{"id":126742,"date":"2018-06-21T11:00:14","date_gmt":"2018-06-21T15:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=126742"},"modified":"2018-06-21T10:58:41","modified_gmt":"2018-06-21T14:58:41","slug":"poetry-rx-a-poem-not-about-sex","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/06\/21\/poetry-rx-a-poem-not-about-sex\/","title":{"rendered":"Poetry Rx: A Poem Not About Sex"},"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>

\u00a9 Ellis Rosen<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

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\u2014long-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?<\/em><\/p>\n

Yours,
\n<\/em>Love Is Wonderful<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Dear LIW,<\/p>\n

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 \u201ca large piece of the puzzle\u201d finally clicking into place. It\u2019s a load-bearing gratitude in my life, as it sounds to be in yours.<\/p>\n

For you, I offer \u201cErrata<\/a>\u201d by Kevin Young, a poem I\u2019ve been reading and rereading since my wedding. It begins,<\/p>\n

\n
Baby, give me just<\/div>\n
one more hiss<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
We must lake it fast<\/div>\n
morever<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
I want to cold you<\/div>\n
in my harms<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In the speaker\u2019s great love fugue, \u201cYou make me weak in the knees\u201d becomes \u201cYou wake me meek \/ in the needs.\u201d\u00a0 It\u2019s a deeply clever, desperately hopeful love poem that shows language buckling under the weight of desire.<\/p>\n

In A Year with Swollen Appendices<\/em>, Brian Eno writes, \u201cThe 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.\u201d For Young\u2019s 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, \u201cErrata\u201d exemplifies Horace\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u2014KA<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Dear Poets<\/p>\n

I was wondering if you could prescribe me the perfect rain poem, if such a thing even exists. But if not that, or perhaps in addition to it (I don\u2019t want to be greedy with the poems here but sometimes people\u00a0go to the doctor thinking they have one thing when they really have two), a poem that hugs you. Do you know what I mean? Like a poem that feels like a hug when you read it. <\/em><\/p>\n

Yours,<\/em>
\n Hug Me in the Rain<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Dear Hug,<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know about the perfect <\/em>rain poem\u2014I think of Robert Graves\u2019s line about the impossibility of a perfect poem: \u201cOnce it had been written, the world would end.\u201d But here is a very, very good rain poem by Dorothea Lasky<\/a>, which was originally published in issue no. 208 of\u00a0The Paris Review<\/em><\/a>\u00a0(Spring 2014). As a bonus, its last couplet is about as close as a poem can come to pulling you into a giant bear hug.<\/p>\n

\n

The Rain
\nby Dorothea Lasky<\/p>\n

What is going to happen
\nIs that it\u2019s going to rain<\/p>\n

Rain my love
\nA poem not about sex<\/p>\n

But love
\nThe true kind<\/p>\n

You talk of things
\nTo myself and others<\/p>\n

You think of things
\nHer long tanned arms<\/p>\n

You will realize you love me
\nBut it will be too late<\/p>\n

You will cry out for me
\nI will be long gone<\/p>\n

This is not a wish
\nBut what I knew to be so<\/p>\n

This is what I knew to be so
\nUnder the pouring sun<\/p>\n

This is what I knew to be so
\nUnder the pouring sea<\/p>\n

Where they will find us
\nYou and me<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u2014KA<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

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

Do you have a poem for that fusion of emotions\u2014rage, guilt, blurry compassion\u2014that you feel after you\u2019ve outgrown someone or something that used to mean a lot to you?<\/em><\/p>\n

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

Dear Growing Pains,<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been totally taken by this new poem by Shane McCrae\u00a0titled, \u201cLines Composed at 34 North Park Street, on Certain Memories of My White Grandmother Who Loved Me and Hated Black People Like Myself. July 15, 2017<\/a>.\u201d I think it has everything to do with the feeling you describe. The title cues us into the complex relationship the speaker has with his grandmother, and the complex relationships people like his grandmother have with themselves and their stations. It begins,<\/p>\n

America I was I think I was
\nSeven I think or anyway I prob-
\nably was\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 nine\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I anyway was nine<\/p>\n

And riding in the back\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 seat of our tan
\nDatsun 210\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 which by the way Amer-
\nica I can\u2019t believe\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Datsun is just<\/p>\n

Gone\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 anyway\u00a0\u00a0 America I was
\nRiding in the back\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 seat we were we my grand-
\nmother and I were passing the it must<\/p>\n

Have been a mall\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 but I have tried\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 and can\u2019t
\nRemember any malls in Austin at
\nThe time America but do I really<\/p>\n

Remember Austin really \u00a0\u00a0 I remember
\nThis thing that happened\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 once when I was passing
\nA mall in Austin so \u00a0\u00a0 the mall so Austin<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The poem\u2019s repetitions declare its obsessions, endlessly reprocessing a dangerous past in order to illuminate the path toward a safer future. The echoes of \u201cAmerica,\u201d \u201cmall,\u201d \u201cDatsun,\u201d and, later, \u201cglass\u201d create an incantatory whirl, an exorcist\u2019s chant. The effect is narcotic, hallucinatory\u2014something is being conjured or cast out.<\/p>\n

By the end of the poem, the speaker has identified the true culprit, the one that tries to watch and consume him as it literally consumed his grandmother in her \u201cmobile home filling up with trash.\u201d It is the nation that taught his grandmother to hate, that bred in her that dissonance and ultimately choked her with its \u201ccloud of glass,\u201d all that sparkling trash. The orientation of the speaker to his grandmother is perfectly captured by your phrase, \u201cblurry compassion.\u201d Henry James said that a writer is \u201cone upon whom nothing is lost,\u201d and for McCrae, each detail is a kind of recovery, a way to turn the tables on an idea of America he outgrew long ago.<\/p>\n

\u2014KA<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Want more? Read earlier\u00a0installments of\u00a0Poetry Rx.<\/a>\u00a0Need 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>,<\/em>\u00a0Poetry,<\/em>\u00a0t<\/em>he<\/em>\u00a0New<\/span>\u00a0York Times,<\/em>\u00a0the\u00a0<\/em>Nation,\u00a0and elsewhere. His first book is\u00a0<\/em>Calling a Wolf a Wolf. 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, I have finally settled with the great love of my life. I have been with him through […]<\/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":[34447,13057,810,34448,5479,1862,34445,12706,34446,34444],"class_list":["post-126742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry-rx","tag-a-year-with-swollen-appendices","tag-brian-eno","tag-dorothea-lasky","tag-errata","tag-horace","tag-kevin-young","tag-lines-composed-at-34-north-park-street","tag-robert-graves","tag-shane-mccrae","tag-the-rain"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nPoetry Rx: A Poem Not About Sex<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Kaveh Akbar brings you the perfect love poem, the perfect rain poem, and the poem for the rage and guilt of outgrowing the things you once loved.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, 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