Poems Speak to Poems
Kay Ryan's selected poems, The Best of It, came out in 2010 and I've had it since then. It's easy to make a case for owning poetry books, because they speak to things in different ways through time, poems do. There will be poems you sort of skip over when you first read them, but then when you take the book off the shelf a year later, wow, that's the one that comes to the forefront. It was like this with the Ryan book a couple of days ago for me, and with this next poem.
Winter Fear
by Kay Ryan
Is it just winter
or is this worse.
Is this the year
when outer damp
obscures a deeper curse
that spring can't fix,
when gears that
turn the earth
won't shift the view,
when clouds won't lift
though all the skies
go blue.
The poem has always been more about the winter season, but now it speaks to the day, also. Poems are like this. They can see into the future.
But the poem shouldn't be read in isolation. Just keep turning the pages of the book, and this next poem answers.
Tenderness and Rot
by Kay Ryan
Tenderness and rot
share a border.
And rot is an
aggressive neighbor
whose iridescence
keeps creeping over.
No lessons
can be drawn
from this however.
One is not
two countries.
One is not meat
corrupting.
It is important
to stay sweet
and loving.
I think that can't be emphasized enough.
“It is important
to stay sweet
and loving. ”
It is important to stay sweet and loving.
I don't think I'm naive in saying that tenderness will prevail. Robert Bly said: “I am proud only of those days that pass in undivided tenderness.”
I don't think we have a choice. We need to come away from the rot, and the cold, and the unkindnesses with more tenderness, not less.
