A Day is a Bowl, or, How and Why I’m Reading Poetry Now
Does the how of reading poetry change? Through time, through your life, because of external forces, internal ones? It’s poetry month and I find myself thinking about poetry as a vessel, and coming back to the book by Jane Hirshfield — Ledger.
There is a poem in Ledger, titled, “The Bowl,” and it’s a good one:
The Bowl
by Jane Hirshfield
If meat is put into the bowl, meat is eaten.
If rice is put into the bowl, it may be cooked.
If a shoe is put into the bowl,
the leather is chewed and chewed over,
a sentence that cannot be taken in or forgotten.
A day, if a day could feel, must feel like a bowl.
Wars, loves, trucks, betrayals, kindness,
it eats them.
Then the next day comes, spotless and hungry.
The bowl cannot be thrown away.
It cannot be broken.
It is calm, uneclipsable, rindless,
and, big though it seems, fits exactly in two human hands.
Hands with ten fingers,
fifty-four bones,
capacities strange to us almost past measure.
Scented—as the curve of the bowl is—
with cardamom, star anise, long pepper, cinnamon, hyssop.
The day is a bowl, the bowl is a day, a poem is a bowl. The bowl fills, the bowl empties. Hungry, sated, the bowl goes back and forth. The bowl is endless; the bowl is eternal.
I read poetry to fill up, to empty. I read it with affection, with dismay. I read calmly, for calm, and sometimes for sorrow. I read to feel and to let someone else do the feeling for me. I read for mystery, to not know, to sit and howl in the not knowing, to steep in it, and I read for clarity and understanding and for the shock and howl of that too.
I read poetry to be mindful, to be attentive, to sharpen my perception, to exult in the mathematics and angles and angels of the soul. I read poetry to love, be loved, to feel seen, to see what I did not see. For the unexpected, and the ordinary enlivened. I read poetry to glimpse eternity, to be grounded, to stretch, to remember, to forget, to be grateful. I read poetry to be in the presence of elegance and intellect. I read poetry for brightness in the dark, and for shadows in the blinding sun. I read it for compassion and for the evidence of empathy. I read it for sparks and for soothing sounds. I read poetry for the weather report and the news and for the history and blues. I read poetry for quick wit, for dry humour. For the smallest moments, the largest. For that thing you would never have thought about otherwise. I read poetry because the days race by. I read poetry to slow things down, to speed things up. I want my life to be poetry; I read poetry!
How do I read poetry now? The same as before, but also it feels different, more imperative. I read a poem that arrives in my email, I read a poem on Twitter, I read a poem in the morning from a book that calls to me from my bookshelf while I have my first cup of coffee. I peel an orange and remember that poem about oranges and go searching for it, often finding three other poems in the meantime. I sit in the backyard, and remember Charles Wright. I see a painting by Vermeer and look at the Zagajewski poem. This poet leads me to that poet. I read a line I underlined in one book which takes me to a line I underlined and circled in another book. I dog-ear one poem and then another. Some days I read all the dogeared poems. Sometimes I turn to a page I’ve forgotten.
I forget what I love, and go to find it in a poem. I am at a loss. I am sanguine. I am losing my confidence. I feel gaslighted. I am dismayed by the world. I need joy. I am unsettled. I go to poetry. I miss beauty. I miss you. I feel alone. I hate. I feel poisoned. Poetry. Poetry. Poetry.
I don’t know what to do with my life. I don’t want change; I do want change. I want light and I want integrity. I want sense and intelligent thought and delight. I want hope. I want commiseration and I want good trouble and I want to be roused. I want the exquisite. I want fun. I don’t want to be told. I don’t want unrest. I want play. I am exhausted. I am foggy. But I am bold. Poetry, I tell you, poetry.
I want a drinky-drink and a thinky-think. I want to read poems that “look like a glass of water but turn out to be gin.” (Andrew Motion).
I want company. I want to be alone. I want to be awake. I want to feel alive. I want to be astonished. Poetry poetry poetry poetry poetry.
What poetry will you put in your bowl?
April 16, 2022
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