{"id":130803,"date":"2018-11-08T14:03:00","date_gmt":"2018-11-08T19:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=130803"},"modified":"2018-11-14T18:26:03","modified_gmt":"2018-11-14T23:26:03","slug":"poetry-rx-you-have-become-everything-you-needed-to-become","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/11\/08\/poetry-rx-you-have-become-everything-you-needed-to-become\/","title":{"rendered":"Poetry Rx: You Have Become Everything You Needed To Become"},"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

\"\"<\/a>

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

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

I find myself distracted these days\u2014mostly by the violence of the news, which streams in circles. I want to engage thoughtfully, but it\u2019s difficult when everything is \u201cbreaking\u201d and urgent. Do you have a poem for this age of terrible information? I want to do what I can in solidarity with those who are putting everything on the line, but I get overwhelmed by the width and scale of injustice. I\u2019d appreciate any help you can offer for narrowing in and focusing my efforts without tuning reality out. At the moment my world is spinning, and I just feel helpless.<\/em><\/p>\n

With Love,
\n<\/em>Can\u2019t Do It All<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Dear Can\u2019t Do It All,<\/p>\n

This morning, I stood in the desert. I felt so small compared with its vastness. Then I imagined myself not in opposition to the desert, but joining with it. Suddenly, I felt different, possible. When I think about the scale of injustice against the scale of my one life, I feel overwhelmed. News cycles rely on the pretense of newness, but these are old stories. The urgency is real, but the roots are deep. We can\u2019t hack at what grows new and expect the roots to shift. Learn your histories. Join with those doing the work of making a better world. There is a quote I have been holding recently, from Pirkei Avot: \u201cIt is not your responsibility to finish the work, neither are you free to desist from it.\u201d For you, Louise Gl\u00fcck\u2019s \u201cVespers<\/a>,\u201d a poem that draws me back to the sacred work of tending even the smallest things:<\/p>\n

In your extended absence, you permit me
\nuse of earth, anticipating
\nsome return on investment. I must report
\nfailure in my assignment, principally
\nregarding the tomato plants.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The speaker seems at first to be addressing, perhaps, a neighbor who has left town. Then the poem turns. The address expands:<\/p>\n

\u2026All this
\nbelongs to you:
\n\u2026You who do not discriminate
\nbetween the dead and the living, who are, in consequence,
\nimmune to foreshadowing, you may not know
\nhow much terror we bear, the spotted leaf,
\nthe red leaves of the maple falling<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It is not a neighbor but the world\u2019s creator who has taken leave. What immense uncertainty the speaker\u2019s vision passes through. In the poem\u2019s final lines, the speaker\u2019s gaze contracts, renewing an obligation not to every leaf on earth, but to the tomato plants:<\/p>\n

even in early August, even in darkness: I am responsible
\nfor these vines.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You already see that the work is large. Now choose your plot and commit to its care.<\/p>\n

\u2014CS<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

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

\u00a0<\/em>I teach creative writing to students in juvenile detention. I love using your column as a way to talk about emotions with kids who often aren\u2019t given many opportunities to express themselves. Yesterday, one student wrote a piece for me to submit to you.<\/em><\/p>\n

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

Have you ever felt trapped to the point where you can\u2019t go anywhere or leave or text your friends, can\u2019t go outside whenever you want? Because I feel trapped like I\u2019m chained down in a maze, about to set my soul ablaze. I want to be free and spread my wings and fly high like a kite, but I can\u2019t because I\u2019m stuck in a jail cell, staring into the white walls, slowly going insane. I get headaches, brain waves that die and come back from the grave. I hate this place. Got any advice?<\/em><\/p>\n

Trapped<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Do you have any poems to help this student?<\/em><\/p>\n

All the best,
\n<\/em>Trapped\u2019s Teacher<\/em><\/p>\n

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

Dear Trapped\u2019s Teacher,<\/p>\n

Thank you for the work you do. Thank you for sharing Poetry Rx with your student, and for sharing your student\u2019s letter with us.<\/p>\n

Dear Trapped,<\/p>\n

I\u2019m sorry you\u2019re in a place you haven\u2019t chosen, and that you can\u2019t leave freely. There is a rich tradition of poetry written in confinement. I wonder if this is in part because poems can craft largess from small spaces, as they radically reimagine the boundaries of the work. The work of Reginald Dwayne Betts<\/a>, Ethridge Knight<\/a>, Mahvash Sabet<\/a>, among many others, comes to mind. I hear poetry in your letter, too\u2014your rhyme and simile (\u201clike a kite\u201d) forge beauty, your language maps the freedom that incarceration denies. I want to share with you a poem that teaches me how poetry can transform the experience that has been handed to us. Mahmoud Darwish\u2019s \u201cThe Prison Cell<\/a>\u201d (translated by Ben Bennani) begins with wild affirmation:<\/p>\n

It is possible\u2026
\nIt is possible at least sometimes\u2026
\nIt is possible especially now
\nTo ride a horse
\nInside a prison cell
\nAnd run away\u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

When the guard comes to interrogate the imprisoned poet, the poet affirms the ability of poetry to create a new order:<\/p>\n

What did you do with the walls?
\nI gave them back to the rocks.
\nAnd what did you do with the ceiling?
\nI turned it into a saddle.
\nAnd your chain?
\nI turned it into a pencil.<\/p>\n

The prison guard got angry.
\nHe put an end to the dialogue.
\nHe said he didn\u2019t care for poetry,
\nAnd bolted the door of my cell.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In the evening, the guard returns:<\/p>\n

Where did this moon come from?
\nFrom the nights of Baghdad.
\nAnd the wine?
\nFrom the vineyards of Algiers.
\nAnd this freedom?
\nFrom the chain you tied me with last night.<\/p>\n

The prison guard grew so sad\u2026
\nHe begged me to give him back
\nHis freedom.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As the poem ends, it is the poet\u2014with their imagination that can reconfigure the world\u2014who possesses freedom. The guard, who knows only the language of locks and anger, is the one who is confined.<\/p>\n

\u2014CS<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

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

I\u2019ve been in a state of unraveling for the past few months. For a while, I felt ready to barge into my priorities headfirst, but now I feel a little more wary. Several traumatic memories have bubbled back up to the surface. I feel like I\u2019m living as a contradiction.\u00a0I exist in the shadow of past abuse while still living with my abuser. I thought that he had changed, as our relationship has improved by leaps and bounds, but I feel simply confused in light of these recovered memories.<\/i><\/p>\n

What constitutes growth? What does it feel like to truly recover\u2014from pain, inflicting pain, or otherwise?\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Best,
\n<\/em>Discovered Darkness<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Dear Discovered Darkness,<\/p>\n

I\u2019m sorry that you\u2019ve experienced abuse and that the abuse you\u2019ve experienced in the past is resurfacing to unsettle your present. I can\u2019t tell you what recovery feels like because too often the idea of recovery imposes a narrative on an experience that is fundamentally nonnarrative. Growth feels like many things. I can tell you what you already know: healing is not linear. The conditions of your relationship may have changed, but memory lives in your body on its own terms. You deserve whatever time and space your healing requires. As we\u2019ve said here before, a poem is not a therapist, and I hope you are building robust support systems. In the spirit of offering something to go along with that support, whatever form it might take, I want to share with you Joanna Klink\u2019s \u201cFour Skies<\/a>,\u201d which offers both companionship in devastation and language for imagining healing. The poem\u2019s four sections recall for me four seasons, reminding me that growth happens in cycles.<\/p>\n

The first section opens into harm\u2019s infinity:
\nEach wrong done to you
\na gate that opens forever into storm.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In the second section, the subject dissolves. The trauma overwhelms.<\/p>\n

You could stand here for hours and then turn to
\nstorm\u2014sheer refusal and will. You could collapse
\ninto fear and draw back into foam. These sheets of rain
\nare fences and crops, deeds, statues, ponds.
\nThey are things you can\u2019t change. Things you can\u2019t say<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The third section is distilled into clarity. \u201cIf you have grieved you have loved,\u201d Klink writes. These lines teach me to approach my grief with tenderness, to ask: Where is the love drawn by the outline of my loss? How might I move back toward that?<\/p>\n

And, finally, a vision toward healing\u2014not a destination, but something to hold as you move through the harder times:<\/p>\n

You are unscathed. The delicate grasslands
\nhave thinned to pure sound traveling across miles
\nof white dust\u2026<\/p>\n

\u2026<\/p>\n

You have become everything you needed
\nto become\u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\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","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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