{"id":135188,"date":"2019-04-04T11:00:46","date_gmt":"2019-04-04T15:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=135188"},"modified":"2019-04-12T20:29:30","modified_gmt":"2019-04-13T00:29:30","slug":"poetry-rx-for-my-lover-returning-to-his-wife","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/04\/04\/poetry-rx-for-my-lover-returning-to-his-wife\/","title":{"rendered":"Poetry Rx: For My Lover, Returning to His Wife"},"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

\n
\n
\"\"<\/a>

\u00a9 ELLIS ROSEN<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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

It\u2019s 1 AM<\/small> where I live now, and it\u2019s yet another sleepless night for me. For the past four years, I lived in another country across the world, but I recently had to move back home due to some paperwork-related issues. My expat life was exciting and it transformed me. It pushed me outside of my comfort zone, and gave me my best friend and new hobbies and interests.<\/em><\/p>\n

But I\u2019m now stuck back in my hometown, unable to make any future plans until the issue is resolved. I have no close friends here, there are no interesting events, and a good time for most people my age is to get wasted. My days are spent going to the gym and to the same two caf\u00e9s (it\u2019s a pretty small city) to study or read.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been trying to stay positive, but the thought of wasting my life like this has been keeping me awake for quite a while now. Do you have a poem for people who feel left out of life?<\/em><\/p>\n

Sincerely,<\/em>
\nStuck In Limbo<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Dear Stuck,<\/p>\n

It is a miserable thing to find yourself in an inescapable and undesirable station, and it doubly miserable, I imagine, to find yourself stuck there through no fault of your own. I\u2019m sorry the soulless, violent winds of bureaucracy have blown you so far from the transformative new life you relished.<\/p>\n

For you, I offer Solmaz Sharif\u2019s \u201cThe End of Exile<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the dead, so I come
\nto the city I am of.
\nAm without.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The speaker in the poem arrives in Shiraz, their so-called home, but is startled at the feeling of being \u201cwithout,\u201d of lacking and of being outside looking in. This is, of course, not exactly the experience you describe, and yet in a way it is the experience of all displaced peoples. In a room full of Iranians, I feel like the least Iranian person. In a room full of Americans, I certainly don\u2019t feel particularly American. That liminality has become my home, and it is a home I carry with me wherever I go.<\/p>\n

\n
To watch play out around me<\/div>\n
as theater\u2009\u2014<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
audience as the dead are audience<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
to the life that is not mine.<\/div>\n
Is as not<\/div>\n
as never.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Turning down Shiraz\u2019s streets<\/div>\n
it turns out to be such<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
a faraway thing.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
A without which<\/div>\n
I have learned to be.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Such dislocation is painful but powerful. When you\u2019re inside a place or a culture, it\u2019s easy to become dulled, habituated to its textures\u2014sonic, human, and otherwise. But dislocated from it, looking at it from the outside, you can see those textures with acuity. It\u2019s why so many of history\u2019s greatest writers have, for one reason or another, found themselves writing from a position of alterity\u2014the remove grants them a defamiliarized perspective not afforded to the status quo\u2019s comfortable and dominant.<\/p>\n

I wish you didn\u2019t have to bear this forcible expulsion from your beloved new home, with its bouquets of new hobbies and interests. But I hope you can use this time while you wait in your old hometown to read, to write a lot, and to build something new from your singular vantage point.<\/p>\n

\u2014KA<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

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

One of my first loves, the person with whom I learned to love poetry, is getting married soon. Though our relationship ended nearly a decade ago, we have kept in ill-advised contact for most of that time. Often, in the last few years, we discussed whether we should give it a try again\u2014with the prospect of marriage always lurking in the background. <\/em><\/p>\n

Neither of us, however, was sure or brave enough to leave our current relationships. Barring any promises that we could make it work, and with a lot of social pressure to move forward in his life, my ex is now engaged while I am stubbornly very far from that milestone.<\/em><\/p>\n

Given the messy nature of our communication, I decided recently that we could no longer be in touch. It was objectively the right thing to do, but I am full of anger, regret, and loss. I am hoping you could recommend something that speaks to these tangled and stifled feelings.<\/em><\/p>\n

Sincerely,<\/em>
\nForever Holding My Peace<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Dear Forever Holding,<\/p>\n

Here is Anne Sexton\u2019s \u201cFor My Lover, Returning To His Wife<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

I give you back your heart.
\nI give you permission –
\nfor the fuse inside her, throbbing
\nangrily in the dirt, for the bitch in her
\nand the burying of her wound<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It sounds like a messy tangle, yes. Anger, regret, loss\u2014Sexton doesn\u2019t shy from any of it.\u00a0The rending, immobilizing gift of a line like \u201cI give you back your heart. \/ I give you permission.\u201d Then the scathing final movement of the poem:<\/p>\n

She is so naked and singular
\nShe is the sum of yourself and your dream.
\nClimb her like a monument, step after step.
\nShe is solid.
\nAs for me, I am a watercolor.
\nI wash off.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Those last six lines devastate me. You\u2019ve done an exceptionally difficult thing. I hope you and your ex can now set out, wholeheartedly, on the separate paths you\u2019ve chosen.<\/p>\n

\u2014KA<\/p>\n

*<\/div>\n

Hello poets, \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

I recently heard about the death of an acquaintance. I had thought it was caused by a chronic, physical illness that I didn\u2019t know about, but then I heard that she took her own life. Since then, I have been walking around in a weird shroud of questions: Was there anything I could have done? Would it have made a difference? What can I do now? How do I deal with this pain, doubt, anger, and guilt? I\u2019m also surprised that I feel so intensely\u2014we weren\u2019t that close. Despair seems to seep easily into my mind. I\u2019m wondering if you have some words to soothe this muddle of mine.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Sincerely, <\/em>
\nMuddle-Mind<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dear Muddle,<\/p>\n

I am sorry to hear about the loss of your acquaintance. There is, of course, nothing useful to be said in situations like these. I will offer only that you are not powerful enough to affect, to have affected, the trajectory of someone else\u2019s disease one way or another. Frankly, nobody is that powerful.<\/p>\n

For you, I offer this poem<\/a> by Danez Smith.<\/p>\n

i know
\nwhat happens when you
\nask for a kiss, it\u2019s all
\ntongue, you don\u2019t
\nunlatch, you suck
\nface until the body
\nis gone.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Speaking directly to a personified suicide, Smith asks what has become of their friends (they look for their friends inside a tulip but find only \u201cthe yellow heart,\u201d they look for their friends under a cup but find only air).<\/p>\n

\n
dear suicide<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
you made my kin thin air.<\/div>\n
his entire body dead as hair.<\/div>\n
you said his name like a dare.<\/div>\n
you\u2019ve done your share.<\/div>\n
i ride down lake street friendbare<\/div>\n
to isles of lakes, wet pairs<\/div>\n
stare back & we compare<\/div>\n
our mirror glares. fish scare<\/div>\n
into outlines, i blare<\/div>\n
a moon\u2019s wanting, i wear<\/div>\n
their faces on t-shirts, little flares<\/div>\n
in case i bootleg my own prayer<\/div>\n
& submit to your dark affair.<\/div>\n
tell me they\u2019re in your care.<\/div>\n
be fair.<\/div>\n
heaven or hell, i hope my niggas all there<\/div>\n
if i ever use the air as a stair.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

All of the emotions you describe\u2014the muddle of pain, doubt, anger, guilt\u2014braid together in Smith\u2019s address. The rhyming inertia of that final stanza, its singsong, Plath-like quality, reminds me of a child desperately singing to themselves in a corner, hands over their ears. Plath famously rises with her red hair to \u201ceat men like air,\u201d while Smith contemplates eventually using that \u201cair as a stair.\u201d It\u2019s an utterance that feels at once intensely intimate and completely transient; it seems here the only reasonable way one might hope to speak to a force that is at once \u201ca kind of mother\u201d and \u201ca kind of freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014KA<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Want more? Read earlier\u00a0installments of\u00a0Poetry Rx<\/a>.\u00a0<\/i>Need a poem?\u00a0Write to us<\/a>! In the next installment, 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 College.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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