{"id":132566,"date":"2019-01-10T09:00:56","date_gmt":"2019-01-10T14:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=132566"},"modified":"2019-01-09T18:33:54","modified_gmt":"2019-01-09T23:33:54","slug":"poetry-rx-your-body-will-haunt-mine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/01\/10\/poetry-rx-your-body-will-haunt-mine\/","title":{"rendered":"Poetry Rx: Your Body Will Haunt Mine"},"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>

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

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

My girlfriend broke up with me five months ago. She once said to me, \u201cI\u2019ll love you forever.\u201d Even though I knew forever wasn\u2019t likely, her absence still leaves me lonely. I\u2019m looking for a poem that will wrap me in its arms.<\/em><\/p>\n

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

Bed is Too Big for Just Me\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Dear Bed Too Big,<\/p>\n

Mourning has an object. Memory transforms the past\u2014what happened\u2014into a place you can return to. To have been in a relationship with someone is not only to have shared a past; often, it is also to have imagined a joint future. When your girlfriend said, \u201cI\u2019ll love you forever,\u201d she mapped such wide possibility. How can you think about grieving not only what you had, but also the infinite space of what might have been?<\/p>\n

To meet this question, a poem I hold close: Adrienne Rich\u2019s \u201cTwenty-One Love Poems [(The Floating Poem, Unnumbered).<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n

Whatever happens with us, your body
\nwill haunt mine\u2014tender, delicate
\nyour lovemaking, like the half-curled frond
\nof the fiddlehead fern in forests
\njust washed by the sun\u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On one side of the opening line: the proclamation of the relationship\u2019s uncertainty. On the other: the margin\u2019s blank space. Against all that doubt\u2014which, as I\u2019ve written about elsewhere<\/a>, is also all that faith\u2014is the lover\u2019s body. That profound presence moves the speaker out to nature\u2019s beauty, to the pleasures of alliteration. The lovers\u2019 intimacy charts that wide world, and the poem ends with a powerful affirmation:<\/p>\n

whatever happens, this is.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Whatever becomes of the relationship, the speaker has experienced vastness. \u201cThere is no life \/ that couldn\u2019t be immortal \/ if only for one moment,\u201d Wis\u0142awa Szymborska wrote<\/a>. I think love is that statement\u2019s engine. How impossibly possible love makes things feel. From that angle, when your girlfriend said, \u201cI\u2019ll love you forever,\u201d she wasn\u2019t predicting what was to come, which none of us can know, so much as naming a truth: \u201cPerched in this moment with you, I can see out into an infinite future.\u201d What a gift, that you built so much possibility. That expanse was and that expanse continues to be,\u00a0even if the relationship is no longer. Carry that sense of wild possibility out into the blank space. Beyond what you thought you knew, who knows what you might find waiting.<\/p>\n

\u2014CS<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

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

\u00a0<\/em>2018 hasn\u2019t been great. Within the first three weeks, my mom got diagnosed with stage 4 cancer and I had to fly away from home back to school for one last semester of college.\u00a0<\/em>I successfully finished my thesis, but I never felt like I had time to appreciate my accomplishments of the past four years. Within another three weeks, I got my diploma, my parents renewed their vows for their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, and then my mom died.<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure if I want a poem about grief, but I have been grieving. A lot.<\/em><\/p>\n

Just when I thought I might have been doing better, in another three weeks, my dog died, I had to fly away again (this time to try and start a career), and my college roommate tried to kill herself.<\/em><\/p>\n

I know that between those spurts were plenty of good weeks, or at least better ones. But I don\u2019t know if they\u2019re enough. I\u2019d like something to let me know that they are.<\/em><\/p>\n

Sincerely,
\n<\/em>Searching for Sustenance<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Dear Searching for Sustenance,<\/p>\n

I\u2019m sorry last year brought you so much heartbreak, and I hope that 2019 brings you joy. But living doesn\u2019t tend to respect the calendar\u2019s boundaries. You wrote asking for a poem to assure you that your good weeks are \u201cenough.\u201d To assure you they\u2019re \u201cenough\u201d would be to weigh the good against the bad. But poems don\u2019t traffic in those kinds of transactions. Poems, though, can map connection where connection is otherwise obscured. Grief is love that registers the transformation loss brings about. You\u2019re grieving so much because you\u2019ve loved so much\u2014your mother, your dog, the place you had to fly away from. Instead of seeking to prove that the joy in your life is sufficient balance against the pain, I\u2019m going to turn your question slightly. Here is a poem that reminds me of the transformational possibilities of tending to moments of joy amidst pain.<\/p>\n

For you, \u201cus<\/a>,\u201d a poem by Tory Dent, a poet whose work described\u2014among many other things\u2014her struggle with HIV\/AIDS<\/small>. The poem begins:<\/p>\n

in your arms
\nit was incredibly often
\nenough to be
\nin your arms
\ncareful as we had to be at times
\nabout the I.V. catheter
\nin my hand<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Though the speaker is ill in the hospital, the poem\u2019s first site is not the hospital. Instead, the speaker dwells on the embrace of a loved one, staving off the vocabulary of illness until the sixth line. The lover\u2019s arms can\u2019t take illness away, but they can offer respite\u2014respite that Dent builds into by lingering on it in language.<\/p>\n

in your arms
\noften enough, it was
\nin that stillness, the only stillness
\namidst the fears which wildly collided
\nand the complexities
\nof the illness, all the work
\nwe had yet to do, had just done,
\nthe hope, ridiculous amounts of it
\nwe had to pump
\nfrom nothing, really<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The world offers Dent so little from which to forge hope, so she hones her attention. Dent\u2019s poem reminds us that to pay attention to what brings you joy is to enlarge it. You\u2019ve experienced a season of grief. But, as James Baldwin reminds: \u201cFor nothing is fixed, forever and forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock.\u201d Keep growing the love in your life by attending to it. The seasons will change. They always do.<\/p>\n

\u2014CS<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

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

My mom died a year and a half ago and I still miss her every day. Since her death I feel like my safety net has disappeared and I\u2019m aimless and without direction. Can you suggest something to help me start moving forward? <\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>Thank you,
\n<\/em>Craving a Compass<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Dear Craving a Compass,<\/p>\n

I\u2019m so sorry to hear about your mother\u2019s death. When I read your letter, I thought immediately of the opening of Toni Cade Bambara\u2019s novel, The Salt Eaters<\/em>. The healer Minnie Ransom asks Velma Henry, who has approached her: \u201cAre you sure, sweetheart, that you want to be well?…Just so\u2019s you\u2019re sure, sweetheart, and ready to be healed, cause wholeness is no trifling matter.\u201d Your letter beautifully suggests that you are ready to do that healing work. First, I want to mark that. It is no small thing. And, for that work, I want to offer you two poems by Marie Howe. In her poem \u201cWhat the Living Do<\/a>,\u201d Howe addresses her brother Johnny, who died of AIDS<\/small>-related complications. She writes of quotidian pleasures and frustrations. The poem\u2019s final line is, \u201cI am living. I remember you.\u201d You remember your mother. You are already doing work. Now, you ask, how to do that work in a way that moves your life toward new possibility? For that question, another poem of Howe\u2019s, \u201cThe Gate<\/a>\u201d:<\/p>\n

I had no idea that the gate I would step through
\nto finally enter this world
\nwould be the space my brother’s body made.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As in \u201cWhat the Living Do,\u201d it is not spectacular legacy, but the miracle of ordinary life that connects Howe with her late brother.<\/p>\n

This is what you have been waiting for, he used to say to me.
\nAnd I\u2019d say, What?<\/p>\n

And he\u2019d say, This\u2014holding up my cheese and mustard sandwich.
\nAnd I\u2019d say, What?<\/p>\n

And he\u2019d say, This, sort of looking around.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It can be difficult to release grief. Mourning is one way to keep touching what we\u2019ve lost. Howe\u2019s poem reorients loss from clinging to the past towards the futures this transformation opens. What are the forms of living your mother\u2019s life made possible for you? What shape is her absence, what is the space that you can now step into?<\/p>\n

\u2014CS<\/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

 <\/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":[1628,46332,46331,46330,46329,46328,46333],"class_list":["post-132566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry-rx","tag-adrienne-rich","tag-marie-howe","tag-the-salt-eaters","tag-toni-cade-bambara","tag-tory-dent","tag-twenty-one-love-poems-the-floating-poem","tag-what-the-living-do"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nPoetry Rx: Your Body Will Haunt Mine by Claire Schwartz<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"January 10, 2019 \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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