"how often and how well"

poetry of life and death

Dear friends,

I enjoyed your pantoums so much — thank you for writing and reading and commenting on them. Forgive me for repeating myself, but I find that poetic forms can be a vast repository of psychological containment: their patterns and demands reveal unseen patterns back to us when we put language in their constraints.

The next season of Poetry Unbound starts tomorrow. We’ll have eight weeks of episodes, Mondays and Fridays. Making episodes of Poetry Unbound is a joy for us, and any time any of you writes to us, or comes up at an event, and shares how you met a poem with your own life, or wrote a poem inspired by one you heard, or have begun reading poetry more regularly, or — as someone wrote the other day — found the doors of poetry open to them, it makes my day. Thank you.

Long Island City, November 2024. Photo by Pádraig Ó Tuama.

I am lucky to have grown up in a culture where poetry was marked as a way of speaking to questions of culture, history, power, independence, nature, language, resistance, joy and grief. I didn’t know that this was what I was learning, but I was. The poems we’ve chosen for you in this new season of Poetry Unbound go across a wide variety of tones and topics, some very well known poets and others who deserve to be well known. One of the episodes this coming week is on W.S. Merwin’s poem “For the Anniversary of My Death” where he recognises that in all his years (and he lived into his 90s) he has passed by what will be the anniversary of his own death. He, a man with longstanding Buddhist meditation practice, takes the opportunity to look at this. He writes:

“...Then I will no longer

Find myself in life as in a strange garment…”

[From “For the Anniversary of My Death,” W.S. Merwin from The Second Four Books of Poems published by Copper Canyon Press]

It’s a moving meditation, one written from the vantage point of not-knowing and trying — with his punctuation-free language that became a hallmark of his mid and late career — to look at time and dates and place, knowing what he can see, and seeing all that he cannot know.

It’s impossible to think of this poem today and not consider Renée Nicole Macklin Good who was killed this week in Minneapolis by an ICE agent. As a younger person she’d travelled to Northern Ireland on church trips, and she was also a poet. In 2020 she won an award from the Academy of American Poets for her poem “On Learning to Dissect Fetal Pigs,” the last lines of which are:

“…now i can’t believe—

that the bible and qur’an and bhagavad gita are sliding long hairs behind my ear like 
mom used to & exhaling from their mouths “make room for wonder”—

all my understanding dribbles down the chin onto the chest & is summarized as:

life is merely

to ovum and sperm

and where those two meet

and how often and how well

and what dies there.”

Like many people, I have read these lines this week, thinking about how Renée Nicole Macklin Good spoke for herself. Her own words, her own consideration about religion, life, meaning, importance, the memories she used, “sliding long hairs behind my ear like mom used to,” to guide and make meaning and art and message.

This, too, is a poem about how we live, “how often and how well,” and also “what dies there.” It is brutal to think of her life — and the live of many others too — so viciously taken from her and them.

It is a sombre time to think of poems of life and death. And poetry is capable of carrying us with sombre language. Poetry does not make promises, and it does not seek to solve. Poetry is a place where sharp turns of language can exist alongside metaphors of sweet love. Poetry changes time and time changes poetry: we read both of these poems differently now that we know both poets have died; though the death of one was merciful, and the other was merciless. We see that clearly too.

What can we say to each other today? Let us share moments of power that you saw in the life of another: courage, compassion, creativity, resistance, truth, dismissal, refocus. It seems to me that this is one of the things Renée Nicole Macklin Good inferred with those lines: “life is merely / to ovum and sperm / and where those two meet / and how often and how well / and what dies there.”

I’ll see you in the comments, friends.

PS: Our first episode of this new season is by the magnificent Kimberly Blaeser, and is titled “my journal records the vestiture of doppelgangers” — I’ll look forward to writing about that wonder-filled poem next week.

---

The Latest from Poetry Unbound

Bonus Episode: “Poetry Unbound in Conversation — Marie Howe”

You can also listen on Spotify, poetryunbound.org, or wherever podcasts are found.

---

Poetry in the World

A list of my events: Online and in the US (Minneapolis, MN; Berkeley, CA; Washington, DC; Manhattan, Kingston, and Rhinebeck, NY; Orlando, FL; Notre Dame, IN) and the UK (Iona, Scotland)

---

January 12, Online

Save the date for an online conversation between me and poet and novelist Reshma Ruia. (For more info, click on the date heading.)

---

January 16, Minneapolis, Minnesota

Come join me at the Hope Arts Center, where I’ll give a reading followed by a conversation with poet G.E. Patterson and a book signing. It all begins at 7 p.m. (For more info and to secure your tickets, click on the date heading.)

---

January 17, Minneapolis, Minnesota

I’m leading a generative workshop on the space between poetry and prayer at The Loft Literary Center at 10 a.m. (For more info and to secure your tickets, click on the date heading.)

---

January 18, Saint Paul, Minnesota

Join me at Gloria Dei Lutheran Church, we’ll be reading, writing, and discussing poems together, beginning at 3:00 p.m. (For more info, click on the date heading.)

---

January 29, Berkeley, California

I’ll be presenting an evening keynote at The Center for Faith and Justice. (For more info, click on the date heading.)

---

January 31, Palo Alto, California

I’ll be leading a morning retreat at All Saints Episcopal Church, beginning at 10:00 a.m. (For more info, click on the date heading.)

---

February 2, Washington, District of Columbia, and Online

Join poet Marilyn Nelson and me for a conversation at the Washington National Cathedral at 7 p.m ET. (For more info, click on the date heading.)

---

February 11, Online

I’m directing an evening workshop on lyric address through Poets House, beginning at 6:00 p.m. (for more info, click on the date heading.)

---

February 19, Manhattan, New York

I’m giving a lecture on storytelling and narrative poetry at The Morgan Library at 6:30 p.m. (For more info, click on the date heading.)

---

February 24, Orlando, Florida

I’m giving a keynote address at Training Magazine’s annual exposition. (For more info, click on the date heading.)

---

February 26–March 1, Kingston, New York

I’m leading a weekend retreat workshop called “Poems of Longing”. (For more info, click on the date heading.)

---

April 23, Notre Dame, Indiana

I’ll be giving the keynote for a symposium at the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art. (For more info, click on the date heading.)

---

May 31–June 5, Rhinebeck, New York

This spring, I’m leading a six-day workshop at the Omega Institute. We’ll read and examine poems and also write and discuss our own. I’d love to see you there. (For more info, click on the date heading.)

---

June 27–July 3, Iona, Scotland

Krista and I will be leading a week of conversation (with some musical guests) on Iona, an island off an island off the west coast of Scotland. It is filled, but if you want to be on a waiting list, you can email the Saint Columba hotel by clicking on the title just above here. (For more info, click on the date heading.)