{"id":131901,"date":"2018-12-13T09:00:06","date_gmt":"2018-12-13T14:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=131901"},"modified":"2018-12-12T17:56:07","modified_gmt":"2018-12-12T22:56:07","slug":"poetry-rx-theres-no-going-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/12\/13\/poetry-rx-theres-no-going-home\/","title":{"rendered":"Poetry Rx: There\u2019s No Going Home"},"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 recently realized I wanted to be a poet. Is there a poem for getting over the fear that my poetry won\u2019t be good enough?<\/em><\/p>\n

Sincerely,
\n<\/em>A Hopeful Poet<\/em><\/p>\n

Dear Hopeful Poet,<\/p>\n

In a way, every poem answers you. Every poem moves against or in spite of the fear that language is not equal to the task. You call yourself both hopeful and afraid. Perhaps fear and hope are two names for the same destination: the first shaped by a mindfulness of loss and the second by an awareness of presence. Fear, like hope, knows that something that matters is at stake. Fear, then, is not something to \u201cget over\u201d but might, perhaps, be differently held so that it positions you to move toward your desire.<\/p>\n

For you, Ilya Kaminsky\u2019s \u201cAuthor\u2019s Prayer<\/a>,\u201d which moves headfirst into the realm of loss, naming it as the author\u2019s site of making:<\/p>\n

If I speak for the dead, I must leave
\nthis animal of my body,<\/p>\n

I must write the same poem over and over,
\nfor an empty page is the white flag of their surrender.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The impossible task\u2014to \u201cspeak for the dead\u201d\u2014forms the condition of the author\u2019s imperatives: \u201cI must \u2026 I must \u2026 \u201d Halfway through the poem, the momentum from that original \u201cif\u201d\u2014the energy of that conditional\u2014shifts. The poem steadies. The speaker affirms: \u201cYes, I live.\u201d Now the sincerity of obligation opens onto the exuberance of possibility: \u201cI can cross the streets asking \u2018What year is it?\u2019\u2009\/\u2009I can dance in my sleep and laugh.\u201d And then ability makes way for commitment, \u201ccan\u201d moves to \u201cwill\u201d:<\/p>\n

I will praise your madness, and
\nin a language not mine, speak<\/p>\n

of music …<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

When the final line returns to the author\u2019s obligation\u2014\u201cthe darkest\u2009\/\u2009days must I praise\u201d\u2014that obligation now carries the incontrovertible fact of the author\u2019s living.<\/p>\n

To be a poet means to serve the work; sometimes, the self gets in the way. If naming yourself poet<\/em> amplifies the self in the form of self-doubt, let the title go. Move tenderly toward a single word. Then the next. You will come into the word poet<\/em> in your own time. But if naming yourself poet<\/em> gives you intention, offers you a map into the unknowable, say your name, Poet, softly to steady yourself. Doubt is where creativity resides. If you already knew the answer, you would not be making anything new. Yes, you live. Now what do you want to make with your living?<\/p>\n

\u2014CS<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

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

I\u2019m a homosexual man living in a country where homosexuality is referred to mostly as an insult or in offensive jokes. I have loving friends to whom I\u2019ve come out, and they have been extremely supportive. But somewhere, both within me and without, there\u2019s this ineffable, permanent void of fear, self-doubt, self-reproach, and acute loneliness that at times seems to suck my very being inside of it. It leaves me in a hopeless pool of tears. I know that things will get better if I make the effort to find a romantic partner, but somehow I\u2019m always already devoid of the strength and motivation to do so. Sometimes I feel this pain is self-inflicted. Do you have a poem that could be my companion in this distress?\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

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

Gay and Despondent<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Dear Gay and Despondent,<\/p>\n

I hate that the free expression of love for you, and for so many, is disrupted. I hate how the violence of a closed-minded world can deform even our own relationship to our desire. I love that you\u2019ve asked for a poem-as-companion to fortify you. I love how a poem can make room in my chest. It\u2019s a private offering to how I would like to live. Poems can forge what June Jordan calls \u201cliving room,\u201d an intimate space in which to be together, to envision and enact other ways to be.<\/p>\n

I want to share with you a poem by Essex Hemphill, whose language made living room in a nation that sought, in many ways, to kill him. A black, gay man who died of AIDS<\/small>-related complications, Hemphill was intimately familiar with the shapes of America\u2019s hatred. For you, his \u201cAmerican Wedding<\/a>,\u201d which finds and forges possibilities in the interstices of violence:<\/p>\n

No horsemen
\nbearing terror,
\nno soldiers of doom
\nwill swoop in
\nand sweep us apart.
\nThey\u2019re too busy
\nlooting the land
\nto watch us.
\n.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.
\nThey don\u2019t know
\nwe are becoming powerful.
\nEvery time we kiss
\nwe confirm the new world coming.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is followed by the poem\u2019s only stanza break, which underlines the magnitude of that statement and maps something haunted. Twenty-three years after Hemphill\u2019s death, the new world he dreamed is still coming. Even as he imagined yet-to-arrive futures, Hemphill claimed the wide province of his love for his own present\u2014not in the official language of the state\u2019s flimsy promises but in the alternative ways of queer loving:<\/p>\n

What the rose whispers
\nbefore blooming
\nI vow to you.
\nI give you my heart,
\na safe house.
\nI give you promises other than
\nmilk, honey, liberty.
\n.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.
\nI assume you will always
\nbe a free man with a dream.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The dream exists even absent recognition. Hemphill and so many other queer writers and makers\u2014Melvin Dixon, Adrienne Rich, June Jordan, Joseph Beam, Audre Lorde, Marlon Riggs, Danez Smith\u2014saw and see your desire. They know how beautiful your desire is. They join your company just as your letter joins Hemphill\u2019s prayer:<\/p>\n

Long may we live
\nto free this dream.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u2014CS<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

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

For a year now, I\u2019ve been living alone, thousands of miles away from home for work and studies. Things are going well, and it looks as though I\u2019ll be away even longer. I know I should be happy\u2014these opportunities are what I came here for. And while I am, I also can\u2019t grapple with the thought that there is literally no \u201cgoing back.\u201d Everything at home\u00a0will keep moving without me. I don\u2019t fully belong here and I feel like I no longer belong there, either. I\u2019m having a hard time explaining this to anyone. Is there a poem that could help me cope with this feeling?<\/em><\/p>\n

Yours,
\n<\/em>Confused and In B<\/em>etween<\/em><\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Dear Confused and In Between,<\/p>\n

When I read your letter, I thought immediately of these lines from Aracelis Girmay\u2019s poem cycle \u201cElelegy\u201d: \u201cDistance: my wealth\u2009\/\u2009Distance: my grief.\u201d Distance carries many meanings. It makes sense that you feel conflicted. It\u2019s okay to both name your grief and celebrate your possibilities. To identify one doesn\u2019t erode the other. Trying to discipline feelings with \u201cshould\u201d can be lonely-making. \u201cShould\u201d won\u2019t change your feeling, but it will estrange you from it. (Yet another form of distance in a circumstance already formed by distance!) I\u2019m so glad you\u2019ve asked not for a poem to obliterate the difficulty but for one that will help you better understand its shape. For you, Natasha Trethewey\u2019s \u201cTheories of Time and Space<\/a>,\u201d which gets at precisely the impossibility of \u201cgoing back\u201d that you\u2019ve named:<\/p>\n

You can get there from here, though
\nthere\u2019s no going home.<\/p>\n

Everywhere you go will be somewhere
\nyou\u2019ve never been.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Trethewey\u2019s poem explores how experience is formed at the cross section of space and time, so that when we say home<\/em> we are also naming a moment; when we point to a memory and say then<\/em>, we also mean \u201cthere.\u201d To be in between is to hold complexity. To hold complexity is to have many possible sites of connection. As Sarah Kay has beautifully written<\/a> about hyphenated identities: \u201cEven if it feels like you don\u2019t come from one single place or that you do not belong to a \u2018home\u2019 you can point to on a map, all those en dashes help you form new homes everywhere you go.\u201d Or, as Trethewey\u2019s poem teaches me, everywhere you\u2019ve been, you are there waiting:<\/p>\n

\u2026 On the dock<\/p>\n

Where you board the boat for Ship Island,
\nsomeone will take your picture:<\/p>\n

the photograph\u2014who you were\u2014
\nwill be waiting when you return<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u2014CS<\/p>\n

 <\/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

\"\"<\/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.<\/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":[44151,44153,30683,44152,7788,44150],"class_list":["post-131901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry-rx","tag-american-wedding","tag-authors-prayer","tag-essex-hemphill","tag-ilya-kaminsky","tag-natasha-trethewey","tag-theories-of-time-and-space"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nPoetry Rx: There\u2019s No Going Home by Claire Schwartz<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"December 13, 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 turns prescribing the perfect poems to match. 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