{"id":135645,"date":"2019-04-18T13:20:00","date_gmt":"2019-04-18T17:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=135645"},"modified":"2019-04-18T16:24:39","modified_gmt":"2019-04-18T20:24:39","slug":"poetry-rx-sometimes-sadness-is-just-what-comes-between-the-dancing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/04\/18\/poetry-rx-sometimes-sadness-is-just-what-comes-between-the-dancing\/","title":{"rendered":"Poetry Rx: Sometimes Sadness Is Just What Comes between the Dancing"},"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

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

\u00a9ELLIS ROSEN<\/p><\/div>\n

\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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

I\u2019m in a stable tumultuous relationship. I love my partner dearly, and she returns my enthusiasm. Some of the time. There are days when I feel love radiating off her, and others when I could not buy a kind word or any showing of support. I realize all relationships have ups and downs, and I\u2019ve come to accept and respect my partner\u2019s moods. Still, I find it very difficult to cope with things when I am on her bad side, especially if I myself am suffering. I try my best to communicate this to her and not to be so sensitive. Despite knowing that things inevitably will revert to normal, I feel very abandoned and unloved in the moment. I\u2019m not sure if I\u2019m being unfair or overly needy or what.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Kind regards,
\n<\/em>Confused in Love<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Dear Confused,<\/p>\n

Your note put into language something I\u2019ve experienced: a stable tumultuous relationship. One in which things are regularly turbulent and, at the same time, some joy or good love or possibility prevents collapse. Here\u2019s what it\u2019s taken me a long time to understand: If the relationship requires your smallness for stability, the relationship is not stable. You are waxing and waning to keep things from toppling. You are absorbing the instability. Of course, people are complicated. Intimacy is work. But there is a difference between the care of being with someone when they feel something other than joy and a relationship whose structure requires you to change your own shape. For you, a poem about honoring the shape of your own gentle impulses, Aracelis Girmay\u2019s \u201cThe Woodlice<\/a>\u201d:<\/p>\n

The beauty of one sister
\nwho loved them so
\nshe smuggled the woodlice
\ninto her pockets & then into
\nthe house, after a day\u2019s work
\nof digging in the yard
\n& after the older ones of us
\nhad fed her & washed,
\nshe carried them into
\nthe bed with her, to mother
\nthem, so that they would have
\ntwo blankets & be warm<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The tragedy of this poem is that one sister\u2019s tenderness, her urge to care, is soon eroded by the older sisters who \u201cknow better\u201d:<\/p>\n

\u2026& we,
\nbeing elders to that sister,
\nwe, having seen strangers
\nin our house before, we, being
\nolder, being more ugly & afraid,
\nwe began, then, to teach her the lessons
\nof dirt & fear.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We learn these lessons of dirt and of fear\u2014these barriers to tenderness\u2014and then we name them instinct<\/em>. Your first instinct, the one that is sensitive, that needs your partner\u2019s love manifested through kindness is beautiful. Nourish that. You deserve it.<\/p>\n

\u2014CS<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

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

My letter will not be as eloquently written as those of other people who have reached out to you, but that ties to my problem. My roommate, whom I met a year ago and who has proven to be a kind and sparkling person, is in the process of losing her mother. I have no idea what to say. I know there are many ways to show up for someone who is grieving, but I would love to give her poem. I\u2019d like her to know life will be okay without the person who brought her into it, but I don\u2019t know if such a promise can even be made. <\/em>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Thank You,
\n<\/em>At a Loss<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Dear At a Loss,<\/p>\n

A few poems came immediately to mind. I thought of Dorianne Laux\u2019s \u201cDeath of the Mother<\/a>,\u201d which offers something about the knottiness of kinship, and makes space to hold the complexity of living within the devastation of loss. Every sturdy relationship also teaches us how to live without it. Its final lines: \u201cYou taught us how to glean the good \/ from anything, pardon anyone, even you, awash as we are in your blood.\u201d I thought of Elizabeth Alexander\u2019s \u201cAutumn Passage<\/a>,\u201d which tends so beautifully to the dying body, it feels to me like it shepherds it into a gentle elsewhere. I thought of Tracy K. Smith\u2019s \u201cThe Speed of Belief<\/a>,\u201d which moves with the not-knowing that death makes. And I wrote about one of my most cherished elegies here<\/a>. But there is too much I don\u2019t know. I don\u2019t know your friend\u2019s relationship with her mother. I don\u2019t know the shape of her grief or how it will move or what she needs. What I do know is that you thinking of your friend, your commitment to being there with something <\/em>that she might need, to being there even when you don\u2019t know how exactly that will look, that <\/em>is the balm. That <\/em>is the buoy. The poem I want to offer you, to offer your friend, more than anything is Gwendolyn Brooks\u2019s \u201cPaul Robeson<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n

That Time, We All Heard It.
\nThat time
\ncool and clear,
\ncutting across the hot grit of the day.
\nThe major Voice.
\nThe adult Voice
\nforgoing Rolling River,
\nforgoing tearful tale of bale and barge
\nand other symptoms of an old despond.
\nWarning, in music-words
\ndevout and large,
\nthat<\/p>\n

we are each other\u2019s
\nharvest:
\nwe are each other\u2019s
\nbusiness:
\nwe are each other\u2019s
\nmagnitude and bond.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u2014CS<\/p>\n

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

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

After a terrible experience with love a few years ago, I more or less shut off any ability to feel truly romantically vulnerable with another person. But now that\u2019s changing! I\u2019ve started seeing a man who makes me feel butterflies. He\u2019s smart and kind and well-adjusted; he makes me laugh, and when we\u2019re together, all the bad things in the world feel a bit less terrible. I\u2019m trying to take things one day at a time and luxuriate in the joy of feeling this way\u2014something I thought I no longer was capable of doing. But I\u2019m also terrified that I\u2019ll mess things up, and have my heart broken all over again (though I\u2019m trying not to give that anxiety too much power). Is there a poem for me?\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Sincerely,
\n<\/em>Allergic To Vulnerability (And Maybe Also Happiness?)<\/em>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Dear AtVaMAH,<\/p>\n

How wonderful to be with someone who opens you to so much joy! When I read your letter, I thought of Kaveh\u2019s response to another letter<\/a>: \u201cNow that I\u2019ve left, for the time being, the proverbial (and literal) gutter, I find myself in the unfamiliar position of living a life I\u2019d be pained to lose.\u201d Nothing we love will last forever. Joy always carries with it the shadow of grief. Denying yourself happiness out of fear is only a way of clinging to grief. For you, a poem that refuses to make false assurances that heartbreak won\u2019t come again, but that reminds us, in the words of Rainer Maria Rilke, that \u201cno feeling is final.\u201d Patrick Rosal\u2019s \u201cBrokeheart: Just like that<\/a>\u201d a poem I cherish for the music it builds:<\/p>\n

What like\u2014what may be\u2014depression and
\nAnd just like that everyone knows
\nmy heart\u2019s broke and no one is home.
\nJust like that, I\u2019m water.
\nJust like that, I\u2019m the boat.
\nJust like that, I\u2019m both things in the whole world
\nrocking. Sometimes sadness is just
\nwhat comes between the dancing.
\nAnd bam!, my mother\u2019s dead and, bam!, my brother\u2019s
\nchildren are laughing. Just like\u2014ok, it\u2019s true
\nI can\u2019t pop up from my knees so quick these days
\nand no one ever said I could sing but
\ntell me my body ain\u2019t good enough
\nfor this. I\u2019ll count the aches another time<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Poems and music, in their compression and movement, teach us this: you might have your heart broken again, but you have this good thing now.<\/p>\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

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

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

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