Dear friends. Dear, dear friends.
"I’ve been a good friend. A bad friend. I’ve intervened, and I haven’t."
Dear friends,
In Irish, when you address a crowd of people, you don’t say the equivalent of “Ladies and Gentlemen,” you say “A chairde,” which addresses a crowd as “friends” (for those interested, the ‘a’ is the vocative case). Friends! I’ve always loved that. Such a convention isn’t limited to Irish, of course. I had a dear friend who died shortly before Covid, a proud Scot, whose “Friends” — with an elongated ‘ɛ’ sound after that tapped ‘r’ — was a joy to hear.
Our poems on Poetry Unbound this week are on the theme of friendship. Monday’s poem — “Eva Whose Shadow Is a Swan” by Dunya Mikhail is an elegant poem that spans decades, wrapping a friendship between two people separated by culture and age in the simplicity of postcards and irreplaceability of love. Friday’s poem, “Self-Care” by Solmaz Sharif looks at the marketing of friendship-with-self. Friendship with self is vital, but when it’s used as a tactic for distraction or capitalism, it’s as hollow as it is commodified. Some of what the poem praises probably works. Some of it definitely doesn’t. The knife-edge of her poem felt right to broadcast on a day often called “Black Friday” where gifting is the carrot that taunts people to empty their wallets, on a day — globally now, it seems — where economics seems to whitewash over the pasts of countries that have been irrevocably altered by enmity, not friendship.
Friendship is the gift: with self, others, family, and chosen family. What is family anyway, but people who make family with each other, in all kinds of shapes. Over the last while I’ve had reason to rely on friends in ways that have been necessary. One friend phoned one day and said, “How are you? I’ve had a feeling you need to talk.” I hugged my best friend hello at an airport and then hugged him again immediately. And then again. I saw people smiling at us the way I’ve smiled when I see others greeting each other at bus stations or airports or street corners. Another friend sends a message after some weeks of silence. I’ve been a good friend. A bad friend. I’ve intervened, and I haven’t. Someone said to me, “I’ve never told you this before, but…” and someone else said, “I’ve always wanted to ask you… .” In my forties, I read articles about the necessity of relying on friendships. I’d be lost without them.
If you’re so inclined, I’d love to read snapshots of a friendship of yours. Just one sentence, about a particular moment — you don’t need to give context. You can simply drop us into a single moment of a friendship, a new one, or an old one. A poem often holds so much in what it doesn’t say, in how it conveys time and timelessness through the concrete description of a moment.
That’s the invitation: in simple language, without needing to explain, praise the praise of friendship through the poem of a sentence.
A poem can be a friend, too; in a different way to a person. But it is the heart of exploration and yearning and love and reminder that a poem can hold that makes me think of certain poems in the contexts of friendship; something I’ll return to again and again.
Friends, I’ll look forward to reading those, and to celebrating you and your friendship in the comments. Thank you, already. And I’ll look forward to seeing you at the online book launch of the US edition of Poetry Unbound (details for that below).
Pádraig
PS: I had a new poem published in Spiritus, a journal from Johns Hopkins University Press, this week, a poem of friendship. My old friend Glenn, a few weeks before died, phoned me to say, “The goldfinches are back!” In the first shock of grief, I turned to birds and animals to praise all he’d been for me and the cities that loved him.
I’m delighted to extend a warm welcome to our celebration of the arrival of Poetry Unbound: 50 Poems to Open Your World onto American bookshelves. And, we would love to include the voices of our wonderful Substack community in the launch. Send us a note at poetryunbound@onbeing.org with one sentence about a time when something from Poetry Unbound was meaningful to you — maybe how it opened something in your world.
3 pm PT / 5 pm CT / 6 pm ET / 11 pm GMT
Register right here
It would be a joy to have you with us.
And while you wait…
“Celebrating Rilke, on his birthday”
Sunday, December 4th
4pm - 5:30pm EST
Join me next weekend for a conversation with two wonderful people — Rilke scholar Mark Burrows, and journalist and writer Barbara Mahany for an event on the birthday of the late poet, Rainer Maria Rilke. We gather on Zoom, and it’s free to attend (what sort of birthday would that be, otherwise?). RSVP here, and you’ll receive the link to join in your inbox.
Dear friends. Dear, dear friends.
An hour before my first date in 10th grade my best friend lets me practice holding her hand and tells me, "It's not THAT clammy!"
Friendship - 'Who will come to my funeral?" I bellow to the wind - and a hundred leaves fall from the gambel oak on the hillside.