{"id":138076,"date":"2019-07-18T12:00:54","date_gmt":"2019-07-18T16:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=138076"},"modified":"2019-07-18T10:35:47","modified_gmt":"2019-07-18T14:35:47","slug":"poetry-rx-forgive-me-open-wounds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/07\/18\/poetry-rx-forgive-me-open-wounds\/","title":{"rendered":"Poetry Rx: Forgive Me, Open Wounds"},"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, Sarah Kay is on the line.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

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

Dear Poets,\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

I am writing to you for some clarity or company. At thirty, I have found myself in some kind of threshold state. I\u2019m grappling with the tragic loss of a person I loved, mourning a future that got lost in the past, and also celebrating the births of so many of my peers\u2019 new babies. I have been at the hospital witnessing\u2014or on the other side of the phone hearing about\u2014these big ends and big beginnings. I feel like I\u2019m spinning: a compass who doesn\u2019t know whether to point toward the exits or the entrances. Are the exits and entrances are the same? Babies come out of the holes in our bodies, surgical or anatomical, and loss feels the same way: I feel like she was torn from my body somehow, leaving an emptiness, a wound. I guess I don\u2019t really have a question, except to say, does this seem familiar to you? Are you spinning, too?\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Thank you,
\n<\/span>Caught in A twirl<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Dear Caught in A Twirl,<\/span><\/p>\n

So much of your letter does indeed sound familiar. During a bout of despair I once asked my mother whether growing older was just one wound piled upon another until we are just a collection of hurt, and she answered, unironically, \u201cNo, sometimes someone gets married or has a baby!\u201d At the time I probably rolled my eyes or laughed at her stubborn optimism, but I have since grown to take her answer quite genuinely. My best friends are also having babies or getting married, big beginnings I am grateful to witness. And at thirty we are both already starting to encounter some big endings, too. I am very sorry for your loss. I want to share with you Robin Beth Schaer\u2019s poem <\/span>\u201c<\/span>Holdfast<\/span><\/a>\u201d<\/span> which begins,\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The dead are for morticians & butchers
\n<\/span>to touch. Only a gloved hand. Even my son
\n<\/span>will leave a grounded wren or bat alone
\n<\/span>like a hot stove. When he spots a monarch
\n<\/span>in the driveway he stares. <\/span>It\u2019s dead<\/span><\/i>,
\n<\/span>I say, <\/span>you can touch it<\/span><\/i>. The opposite rule:
\n<\/span>butterflies are too fragile to hold
\n<\/span>alive, just the brush of skin could rip
\n<\/span>a wing. He skims the orange & black whorls
\n<\/span>with only two fingers, the way he learned
\n<\/span>to feel the backs of starfish & horseshoe crabs
\n<\/span>at the zoo, the way he thinks we touch
\n<\/span>all strangers. <\/span>I was sad to be born,<\/span><\/i> he tells me,
\n<\/span>because it means I will die.\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In a small footnote to this poem, Robin adds, \u201cAs my son encounters the world for the first time, I re-encounter it with him, both of us reckoning together with how to live and how to die.\u201d I think that is perhaps what you and I are both doing: just trying to reckon with how to live and how to die. One of the ways to do the former is to take every opportunity to spin your compass toward reasons to celebrate. Just as you wonder whether entrances and exits are the same thing, I think celebrating is the same thing as gratitude. Your peers are having babies! Worth celebrating. You loved someone so fully! Worth celebrating. Even\u2014and especially\u2014when her absence feels terribly heavy. The world will do its part to spin you toward hurt often enough. When it is available to you, I hope you orient yourself toward joy. These beginnings, and maybe even the endings\u2014they are evidence of how lucky you were to experience something miraculous, no matter how brief. Celebrating does not have to be in opposition to grieving. Both can exist inside you at once. The second half of Robin\u2019s poem feels especially right for you today, and I most want to send you this line: \u201c<\/span>We should hold each other more \/ while we are still alive, even if it hurts.<\/span>\u201d <\/span><\/i>Hold those new babies. Hold the ones you love, and the ones who love you. Spin your compass toward them.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014<\/span><\/i>SK<\/span><\/p>\n

*<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Dear Poets,<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Almost a year ago, I was left with no choice but to take a really good look at myself. This looking grew into a commitment to tame my triggers and heal my traumas. Taking off the haters-gonna-hate armor I usually wear, and confronting my own shortcomings, has been painful. Right now, I\u2019m stuck in a cycle of feeling incredible guilty for things I\u2019ve said and done, and who I\u2019ve been in my past. The voices in my head box me into my worst moments, instead of toward my ability to grow past them. I\u2019m in pursuit of different voices\u2014ones that will leave room for openness and transformation and becoming. How can I be self-critical without tearing myself down completely in the process? I was hoping you could help me find a poem to ground me in admitting the need to change while also holding onto the ability to forgive myself. To forgive, in general. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Yours,
\n<\/span>In Search of Forgiveness\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Dear In Search of Forgiveness,<\/span><\/p>\n

I want to recommend to you a poem called \u201c<\/span>Under One Small Star<\/span><\/a>\u201d by Wislawa Szymborska, as translated by Clare Cavanagh and Stanis\u0142aw Bara\u0144czak (p. 192) which begins,\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

My apologies to chance for calling it necessity.
\n<\/span>My apologies to necessity if I\u2019m mistaken, after all.
\n<\/span>Please, don\u2019t be angry, happiness, that I take you as my due.
\n<\/span>May my dead be patient with the way my memories fade.
\n<\/span>My apologies for all the world I overlook each second.
\n<\/span>My apologies to past loves for thinking that the latest is the first.
\n<\/span>Forgive me, distant wars, for bringing flowers home.
\n<\/span>Forgive me, open wounds, for pricking my finger.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This poem is full of both apologies and the seeking of forgiveness. The first few lines seem a little tongue-in-cheek to me, as though the poem might be making light of the very notion of seeking absolution, but very soon thereafter, many of the requests seem genuine. In fact, I love this poem precisely because so many of the lines feel like mantras I might repeat while lying in bed at night, berating myself for whatever mistakes I\u2019ve managed that day. \u201cForgive me, distant wars, for bringing flowers home. \/ Forgive me, open wounds, for pricking my finger,\u201d sit in my stomach like a rock. Later on in the poem, Wislawa writes,<\/span><\/p>\n

My apologies to everything that I can\u2019t be everywhere at once.
\n<\/span>My apologies to everyone that I can\u2019t be each woman and each man.
\n<\/span>I know I won\u2019t be justified as long as I live, since I myself stand in my own way.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And these are the lines I most want to send your way. You cannot be everywhere at once, you cannot be what everyone needs you to be, always. You cannot do all your healing or atoning overnight. It is not a straight line. There will be more failures and more hurt feelings and more doing to undo. But remember that you are also your harshest critic. You are the one beating yourself up the worst. You are the one most often standing in your own way. To quote Wislawa, \u201cMy apologies to great questions for small answers,\u201d but my small answers to your great question are: just do what you can, when you can, and be gentle and patient with yourself in the same way you are gentle and patient with the ones you love dearest\u2014the ones for whom you were willing to self-examine in the first place, the ones who are rooting for (and invested in) the healthiest, most honest version of you, and who will work with you to help you get there, as long as it takes.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014SK<\/span><\/p>\n

*<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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

I love adventures. Be it small ones to a new coffee shop, or big ones to far-flung corners of the world. The joy of discovery, of doing something different than the norm, is something that energizes me and drives me forward. But what\u2019s particularly wonderful is that I\u2019ve met a lovely man to share these adventures with, and we\u2019re getting married in August. I\u2019d love a poem that captures the joy of adventuring with a partner in crime. Can you help?<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Thank you,
\n<\/span>Adventurous<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Dear Adventurous,<\/span><\/p>\n

I have a very small poem for you, but it is one of my favorites. It is by Rainer Maria Rilke and here it is in its entirety:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Understand, I\u2019ll slip quietly
\n<\/span>away from the noisy crowd
\n<\/span>when I see the pale stars rising, blooming, over the oaks.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ll pursue solitary pathways
\n<\/span>through the pale twilit meadows,
\n<\/span>with only this one dream:<\/span><\/p>\n

You come too.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I love that this poem is all at once a prayer, a wish, a request, a story, and a promise. Which is maybe what marriage is, too. Congratulations to you both, and here\u2019s wishing you a lifetime of adventures side by side.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014SK<\/span><\/p>\n

Our poets, brilliant though they may be, would like to remind you that they are only poets. If you or someone you love requires professional help, please consider\u00a0the resources listed here<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Want more? Read earlier\u00a0installments of\u00a0Poetry Rx<\/a>.\u00a0Need your own poem?\u00a0Write to us<\/a>!<\/i><\/p>\n

Sarah Kay<\/a>\u00a0is a poet and educator from New York City. She is the codirector and\u00a0founder of\u00a0Project VOICE<\/a>\u00a0and the author of four books of poetry:\u00a0<\/em>B,<\/em>\u00a0No Matter the Wreckage,\u00a0<\/em>The Type, and\u00a0<\/em>All Our Wild Wonder.<\/em><\/p>\n

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

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