{"id":131230,"date":"2018-11-29T09:00:30","date_gmt":"2018-11-29T14:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=131230"},"modified":"2018-11-29T12:25:43","modified_gmt":"2018-11-29T17:25:43","slug":"poetry-rx-when-you-weep-sorrow-comes-clean-cut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/11\/29\/poetry-rx-when-you-weep-sorrow-comes-clean-cut\/","title":{"rendered":"Poetry Rx: When You Weep, Sorrow Comes Clean Out"},"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,\u00a0Kaveh Akbar is on the line.<\/i><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

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

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

This year has been full of so many new experiences, in the best possible ways. It\u2019s disorienting. How did I get to this place? How is everything so strange? Am I allowed to feel happy, to accept good things for myself? Even if it\u2019s all so fleeting? I\u2019m unfamiliar with the geography of joy. How might I learn to navigate this space?<\/em><\/p>\n

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

Bewildered in the Best Way<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Dear Bewildered,<\/p>\n

The geography of joy! What a wonderful place to find yourself. When my life slowly started to improve after getting sober, I was mystified. I had familiar psychological algorithms for pain and desperation and loneliness and despair, but I didn\u2019t know what to do with gratitude or contentment. Some of the labor of recovery, for me, has been working to allow new, good things into my life, even when my brain wants me to reject them in favor of the joyless desolation it knows so well.<\/p>\n

For you, I offer Naomi Shihab Nye\u2019s \u201cSo Much Happiness<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0The bewilderment you speak of is the same bewilderment I have known, and it is the bewilderment Nye points to when she writes:<\/p>\n

It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness.
\nWith sadness there is something to rub against,
\na wound to tend with lotion and cloth.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yet, as she says:<\/p>\n

But happiness floats.
\nIt doesn\u2019t need you to hold it down.
\nIt doesn\u2019t need anything.
\nHappiness lands on the roof of the next house, singing,
\nand disappears when it wants to.
\nYou are happy either way.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I hope that you discover a path into and through your new joy, one that will allow you to feel it fully, to be immersed in it, to \u201chold it, and share it, and in that way, be known.”<\/p>\n

\u2013KA\u00a0<\/p>\n

*<\/strong><\/p>\n

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

It seems like every day, there\u2019s more bad news, from climate change to humanitarian crises to the rise of right-wing nationalist politics. I struggle with the onslaught of the daily news and the accompanying feelings of hopelessness and despair. There is magnificent beauty, too, but the mix of beauty and pain is sometimes unbearable. I am seeking a poem to help me in grappling with the question of how to live in this beautiful and terrible world. How to live and thrive and make the most of the time I am given…<\/em><\/p>\n

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

Feeling Raw<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Dear Feeling Raw,<\/p>\n

I am constantly caught between the idea that poetry is totally impotent against the encroaching specters of fascism and ecological collapse, and the idea that poetry is the only reasonable place to live as our actual world becomes more and more inhospitable. Why not settle into a place where death is just an affable companion<\/a> on a long drive, where political and social cruelties are charming Martian curiosities<\/a>\u00a0instead of omnipresent daily terrors? It\u2019s tempting to hide in poem-worlds, to confuse work on the page for work in our lives and in our communities. In this spirit, I offer you \u201cCorona<\/a>\u201d\u00a0by Paul Celan, translated by Michael Hamburger:<\/p>\n

We stand by the window embracing, and people
\nlook up from the street:
\nit is time they knew!
\nIt is time the stone made an effort to flower,
\ntime unrest had a beating heart.
\nIt is time it were time.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The moments of magnificent beauty that you speak of are what propel us forward. They are what we fight for when we fight (and we must fight, here in this crumbling world, however appealing the safer environs of our poems may seem), and they are what we weep for when we lose.<\/p>\n

Today, it\u2019s the touchable delights\u2014the first bite of fresh pecan pie, rubbing lotion on my beloved\u2019s arms, our cats\u2019 soft foreheads\u2014that make me most inconsolable. \u201cIt is time they knew!\u201d shouts Celan. How could anyone neglect the earth when it showers us with the sweetest pecans? How could anyone shape their hands to hold a gun when there are cat foreheads all around waiting to be scratched? \u201cIt is time the stone made an effort to flower.\u201d I can\u2019t improve upon that. It is time all stones made an effort to flower.<\/p>\n

\u2013KA<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Hello there!<\/em><\/p>\n

Recently, I\u2019ve begun something that resembles a relationship with someone truly lovely. We spend a lot of time together, we go on walks through the city, we get small gifts for one another\u2014it\u2019s gentle and new and sweet. The wrinkle is, he\u2019s moving across the country in December. So it has no real potential to be a real relationship, and I have no one to blame for this because I knew it when it all began. I\u2019d love to have a poem that perhaps speaks to grieving a relationship that was doomed to be ephemeral from the start?<\/em><\/p>\n

Thanks!<\/em><\/p>\n

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

Doomed<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Dear Doomed,<\/p>\n

A great poet, Max Ritvo, once told me<\/a>, \u201cSo much of joy is made worse by trying to make joy stay.\u201d It\u2019s the long-awaited concert ruined after you spend four songs trying to take the perfect selfie, or the order of onion rings so sublime you order more, only to have the second batch come out soggy and bland. Max was guiding me to see joy\u2019s ephemerality as a feature, not a flaw. The fleetingness of real delight is what makes it so delectable.<\/p>\n

Here is one of my favorite of Max\u2019s pieces, called \u201cPoem Set in the Day and in the Night<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Max, who died in 2016 at the age of twenty-six, was a young man grappling with a terminal cancer diagnosis when he wrote these inimitable lines. The poem begins:<\/p>\n

Just do things that are meaningful to you.
\nGo to the beach, says the doctor.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It ends:<\/p>\n

On the other side, you\u2019re the body again,
\nand the shadow is again shadow.<\/p>\n

You can enjoy anything\u2014
\nyou don\u2019t remember
\nhow clumsy the old hands were
\nhow picky the tongue.<\/p>\n

When you smile, every tooth is a perfect circle,
\nwhen you write, every letter is a perfect circle,
\nwhen you weep, sorrow comes clean out.<\/p>\n

Hello again, you say. Hello again.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Your will is not being taken from you. Your joy in your new love is still expanding, if you let it. Whatever happens \u201con the other side\u201d of your new romance will happen regardless of your anxieties, your histories, your futures. You might as well settle into joy while it\u2019s around.<\/p>\n

\u2013KA<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Want more? Read earlier\u00a0installments of\u00a0Poetry Rx<\/a>.\u00a0<\/i>Need a poem?\u00a0Write 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":"

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Even if it's all so fleeting? I'm unfamiliar with the geography of joy. 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