{"id":143526,"date":"2020-03-12T12:23:43","date_gmt":"2020-03-12T16:23:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=143526"},"modified":"2020-03-12T12:23:43","modified_gmt":"2020-03-12T16:23:43","slug":"poetry-rx-poems-for-social-distancing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/03\/12\/poetry-rx-poems-for-social-distancing\/","title":{"rendered":"Poetry Rx: Poems for Social Distancing"},"content":{"rendered":"

In our column Poetry Rx, readers\u00a0write in<\/a> with a specific emotion, and our resident poets\u2014Sarah Kay, Kaveh Akbar, and Claire Schwartz\u2014take turns prescribing the perfect poems to match. It\u2019s back after a short hiatus, with Claire Schwartz on the line.<\/i><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

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

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

I feel overwhelmed by the ambient anxiety in the air right now. My hands are raw from washing, and I can\u2019t stop refreshing the news. How do we continue to move through our lives when a virus is spreading, events keep getting canceled, and the only way to greet our loved ones is with an elbow bump? Are these the end-times we keep bracing for? I wonder if you might have a poem that reminds us how to stay close to one another while we\u2019re all \u201cpracticing social distancing.\u201d Or a poem that will be nice to read when we\u2019re all quarantined?\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

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

Lonely COVID<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Dear Lonely,<\/p>\n

These days feel like \u2026 a lot. For you, a poem, that refuses the overwhelmingness of enormity, calling us back to the possibility of our life-size actions, June Jordan\u2019s \u201cOn a New Year\u2019s Eve<\/a>\u201d:<\/p>\n

Infinity doesn\u2019t interest me
\n\u2026 and let the powerful lock up the canyon\/mountain
\npeaks the
\nhidden river s\u2026<\/p>\n

let the world blot
\nobliterate remove so-
\ncalled
\nmagnificence<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Lonely, I think so many of us would answer to your name these days. The prospect of being shut up in our own discrete spaces, the events planned to bring us together canceled one after another\u2014it does feel lonely-making, doesn\u2019t it? But here\u2019s the thing: in many ways, the virus does not promote social distance so much as it exposes the distances that already characterize our societies. People who continue to go to work while sick are evidence of the lack of paid sick leave. People not seeking medical care when they\u2019re ill are a direct result of our lack of universal health care in the U.S. Conferences frantically seeking options for remote participation reveal how too many of us have ignored the calls for more accessible options that people with disabilities have been making for years. Jordan writes:<\/p>\n

it is this time
\nthat matters<\/p>\n

it is this history
\nI care about<\/p>\n

the one we make together
\nawkward
\ninconsistent<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Every avoidable harm is also an instruction for how we might better care for one another. Social distancing is isolating, yes; it is also an act of connection. It is a commitment to our communal well-being, to diminishing both the harm your body may experience and the harm it may cause. How else can we care for one another? Text your friends to check in on them. Pressure your elected officials to make hand sanitizer and medical care available to people who are incarcerated or living in shelters or otherwise vulnerable. If you\u2019re able, donate to your local food pantry to ensure that students usually dependent on food in schools have enough to eat if their schools close. Building a world that cares for all of us is an act against loneliness, and when the virus subsides\u2014as it eventually will\u2014let\u2019s continue to build that world. We\u2019ve needed it all along.<\/p>\n

\u2014CS<\/p>\n

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

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

I graduated college seven months ago and every day I feel like I\u2019m sinking deeper into nothingness. I haven\u2019t been able to get a job in my chosen field\u2014journalism\u2014and almost all my friends have moved away from my city. I\u2019m working a barista job that I love but it doesn\u2019t feel like a future. My father urges me to follow my passion, but I look inside myself to find it and come up empty. I avoid returning the messages of loved ones and mentors because I\u2019m so ashamed of what I am\u2014I can\u2019t let them see. I don\u2019t try meeting new people\u2014how? I try to write for myself but everything I write is such dreck that it makes me ashamed that that\u2019s all I can create. Is there a poem for this emptiness and shame that feels so singular and so isolating?<\/em><\/p>\n

Yours,
\n<\/em>Nobody<\/em><\/p>\n

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

Dear Nobody,<\/p>\n

Who are you<\/a>? Joan Didion says that she loves being small and a woman because people underestimate her, and consequently she finds herself in all kinds of spaces where she wouldn\u2019t be allowed if they knew what she was capable of. That is to say: I don\u2019t think Nobody is the worst person to be, so long as you focus not on how others perceive you but on the wideness of possibility that comes with not knowing exactly who you are. I want to offer you a poem for reconnection with yourself, Kabir\u2019s \u201cUntitled [I talk to my inner lover]<\/a>,\u201d translated by Robert Bly:<\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 I talk to my inner lover, and I say, why such rush?
\nWe sense that there is some sort of spirit that loves birds and animals and the ants\u2014<\/p>\n

perhaps the same one who gave a radiance to you in your mother\u2019s womb.
\nIs it logical that you would be walking around entirely orphaned now?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

When I was little, I wrote fan letters to a constellation of people held together only by the random gravity of my love: Michael Jordan, the Queen of England, my great aunt, Yo-Yo Ma. I recently wrote a fan letter to a poet I adore, and it was a beautiful reconnection with that child-part of myself who loves without any self-consciousness, who writes only to testify to what I love, who puts something in the world without expecting a response. In the matrix of measurements that adulthood can feel like, it can be rare to take direction from your interior compass.<\/p>\n

Now you are tangled up in others, and have forgotten what you once knew,
\nand that\u2019s why everything you do has some weird failure in it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You may not have your dream career\u2014and believe me, I feel your frustration there\u2014but career aspirations are just one form your questions take in the world. Don\u2019t deny yourself what you have. Let yourself love the job you love without holding it up to a future where it falls short. Face the people you love thinking not of how your face looks to them but of how beautiful their faces look to you. Allow yourself the freedom of not-knowing for a while. Move toward what you love without judgemnt. Follow your curiosity. You\u2019ll make your path by walking it.<\/p>\n

\u2014CS<\/p>\n

*<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dear Poetry Rx,<\/em><\/p>\n

When I was a child, blissful as could be in the ocean, my parents would stand on the shore frantically waving their hands, urging me to come in closer.\u00a0 Any time they looked away for a moment, I stole another length of sea and happily drifted a bit farther out. Now, at thirty-two years old, I have found myself moving back into my mother\u2019s home, of all places, for a myriad of reasons (health issues, career change, finances, et cetera). While I am grateful for her welcoming me back, it is hard to not feel like I have failed in my quest for independence, adventure, and distance. I need a poem to remind me that the girl who had no fear of sharks or riptides still lives inside me. That as stuck as I may feel, the ocean and all the faraway land masses still call to me, just as loudly as they ever did. That even if there is no shoreline in sight on the other side of the water, one most certainly awaits. That above all else I still have my feet.<\/em>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Sincerely,
\n<\/em>Sneaky Swimmer<\/em><\/p>\n

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

Dear Sneaky Swimmer,<\/p>\n

When I read your beautiful letter, I thought immediately of Ad\u00e9lia Prado\u2019s \u201cLesson<\/a>,\u201d translated by Ellen Dor\u00e9 Watson, whose blissful opening scene reminded me of yours:<\/p>\n

It was a shadowy yard, walled high with stones.
\nThe trees held early apples, dark
\nwine-colored skin, the perfected flavor of things
\nripe before their time.
\nClay jugs sat alongside the wall
\nI ate apples and sipped the purest water<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The lines I love most:<\/p>\n

Then my father appeared and tweaked my nose,
\nand he wasn\u2019t sick and hadn\u2019t died either;
\nthat\u2019s why he was laughing, blood
\nstirring in his face again,
\nhe was hunting for ways to spend this happiness<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

These lines teach me something about what poetry can do\u2014hold what will be against what has been so that the past is made present again, this time shimmering with the veneer of loss. And in gathering the past and the present, the lesson promised in the title emerges:<\/p>\n

I always dream something\u2019s taking shape,
\nnothing is ever dead.
\nWhat seems to have died fertilizes.
\nWhat seems motionless waits.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The girl who stole another length of sea isn\u2019t gone; she\u2019s becoming. What sent you home is the same current that you rode out into the ocean, all those years ago: you\u2019ve always known exactly where you needed to be. You are still swimming. The tide came in. It will go back out, and you\u2019ll drift far from shore once again.<\/p>\n

\u2014CS<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/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","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dear Poets,\u00a0My hands are raw from washing, and I can\u2019t stop refreshing the news. Do you have a poem that reminds us how to stay close to one another while we\u2019re all \u201cpracticing social distancing\u201d? <\/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":[],"class_list":["post-143526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry-rx"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nPoetry Rx: Poems for Social Distancing by Claire Schwartz<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"March 12, 2020 \u2013 Dear Poets,\u00a0My hands are raw from washing, and I can\u2019t stop refreshing the news. 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