{"id":125815,"date":"2018-05-24T11:00:20","date_gmt":"2018-05-24T15:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=125815"},"modified":"2018-05-24T15:23:52","modified_gmt":"2018-05-24T19:23:52","slug":"poetry-rx-its-not-sad-at-all-any-of-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/05\/24\/poetry-rx-its-not-sad-at-all-any-of-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Poetry Rx: It\u2019s Not Sad at All, Any of It"},"content":{"rendered":"

In our column Poetry Rx, 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,\u00a0Kaveh Akbar is on the line.<\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Original illustration by Ellis Rosen.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Dear Poets,\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

My wife and I are expecting a baby in five months. We are both women, and she is carrying it. The months feel expansive and momentous, like I need to get myself wholly together, smooth out all my rusted-in neuroses, do all the wild kayaking, dancing, writing, and running around in forests. I need to do all that so I\u2019m perfectly composed and ready for the sacrifices of parenthood. I feel I should be savoring every delicious hour of this right-before-baby time, but I\u2019m still worrying and feeling a little bereft and not working out, just like usual. I can\u2019t wait to meet our son or daughter, but how can I graduate to fully baked adult in just five months? What if I\u2019m not good at it?<\/em><\/p>\n

I need a poem that speaks to crossing a big threshold, and the inevitability of unreadiness for being a mom.<\/em><\/p>\n

Sincerely,
\nNot Grown Up Yet<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Dear NGUY,<\/p>\n

Every new or expectant parent I\u2019ve ever spoken with has shared the anxiety you articulate beautifully and concisely: \u201cWhat if I\u2019m not good at it?\u201d I remember being fascinated by the realization (it came embarrassingly late) that before they had my older brother, my parents had never been parents. Some part of me just idly assumed they\u2019d been born parents, fully equipped to handle our feeding and fevers and acne crises.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Everyone living was raised by people who just figured it out as they went. I love Rachel Zucker\u2019s poems for a billion reasons, but chief among those reasons is the great clarity with which they make that figuring-it-out manifest. Look at her poem \u201cSaturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
When I get home<\/div>\n
and try to describe the boy in the street Josh says,\u00a0More people died
\n<\/em><\/div>\n
in Iraq this month than any other\u00a0<\/em>and I remind him that tomorrow morning,<\/div>\n
before the new table is due to be delivered, we\u2019re going to Saint Vincent\u2019s<\/div>\n
Hospital where Dr. Margano will put the KY-covered wand inside me<\/div>\n
and tell us if these past nine weeks have yielded a fetal heartbeat<\/div>\n
which will change everything, nothing.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The supersaturation of images, artifacts from a life richly lived and intensely felt, startles with its clarity. Motherhood doesn\u2019t erase one\u2019s interiority; it doesn\u2019t pave over one\u2019s existing psychic ecosystem. Rather, it inflects it\u2014a boy\u2019s soccer game brings you to the hawks flying overhead; the fetal heartbeat changes \u201ceverything, nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Your anxiety about \u201cgraduating to fully baked adult in five months\u201d means you care and are human. I am not a parent, and I will never be a mother. Most of what I know about the world I know through reading and believing the accounts of others. Zucker\u2019s poem grants me access to the ways historical time braids with personal time, how public and private horrors all filter through a single organ, the same brain tasked with learning to parent. Perfect parenthood seems like a horizon\u2014a place you\u2019re always marching toward, a place at which you never fully arrive. And as with perfect personhood, it\u2019s the marching that matters, just that motion. It seems to me you and your wife are well on your way.<\/p>\n

\u2014KA<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Dear Poets,<\/em><\/p>\n

Two years ago, I divorced a man and married a woman. I myself am a woman. For reasons beyond my comprehension\u2014because it\u2019s not about my sexuality or anything else I can figure out\u2014my two adult brothers are no longer speaking to me. My parents, who maintain a relationship with my wife and me, refuse to say anything to my brothers. Up until the divorce, one of my brothers was my best friend. Since the divorce, everything stings, and I am always excluded from family functions. My family even gathered with my ex, my young daughters, and my extended family on my birthday and didn\u2019t invite me. I am working to make peace with all of this, but some days are harder than others. I would love a poem to remind me that I am a better person now and a better mother. I am heartbroken and lost, but I know what I have done is right for my daughters and me.<\/em><\/p>\n

Sincerely, <\/em><\/p>\n

Heartbroken and Lost<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Dear Heartbroken,<\/p>\n

The cruelest thing a person can do is assign shame to another\u2019s joy\u2014such cruelty seeks not only to diminish the joy at hand but also to poison and repress all future joy. It\u2019s a profound violence, one that testifies to real sickness in the hearts of those who inflict it. The thought of your family gathering with your ex, on your birthday, without you, boggles the mind. I\u2019m sorry you\u2019ve had to bear such a painful and irrational response to your life blossoming into joyful new clarity. I offer Carl Phillips\u2019s \u201cBlow It Back<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
Well, it\u2019s morning, now. Out back, the bamboo<\/div>\n
bows and stiffens. Thoughts in a wind. Thoughts like (but<\/div>\n
nobody saying it): Nobody, I think, knows me better by<\/div>\n
now than you do. Or like: The bamboo, bowing, stiffening,<\/div>\n
seems like nothing so much as, in this light, competing forms<\/div>\n
of betrayal that, given time, must surely cancel each other<\/div>\n
out, close your eyes; patience; wait. Maybe less the foliage<\/div>\n
than the promise of it. Less that shame exists, maybe, than that<\/div>\n
the world keeps saying it does,\u00a0know it, hold on tight to it,<\/em>\u00a0as if<\/div>\n
the world were rumor, how every rumor<\/div>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0rings true, lately.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Reading Phillips\u2019s lines about \u201ccompeting forms \/ of betrayal that, given time, must surely cancel each other \/ out\u201d makes me think of your brothers, the way they\u2019ve betrayed you and your faith in them but also betrayed themselves. They\u2019ve denied themselves a major life-giving friendship with you.<\/p>\n

\n
There\u2019s a minor chord sparrows make<\/div>\n
with doves that\u2019s not the usual business\u2014it\u2019s not sad at all, any of it:<\/div>\n
this always waiting for what I\u2019ve always waited for; this not being<\/div>\n
able to assign to what\u2019s missing some shape, a name; this body<\/div>\n
neither antlered nor hooved\u2014brave too, this body, unapologetic\u200a\u200a\u200a\u200a…<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I want so much for you to be able to shout in their face, \u201cit\u2019s not sad at all, any of it: \/ this always waiting for what I\u2019ve always waited for.\u201d Even more than that, I want them to be able to really hear you say it. I hope one day that can happen, that they\u2019ll feel appropriately embarrassed for their behavior and that for them \u201cshame can, like love, be \/ an eventual way through.\u201d Until then, I am grateful your daughters will get to see you living \u201cneither antlered nor hooved\u2014brave too \u2026 unapologetic\u200a.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014KA<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Dear Poets,<\/em><\/p>\n

I would like a poem to give to my editor when I push my deadline and feel as if I\u2019m not living up to her expectations.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Sincerely,<\/em><\/p>\n

Pushing It<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Dear Pushing It,<\/p>\n

First, a moment of solidarity as I sip my morning coffee and write you on the wrong side of half a dozen important deadlines. My life owes so much of its substance to the patience and grace of good editors. I give you Brenda Shaughnessy\u2019s \u201cA Poet\u2019s Poem.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
If it takes me all day,<\/div>\n
I will get the word\u00a0freshened<\/em>\u00a0out of this poem.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
I put it in the first line, then moved it to the second,<\/div>\n
and now it won\u2019t come out.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
It\u2019s stuck. I\u2019m so frustrated,<\/div>\n
so I went out to my little porch all covered in snow<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
and watched the icicles drip, as I smoked<\/div>\n
a cigarette.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The first half of the poem delivers, with Shaughnessy\u2019s characteristic precision and wit, a portrait of the writer Sisyphusing through their daily labor. The second half shows us the writer\u2019s necessary stepping away.<\/p>\n

\n
Finally I reached up and broke a big, clear spike<\/div>\n
off the roof with my bare hand.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
And used it to write a word in the snow.<\/div>\n
I wrote the word\u00a0snow<\/em>.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
I can\u2019t stand myself.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The yoking of a writer\u2019s self-worth to their productivity is the inevitable and near-universal result of practicing a creative medium within the framework of late capitalism. People have written about this<\/a> far more eloquently and expansively than I can here. Can you recall the last time you met a writer who felt they were reading and writing as much as they should? I can\u2019t. For me, part of the work of being a writer has been understanding when I need to be creating and when I need to be silent. I\u2019ve had to learn to patiently wait for whatever reservoir the writing comes from to refill, without resenting the process. Good editors understand this. Somewhere in the bellows of your frustration, I think you do too.<\/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 Poetry 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,\u00a0Kaveh Akbar is on the line.     Dear Poets,\u00a0 My wife and I are expecting a baby in five months. We are both women, and she […]<\/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":[34203,34204,3682,19555,34205,11324,25758,4183,34206],"class_list":["post-125815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry-rx","tag-a-poets-poem","tag-blow-it-back","tag-brenda-shaughnessy","tag-carl-phillips","tag-monday","tag-rachel-zucker","tag-saturday","tag-sunday","tag-tuesday"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nPoetry Rx: It\u2019s Not Sad at All, Any of It<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"What is the perfect poem for someone who feels unprepared to shoulder the weighty responsibility of motherhood?\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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