{"id":129082,"date":"2018-09-06T11:36:54","date_gmt":"2018-09-06T15:36:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=129082"},"modified":"2018-09-06T13:46:18","modified_gmt":"2018-09-06T17:46:18","slug":"poetry-rx-your-naked-back-in-the-mirror","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/09\/06\/poetry-rx-your-naked-back-in-the-mirror\/","title":{"rendered":"Poetry Rx: Your Naked Back in the Mirror"},"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,\u00a0Claire Schwartz is on the line.<\/i><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

\u00a9Ellis Rosen<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

My family and I are what the newspaper headlines would deem immigrants. Living in a city where people of my kind are under constant scrutiny and threat has caused me to lose hope. I used to find solace in the community of poetry nights until I found myself subject to the same questioning stares there because of my headscarf. There are small acts of hatred that take place that don\u2019t make their way into newspapers. My parents drop me off at university and their breath is suspended in the air until I text them, \u2018reached alright.\u2019 And again, they hold their breath till I walk through the front door at night.<\/em><\/p>\n

I no longer think about my big dreams of writing or research. I pray for safety, for me and for everyone in need of it right now. Do you have a poem for this? For this feeling of being like a lost spaceship, floating with no promise of a return?<\/em><\/p>\n

Sincerely,<\/em>
\nLost in a Big Crowd and Scared<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Dear Lost in a Big Crowd and Scared,<\/p>\n

I wish I had words to eradicate the conditions that make you afraid. I wish I had a poem that would eliminate white supremacy, make xenophobia a relic of another world. Brilliant co-Poetry Rx-er Sarah Kay says: \u201cNo, I don\u2019t think poems will save us. And yet, and yet.\u201d For you, a poem that lives luminously in the \u201cand yet,\u201d Fatimah Asghar\u2019s \u201cIf They Should Come for Us<\/a>\u201d:<\/p>\n

my people my people I can\u2019t be lost
\nwhen I see you my compass
\nis brown & gold & blood
\nmy compass a muslim teenager
\nsnapback & high-tops gracing
\nthe subway platform
\nmashallah I claim them all
\nmy country is made
\nin my people\u2019s image
\nif they come for you they
\ncome for me too\u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The urgency of this poem may be inflected by violence, but it is love that shapes Asghar\u2019s looking. \u201cIf They Should Come for Us\u201d reminds me that fear is love laced with the danger of loss. Look at the universe here: \u201cthe toddler dangling from stroller \/ hair a fountain of dandelion seed,\u201d \u201cthe muslim man who abandons \/ his car at the traffic light drops \/ to his need at the call of the azan,\u201d \u201cthe lone khala at the part \/ pairing her kurta with crocs.\u201d Asghar assembles by noticing her people\u2019s beauty. \u00a0What an act of love. I hear that love, too, in how you trace your parents\u2019 breath with your language, how you reach for each other.<\/p>\n

I hate that the world has given you reason to be afraid. I hope the compass of Asghar\u2019s poem points you toward the widening way that love makes amidst all else that is.<\/p>\n

my people I follow you like constellations
\nwe hear the glass smashing the street
\n& the nights opening their dark
\nour names this country\u2019s wood
\nfor the fire my people my people
\nthe long years we\u2019ve survived the long
\nyears yet to come I see you map
\nmy sky the light your lantern long
\nahead & I follow I follow<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u2014CS<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

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

I am a new mother from Australia. My husband and I welcomed our little one into the world three months ago, and in that time, my husband has been incredible. He has stepped up in all facets of parenting, seemingly inventing new levels and ways of being an amazing father. I can barely explain how amazing he is\u2014beyond nappies and late nights and settling, he has such openness to getting to know her, her temperament, her preferences and her patterns. I can see his relationship blossoming on a level that is somehow unspoken or difficult to describe. And he has cared for me too, when I couldn\u2019t care for myself, lighting the way for me to go forward and evolve as a mother, even when I could not see the next step. I have tried to express to him how amazing he is but I can\u2019t find the words. I also keep telling him – thank you, thank you – but the depth of my gratitude cannot be expressed. How can I express something to him that is so beautiful it seems to me beyond words?<\/em><\/p>\n

Love,<\/em>
\nBearing Witness to an Amazing Father<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Dear Bearing Witness to an Amazing Father,<\/p>\n

Wow\u2014what a beautiful letter to receive! I love these ways your husband gives form to his love. I love the care of your attention and that you\u2019re seeking a form to meet his. I confess, when I read this for the first time, I was anticipating a turn. Narrative tells me that there will be an arc\u2014what begins one place will end somewhere else. But poems! Poems teach you what you already know: to meet that wild feeling on its own terms. When I finished your letter, I thought immediately of a poem charged with exuberance the whole way through, Hera Lindsay Bird\u2019s \u201cI Am So in Love with You I Want to Lie Down in the Middle of a Public Intersection and Cry<\/a>\u201d:<\/p>\n

is not how you are supposed to start love poems
\nbut I\u2019m too far gone to work up to it gently<\/p>\n

your naked back in the mirror
\nhas cured at least 3-4 major diseases<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In Bird\u2019s poem, the force of love immediately breaks the rules. There is no real-world corollary that will satisfy the immensity of the speaker\u2019s feeling, so she reaches for something as important to the world as the love is to the speaker. Even that pales in comparison. 3 major diseases? 4? Who really cares about major diseases in the face of all that love?<\/p>\n

I do not know how to write a love poem
\nbecause love is indescribable
\nit\u2019s this feeling you get
\nwhen your mind gets hot
\nand everything else gets insignificant\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026..with diamonds on it<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The world doesn\u2019t offer any ready-made container for this wild love. (And is there any other kind?) That\u2019s why you can\u2019t find the words. In casting about for what is impossibly beautiful and then going even one step further than that, the speaker forges new forms of possibility. And, after all, isn\u2019t that what love does?<\/p>\n

\u2014CS<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

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

Two years ago, I met someone and fell for him within 7 minutes of meeting him. Somehow, impossibly, the connection was mutual – but he had a girlfriend, so nothing ever happened. Two months ago, he broke things off with her. We fell into a big, expansive, whirlwind of connection, unlike anything I’ve experienced. Magical things happened: shooting stars, a grunion run, pink sunsets, his hand in mine. Two weeks ago, he told me he still loved his former partner and needed to try to be with her. I feel blindsided and heartbroken. What if he was my only chance at feeling this great, big love?<\/em>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Fondly,
\n<\/em>The One Who Wasn\u2019t Chosen<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Dear The One Who Wasn\u2019t Chosen,<\/p>\n

First, a word about what you call yourself. The great poet June Jordan wrote, \u201cThe syntax of a sentence equals the structure of your consciousness.\u201d She said that the passive voice can protect the one who causes harm, can make the course of things feel inevitable. It\u2019s not true that you are not chosen. It is true: he did not choose you. That is a different, difficult thing. Grieve that relationship. But don\u2019t give him the power to define you. What happens if you make yourself the subject of your own experience? Let me start this letter over.<\/p>\n

Dear One Who Has the Capacity for Great, Big Love,<\/p>\n

I want to give you Alice Walker\u2019s poem, \u201cDesire<\/a>,\u201d which reminds me of the gorgeous enthusiasm which with you dove into your relationship:<\/p>\n

My desire
\nis always the same; wherever Life
\ndeposits me:
\nI want to stick my toe
\n& soon my whole body
\ninto the water.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You dove into the chance to love because you, too, were moved by your desire. Desire is a dazzling and unstable thing. Sometimes it shoots through like a lightning bolt and leaves us withered in its wake. Sometimes it is the current of electricity that makes the house more livable. Walker writes: \u201cI want to grow \/ something.\u201d How to coax that desire into something that blooms?<\/p>\n

It seems impossible that desire
\ncan transform into devotion;
\nbut this has happened.
\nAnd that is how I\u2019ve survived:
\nhow the hole
\nI carefully tended
\nin the garden of my heart
\ngrew a heart
\nto fill it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Focus now on the practice of devotion to your own life. The desire will find new forms.<\/p>\n

\u2014CS<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Want more? Read earlier\u00a0installments of\u00a0Poetry Rx<\/a>.\u00a0Need your own poem?\u00a0Write to us<\/a>!<\/i><\/p>\n

Claire Schwartz is the author of\u00a0<\/em>bound\u00a0(Button Poetry, 2018)<\/em>. Her poetry has appeared in\u00a0<\/em>Apogee,<\/em>\u00a0Bennington Review,<\/em>\u00a0The\u00a0Massachusetts Review, and\u00a0<\/em>Prairie Schooner, and her essays, reviews, and interviews have appeared in\u00a0<\/em>The\u00a0Iowa Review,<\/em>\u00a0Los Angeles Review of Books,<\/em>\u00a0Virginia Quarterly Review,<\/em>\u00a0and elsewhere.<\/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,\u00a0Claire Schwartz is on the line.     Dear Poets, My family and I are what the newspaper headlines would deem immigrants. Living in a city where […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1418,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[33114],"tags":[782,5208,12709,36718,36716,36717,36719,13435,23569],"class_list":["post-129082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry-rx","tag-alice-walker","tag-desire","tag-fatherhood","tag-fatimah-asghar","tag-hera-lindsay-bird","tag-i-am-so-in-love-with-you-i-want-to-lie-down-in-the-middle-of-a-public-intersection-and-cry","tag-if-they-should-come-for-us","tag-immigrants","tag-june-jordan"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nPoetry Rx: Your Naked Back in the Mirror by Claire Schwartz<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"September 6, 2018 \u2013 In our column Poetry Rx, readers\u00a0write in\u00a0with a specific emotion, and our resident poets\u2014Sarah Kay, Kaveh Akbar, and Claire Schwartz\u2014take 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