I came across the poet Tom Snarsky on Instagram, as one does. And he shares the poems of others, that act of generosity, as a lot of poets do. Which doesn’t honestly always work for me — I end up skimming past a lot of poets who do same because it’s a lot of the same stuff, or stuff I’ve read before and loved and don’t want to read in an Instagram setting. But Snarsky’s posts almost always stop me in my tracks. He shares a lot of poets I’ve never heard of and then I go and seek out further. And funnily, he himself, is one of those who I ended up seeking out off of Ig — his books. Reclaimed Water and Light-Up Swan.

I’m always a sucker for a short, seemingly simple poem, and from Light-Up Swan we have this, p. 46:

“You can’t spell problem
without poem

& also some rubble
to sift through”

_____________________

Like kill me now. That poem is worth the price of admission right heckin’ there. Love that.

In another poem, “Water Task” he writes:

“In this performance art thing I’m working on

Everybody in the city with a music tattoo goes up

In front of a concert pianist

(The concert pianist is Mr. Field from Kate Kilalea’s novel
OK, Mr Field)

And the pianist plays all the music tattoos in sequence”

Another favourite untitled poem ends:

“Painting is an extended metaphor for
sleeping, which is half of what paint does.

The other half is waiting for light.”

And this works for me, quite nicely indeed.

There are some longer pieces in Reclaimed Water that I very much admired. I had just heard the riddle about the green glass door (went viral on booktok because it’s used in a YA book I think? who can keep up with all the things?), and his poem is a great take on it. For example, “Plainness, but not ostentation. Renaissance, but not Baroque. Camille Rankine, but not Claudia Rankine. Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge, but not (why not??) Wanda Coleman.” Etc. A lot of fun, as you can see.

Another poem that hit hard this week was one by Jeannine Hall Gailey, titled, “When I Thought I was Dying.” And here it is found on Prairie Schooner via Project Muse:

When I Thought I Was Dying

It was easy to love things. Birds, the flutter of branches, my husband who always has to be right.

I thought, I will lose all of this. I hugged my cats more. I watched less television, except for comedies, which drugged

me to sleep at night. Stupid 1950s sci-fi films, especially. Maybe I loved them too. I loved poetry and wrote almost every day,

thinking, I do not have time to write. The lights would flicker and threaten outages. How like our bodies these power lines are,

reliable until they are not: eaten by rats or rammed by cars at random. You see how I thought everything was profound: my Netflix

recommendations, passing a woman on the street and smiling at each other. I ate a lot more pancakes, something I hadn't done since childhood.

I thought, maybe there will be a miracle. Maybe I will have more time. A temporary grant of extension. I will still do taxes and fill out forms

at the doctor's office. I will have time to be mad at traffic. I will stop petting random dogs. I will have time to stop

noticing when the hummingbird or deer or Steller's jay pauses to look in my eyes, that moment before. That's the thing

about having time. You miss so much.

I keep running into that truth that we have, what, maybe 80 summers? And those of us in our 50s, say, how many do we have? Last week I attended the memorial of someone who left us far too soon. (You might have seen my post on FB). It wrecked me, and I can’t imagine how it would wreck those even closer. It’s too hard; it’s too much. And yet.

The message: love things. Love things. Love. Things. And do not waste time.

I’ve been asking myself of late, what are the offices of poetry?

Mainly I love that phrase: the offices of poetry. And that is the question for today’s poetry book club. What do you find to be the offices of poetry? What are its uses, its kindnesses?

In a post from five years! back, I quoted W.S. Di Piero from his notebooks, and I love what he says:

“The offices of poetry. To use shapely speech to express the radicals of existence in all their ambiguity. To answer idiosyncratically, privately, to a public world given over to falsehood, fake facts, scuzzy rumour, casual murderousness, comedic denials, manic vicious wind tunnel ideologies. To answer palsied language with vital language, plasticity, gaiety of invention and fabulation, over against opportunistic mendacity. If poetry can’t or chooses not to, reveal what it feels like to live as a sentient being in a perilous enchanted world, then maybe it really is marginal or beside the point.”

Even smudgy poetry is more vital than everyday speech. For days after being at the memorial my senses were super heightened, and I wanted “shapely speech” and I wanted to write, yell! about how perilous the world is, even while knowing, still, how enchanted it is. This absurd ongoing contradiction of existence.

At a memorial, you feel like you’re still in communication with the loved one. They’re still on the line, holding. Or you are. But is it them or just you? I wrote this:

The dead

only have one word
you know it’s a fraud or a scam when they call you and ask
what is your street address
or when they ask for your SIN or could you make one last bank transfer on their behalf.
The dead only have one word.

Live.

You might know the line by Phyllis Webb, “the proper response to a poem is another poem.” And I think being in the presence of poetry as a usual part of your reading life helps you respond to the poem of life.

What problems does a poem solve? Can we wait for the light together through a poem?

If you have time and enjoy Jane Austen, you might like to take a look at this piece I wrote for a cool series Sarah Emsley has put together this summer titled, “A Summer Party for Sense and Sensibility.”

For all in the Poetry Club category, go here.

Also: quiet Tip Jar reminder :)

August 21, 2024