{"id":127899,"date":"2018-07-26T09:00:04","date_gmt":"2018-07-26T13:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=127899"},"modified":"2018-07-26T11:37:55","modified_gmt":"2018-07-26T15:37:55","slug":"poetry-rx-there-is-a-line-that-could-make-you-love-me-really","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/07\/26\/poetry-rx-there-is-a-line-that-could-make-you-love-me-really\/","title":{"rendered":"Poetry Rx: There Is a Line That Could Make You Love Me Really"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

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

 <\/p>\n

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

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

Sincerely,<\/em>
\n Skinny and Scared<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Dear S & S,<\/p>\n

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\u2014it\u2019s available 24-7.\u00a0I don\u2019t think I can give you a poem that will offer practical advice about how to move forward\u2014or through or around your or your sister\u2019s illness. What I can give you is one that might offer a flicker of recognition, a moment of \u201cthere we are.\u201d Lo Kwa Mei-en\u2019s \u201cPinnochia On Fire<\/a>\u201d is a fugue of searing language, a speaker\u2019s meditation on compulsion, embodiment, and hunger. One section reads:\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0I kept myself bony dry, a sugar<\/p>\n

cube of vermouth: I cut myself by the grain, cool
\nand slender as a fuse with a sister; I missed her over
\nover over like a bullet train shooting past myself<\/p>\n

through the tunnel of a broken heart, and on time,
\nnot mine. But I light up like an obscene October
\nsky celebrating a stroke of war. When all still burns<\/p>\n

from all I see, the taste of ash a horny flower on
\na hard female tongue, say holiday. Say harvest. Stay
\nback. Stand back, trigger this. I\u2019ll keep it real, go<\/p>\n

hurt something to love it, real, good, find the center
\nof aurora in me, the second of ignition.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There are moments of penetrating lucidity\u2014\u201cSay harvest. Stay\u00a0\/ back. Stand back, trigger this.\u201d The suite of imperatives rhetorically draws the you<\/em>\u00a0near even as the language ostensibly calls for the you<\/em>\u00a0to stay away. The \u201ctrigger this\u201d reads as an offer, a plea, an inevitability. In the case of you and your sister, it sounds to me like the best thing you might be able to offer her is your own example\u2014she may sense you struggling with similar demons, and that struggle may be amplifying her own. When Mei-en writes, \u201cI cut myself by the grain, cool\u00a0\/ and slender as a fuse with a sister,\u201d it\u2019s hard for me to not think of you two. Your seeking help for your own condition might be the catalyst she needs to seek help for hers, a \u201cput your own oxygen mask on first before helping others\u201d kind of situation.<\/p>\n

Mei-en\u2019s poem opens with a desperate notion: \u201cThere is a line that could make you love me really.\u201d But of course we know this is wishful thinking\u2014in real life, there is seldom a single utterance, a magical gesture that can supplant the daily, hourly, minute-to-minute work of recovery. I hope you are able to find the help you need to carry you into and through that labor, for your sister\u2019s sake and your own.<\/p>\n

\u2014KA<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

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

I was recently fired from my job in retail. A\u00a0few\u00a0weeks before, a customer accidentally left a gift card behind with a couple dollars on it, and I used it for my own purchase without thinking of it as harmful to me, the company, or the customer. However, the card was traced back to the customer\u2019s name, it was clear that I had wrongly taken it, and I was fired for theft. Now I mostly feel stupid and embarrassed, but I also question whether this\u2014and all the little lies and questionable actions of my past\u2014says something about my character. How can I move forward from here? I\u2019m afraid to tell anyone about this because of what they\u2019ll think of me. I\u2019m afraid of myself. Please, is there a poem to help me through this?<\/em><\/p>\n

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

 <\/p>\n

Dear Criminal,<\/p>\n

I\u2019m reminded of Saint Augustine\u2019s famous prayer: \u201cDa mihi castitatem et continentiam, sed noli modo<\/em>.\u201d (\u201cGrant me chastity and continence, but not yet.\u201d) I don\u2019t quite understand why you would need to tell anyone about the gift card (a simple \u201cI\u2019m looking for a better job now\u201d would be both discreet and truthful). We make mistakes; we learn from them. The first line of Ellen Bass\u2019s \u201cRelax<\/a>\u201d promises, \u201cBad things are going to happen.\u201d The universe authors some of them (\u201cyour parents will die,\u201d \u201cyour cat will get run over\u201d), and others we author ourselves (\u201cyou\u2019ll lose your keys,\u201d you use up a few bucks on a seemingly forgotten gift card). The poem ends:<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a Buddhist story of a woman chased by a tiger.
\nWhen she comes to a cliff, she sees a sturdy vine
\nand climbs half way down. But there\u2019s also a tiger below.
\nAnd two mice\u2013one white, one black\u2013scurry out
\nand begin to gnaw at the vine. At this point
\nshe notices a wild strawberry growing from a crevice.
\nShe looks up, down, at the mice.
\nThen she eats the strawberry.
\nSo here\u2019s the view, the breeze, the pulse
\nin your throat. Your wallet will be stolen, you\u2019ll get fat,
\nslip on the bathroom tiles of a foreign hotel
\nand crack your hip. You\u2019ll be lonely.
\nOh taste how sweet and tart
\nthe red juice is, how the tiny seeds
\ncrunch between your teeth.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Your ability to grow, to turn your attention toward the \u201cwild strawberry growing from a crevice\u201d in your life, will become the real test of your character. \u201cHere\u2019s the view, the breeze, the pulse \/ in your throat.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014KA<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

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

I have just returned from my first solo trip. I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever been so happy as I was during those seven weeks of exploration. Every small discovery or interaction with a stranger brought a renewed excitement for living. Now I\u2019ve returned to my life in Australia, and I\u2019m struggling to maintain the traveler\u2019s mindset of being open to beauty in unexpected places. Is there a poem to keep me going until my next trip?<\/em><\/p>\n

Love,
\n<\/em>European Wine Was Cheaper<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Dear EWWS,<\/p>\n

So much of my work as a poet revolves around keeping myself in a space where I can find the miraculous miraculous, the strange strange. When you say you seek to \u201cmaintain the traveler\u2019s mindset of being open to beauty in unexpected places,\u201d I hear you saying the same thing\u2014but! One expects<\/em> to encounter beauty when they travel. One expects<\/em> the Parthenon to be breathtaking, the fruits at the bazaar to be a hypersaturated palette of reds and yellows. The real trick is retaining that wonder when you go back home, while you\u2019re getting your teeth cleaned (how strange that our mouths are full of bones!) or dropping off mail at the post office (forty-nine cents to make a letter appear across the country in just a few days!) or mowing the lawn (grass grows because it can turn light from a star ninety-three million miles away into sugar!).<\/p>\n

Few contemporary poets take me into this sort of wonder more wholly than Gabrielle Calvocoressi. Take her \u201cPraise House: The New Economy.<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n

Her ankle\u2019s taste. The skin
\nright under the knob, delicate
\nas a tomatillo\u2019s shroud. All the animals
\nthat talk to me. That I finally let them
\ntalk to me. The blessing of waking
\nearly enough to watch the fox
\nbathe itself.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The poem is a registry of occasions for gratitude. Calvocoressi\u2019s permeability to wonder allows a lover\u2019s ankles, moldy peaches, mashed potatoes, even bros (those oft-neglected poetic subjects) to enter her field of vision as couriers of bewilderment.<\/p>\n

Old Bay on all my shrimp.
\nAnd justice. And cities burning
\nif people need to burn them to get free.
\nMy grandmother gardening
\nin the late light. Sun Ra. The first time.
\nParis, even though I\u2019ve never been
\nthere. Natal plums.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It\u2019s important to note, too, that Calvocoressi\u2019s spectrum isn\u2019t limited to the kind of wonder that fills us with joy and awe\u2014the baby-sneeze, blooming-sunflower kind of wonder. There is also wonder at a world that forces its people to burn cities \u201cif people need to burn them to get free,\u201d a world in which mothers have seizures and travelers fear airport detention. These are invitations into a different kind of bewilderment. It\u2019s easy to talk about the kind of wonder Whitman writes about, boisterous and wide-eyed\u2014and Calvocoressi has some of that yawp in her poem, to be sure. But she also draws upon the kind of wonder that powers the work of Brooks, Baldwin, Rukeyser, and countless others who wrote through bewilderment at our human capacity for malice and inequity. This is all to say I\u2019m glad to hear your trip opened you up to beauty, to the everywhereness of excitement and baffle. Your job now will be to stay in that most writerly place of attentiveness to wonder, in all its myriad forms, wherever you may find yourself.<\/p>\n

\u2014KA<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Want more? Read earlier\u00a0installments of\u00a0Poetry Rx<\/a>.\u00a0<\/i>Need a poem? Write to us<\/a>! Next week, Sarah Kay will be answering questions.\u00a0<\/em><\/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

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/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, My little sister is in the throes of an eating disorder. She is quite literally wasting away […]<\/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":[57,60,34816,2004,34818,34819,7221,165,33543,34815,34817],"class_list":["post-127899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry-rx","tag-advice","tag-advice-column","tag-ellen-bass","tag-gabrielle-calvocoressi","tag-lo-kwa-mei-en","tag-pinnochia-on-fire","tag-poems","tag-poetry","tag-poetry-rx","tag-praise-house-the-new-economy","tag-relax"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nPoetry Rx: There Is a Line That Could Make You Love Me Really<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Poems for wanderlust, guilty consciences, and concerned older sisters.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link 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