\/span>,\u00a0Poetry,\u00a0t<\/em>he<\/em>\u00a0New<\/span>\u00a0York Times,\u00a0the\u00a0<\/em>Nation,\u00a0and elsewhere. His first book,\u00a0<\/em>Calling a Wolf a Wolf, was published by Alice James in the U.S. and Penguin in the UK. Born in Tehran, Iran, he teaches at\u00a0Purdue<\/span>\u00a0University and in the low-residency M.F.A. programs at Randolph College and Warren Wilson.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In our column\u00a0Poetry Rx, readers\u00a0write in\u00a0with a specific emotion, and our resident poets\u2014Sarah Kay, Kaveh Akbar, and Claire Schwartz\u2014take turns prescribing the perfect poems to match. This week, Kaveh Akbar is on the line.     Dear Poets, My seventy-two-year-old mother used to wake up early every day and text me the weather so I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1426,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[33114],"tags":[33236,2006,33930,469,6869,14095,33929,33928],"class_list":["post-124954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry-rx","tag-frank-bidart","tag-marianne-moore","tag-of-memory-and-distance","tag-queer","tag-robert-hayden","tag-russell-edson","tag-the-paper-nautilus","tag-those-winter-sundays"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nPoetry Rx: Lie to Yourself, What You Will Lose Is Yourself<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In our column\u00a0Poetry Rx, readers\u00a0write in\u00a0with a specific emotion, and our resident poets take turns prescribing the perfect poems to match. 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