When I read this question I thought immediately to latest poem on Poetry Unbound, "What's Kept Alive," and my reaction to it. I loved the poem and the discussion about it. It's beautiful, the love in it is so full and deep. I could feel the joy of that love. And I also felt achingly sad. I was lying in bed as I listened, and tears rolled into my ears.
And that, for me, is the fundamental tension-- between joy and deep sorrow. Strangely, perhaps, the doorway to joy is most accessible to me through sadness and sorrow. It's the tragedy in my life, that I carry every day, that has broken my heart open. I'm learning to welcome the joy through the cracks. The poems I love the most bow deeply to both joy and sorrow. They hold that tension.
the tension that arises in me as i plunge into poetry is a tension similar to that of pulling back a slingshot... with every word, i feel myself being pulled further and further back until finally, i am launched into an unimaginable place, a journey, a wild beginning... sometimes it is pleasant, other times it is not.
it’s like the tension one might feel before sitting to meditate. you’re nervous about what thoughts might arise and what new things you might discover about yourself.
A quote from The English Patient movie best describes the tension of poetry and beyond for me, remembering that poetry pulsates life—“When were you the happiest? he asks. “Now,” she replies. “When were you the saddest? he asks. “Now,” she replies.
For me, poetry is vulnerability. The tension between wanting to be truly "seen," and the quiet fear of feeling exposed. Pushing past my edges to find the tenderness.
It does take courage to sit in that in between space- that tension - the exact space between, the joy of being hidden and the great sadness of never being found - in that space, courage, motivation and hope is birthed - if we lean into the fear and listen to it’s wish for us - that’s the sweet tension.
there used to be these books, which I can't seem to find anywhere anymore, where there would be a picture, like a painting, say of the woods, but then if you were able to soft-focus your eyes in some particular, but unknowable-to-me way, you would go further into the picture and see a whole other world. Sometimes placing a piece of clear glass over the image would help, sometimes not. I have this tension with poetry, this knowing there is more to understand, to "see" beyond the words as they are laid on the page, and I feel blocked with the tension of not knowing exactly how to "un-focus" my pre-conceptions, or my lack of conceptions to be able to see what is there. Each time you, Padraig, "un-pack" a poem, I'm like, Of Course! This! and This! and This! but I'm lucky if on my own, I can find one thing to un-pack, to go, Ah, This! at least once. The other tension I hold is when I do "get" a poem and love it so much and want to share it, and people don't get it that much, or have time to have a conversation about it. How fast people jump from one thing to the next without allowing for a moment of "un-focus" and what might arise from that... A million thank you's for all this, and for your questions. Bowing to you. Love, Gayle
In my first career, I was a ballet dancer. Mastering the technique and the repertory was the part of it where you were in control but when you stepped through the wings in performance, you stepped into the unpredictable that happens in the interaction/tension with an audience and your “control” was shared with them. I find the same control and unbounded tension in my life as an ethnographer working now for more than 50 years with the Zapotec of Oaxaca, Mexico. I can define more or less what I see and hear and do but their stories are theirs and what is created is only partly mine. Writing poetry has the same tension for me. I may have an idea of where I want to go but find words and lines coming unbidden that change the course of the poem—I listen to those words and lines.
These tensions and surprises are often the heart of poetry. I want to suggest just one that caught me by surprise and still does each time I read it. It is from Seamus Heaney’s Postscript. The poem is a marvelous description of taking a drive out to the Clare coast, of all that one might see. But ends with the unpredictable last two lines:
“As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.” Heaney, Postscript.
Oh my, this could be a long comment for sure. iI is this very tension that brings me to poetry, both to read and to write. It's being brought to learn something and then to unlearn it at the same time. And this happens in a different way each time I read a poem. For me, this tension is also about being in connection with others who are reading the same poem, because we are in the mystical place where our prayers bring us, and we are there together, soul to soul. I can't think of a thing more wonderful!
For me the tension in poetry is music. The tension between sound and silence, word and space. It is how they work and play together to reach raw truths and connect them with transcendent meanings. Ultimately the tension in poetry to me is the attempt of words and their music to deeply respect space and silence. That is where I find a fierce humility before life's tender mysteries: The tension between poignant glimpses of life's possibilities and insufficencies. Poetry, like music is always inadequate to the task and that is also what makes it so wholly magnificent. In judaism we call this keva קבע and kavana כונה- the tension between structure and spirit. Keva is what I often hear you Padraig refer to as a container. I love our human capacity to find containers which help express and give form to the spirit of things.
The tension between getting down to the blood and bones of it...and drifting off into the ether.
Also, to quote Rilke, translated by Robert Bly: "Take your well-disciplined strengths and stretch them between two opposing poles. Because inside human beings is where God learns."
I think for me, I find tension in the space around poetry:
I am drawn to write poems in large expansive places, on top of hills high up, or where I can see until the horizon. In theses places there is such a sense of space, of openness and freedom.
But what I write in these places comes from such a precise space; a memory, a feeling, a moment. Something that is so contained, asks for the word that might bring it into life.
So as I write each word I am aware of the tension between the massive and the compact. But I find the words almost feel like they are challenging any sense of discomfort in that tension. Like a bridge connecting two senses of space.
I wonder if the existential tension you beautifully depict is a variation of the ontological tension between identity and difference, being and becoming, immanence and transcendence at the paradoxical heart of being human? Are we not always until death do us part creatures of earth mingled with star-dust?
Most recently, my poems have centered on my aging parents—longing for who they once were and grief over their inevitable deaths. The tension surfaces when presence grabs the other end of the rope—the side of me that insists on loving them as they are now, the side that insists I enjoy the time we still have left.
Some days it's an exhausting tug-of-war and other days, the flag sags over the puddle of mud while my two selves catch their breath. Regardless of how messy things become, poetry is always willing to host the match.
We stay, we wander, it’s all part of The Journey. Our poetry, our lives, reflect it all…joys and gratitude, lamentation and sorrow. (While I am outgoing introvert, I do enjoy and find comfort in my obscurity.) Everything has shaped us, but we must choose to embrace it…poetry helps us choose. }:- a.m.
Oh gosh. What a timely question. I've been struggling in recent weeks with your reading of David Whyte's "Leaving The Island". Not struggling with it as in... I didn't like your reading of it. Quite to the contrary. It made me realize that there is some poetry that I have a hard time accessing, and some poetry that I find immediately accessible. Recently I realized that there is a tension for me between the written language of the poem and the voice of the poem - or of the poet. I had a difficult time enjoying the poems in "The Bell and The Blackbird", but your reading brought me back to it. In short, I began reading it in your voice, Padraig, and BANG... it was newly accessible. I've heard David Whyte read many times, especially on On Being, and yet his voice did not work for me.
I had a similar but different experience in the last few years with Ada Limon. When I first began reading "Pretty Dead Things" I couldn't quite get it right in my head. I liked the language but couldn't here the voice in the poem. Then Ada took over on the Slow Down for Tracy K Smith and I began to absorb her voice through daily listening. Eventually I went back to Pretty Dead Things and could newly access it. What is this all about? Is it as odd as it seems if I access a poem through the voice of someone else or through the voice of that poet - rather than my own? I confess I feel a little guilty about this. It's not universal with every poet that I read. For example I don't have this issue with W.S. Merwin or Arthur Sze or Chrystal Williams or Donika Kelly... Help! What should I make of this?
When I read this question I thought immediately to latest poem on Poetry Unbound, "What's Kept Alive," and my reaction to it. I loved the poem and the discussion about it. It's beautiful, the love in it is so full and deep. I could feel the joy of that love. And I also felt achingly sad. I was lying in bed as I listened, and tears rolled into my ears.
And that, for me, is the fundamental tension-- between joy and deep sorrow. Strangely, perhaps, the doorway to joy is most accessible to me through sadness and sorrow. It's the tragedy in my life, that I carry every day, that has broken my heart open. I'm learning to welcome the joy through the cracks. The poems I love the most bow deeply to both joy and sorrow. They hold that tension.
the tension that arises in me as i plunge into poetry is a tension similar to that of pulling back a slingshot... with every word, i feel myself being pulled further and further back until finally, i am launched into an unimaginable place, a journey, a wild beginning... sometimes it is pleasant, other times it is not.
it’s like the tension one might feel before sitting to meditate. you’re nervous about what thoughts might arise and what new things you might discover about yourself.
A quote from The English Patient movie best describes the tension of poetry and beyond for me, remembering that poetry pulsates life—“When were you the happiest? he asks. “Now,” she replies. “When were you the saddest? he asks. “Now,” she replies.
For me, poetry is vulnerability. The tension between wanting to be truly "seen," and the quiet fear of feeling exposed. Pushing past my edges to find the tenderness.
It does take courage to sit in that in between space- that tension - the exact space between, the joy of being hidden and the great sadness of never being found - in that space, courage, motivation and hope is birthed - if we lean into the fear and listen to it’s wish for us - that’s the sweet tension.
there used to be these books, which I can't seem to find anywhere anymore, where there would be a picture, like a painting, say of the woods, but then if you were able to soft-focus your eyes in some particular, but unknowable-to-me way, you would go further into the picture and see a whole other world. Sometimes placing a piece of clear glass over the image would help, sometimes not. I have this tension with poetry, this knowing there is more to understand, to "see" beyond the words as they are laid on the page, and I feel blocked with the tension of not knowing exactly how to "un-focus" my pre-conceptions, or my lack of conceptions to be able to see what is there. Each time you, Padraig, "un-pack" a poem, I'm like, Of Course! This! and This! and This! but I'm lucky if on my own, I can find one thing to un-pack, to go, Ah, This! at least once. The other tension I hold is when I do "get" a poem and love it so much and want to share it, and people don't get it that much, or have time to have a conversation about it. How fast people jump from one thing to the next without allowing for a moment of "un-focus" and what might arise from that... A million thank you's for all this, and for your questions. Bowing to you. Love, Gayle
In my first career, I was a ballet dancer. Mastering the technique and the repertory was the part of it where you were in control but when you stepped through the wings in performance, you stepped into the unpredictable that happens in the interaction/tension with an audience and your “control” was shared with them. I find the same control and unbounded tension in my life as an ethnographer working now for more than 50 years with the Zapotec of Oaxaca, Mexico. I can define more or less what I see and hear and do but their stories are theirs and what is created is only partly mine. Writing poetry has the same tension for me. I may have an idea of where I want to go but find words and lines coming unbidden that change the course of the poem—I listen to those words and lines.
These tensions and surprises are often the heart of poetry. I want to suggest just one that caught me by surprise and still does each time I read it. It is from Seamus Heaney’s Postscript. The poem is a marvelous description of taking a drive out to the Clare coast, of all that one might see. But ends with the unpredictable last two lines:
“As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.” Heaney, Postscript.
Thank you for raising these questions!
Anya Royce
Oh my, this could be a long comment for sure. iI is this very tension that brings me to poetry, both to read and to write. It's being brought to learn something and then to unlearn it at the same time. And this happens in a different way each time I read a poem. For me, this tension is also about being in connection with others who are reading the same poem, because we are in the mystical place where our prayers bring us, and we are there together, soul to soul. I can't think of a thing more wonderful!
For me the tension in poetry is music. The tension between sound and silence, word and space. It is how they work and play together to reach raw truths and connect them with transcendent meanings. Ultimately the tension in poetry to me is the attempt of words and their music to deeply respect space and silence. That is where I find a fierce humility before life's tender mysteries: The tension between poignant glimpses of life's possibilities and insufficencies. Poetry, like music is always inadequate to the task and that is also what makes it so wholly magnificent. In judaism we call this keva קבע and kavana כונה- the tension between structure and spirit. Keva is what I often hear you Padraig refer to as a container. I love our human capacity to find containers which help express and give form to the spirit of things.
The tension between getting down to the blood and bones of it...and drifting off into the ether.
Also, to quote Rilke, translated by Robert Bly: "Take your well-disciplined strengths and stretch them between two opposing poles. Because inside human beings is where God learns."
I think for me, I find tension in the space around poetry:
I am drawn to write poems in large expansive places, on top of hills high up, or where I can see until the horizon. In theses places there is such a sense of space, of openness and freedom.
But what I write in these places comes from such a precise space; a memory, a feeling, a moment. Something that is so contained, asks for the word that might bring it into life.
So as I write each word I am aware of the tension between the massive and the compact. But I find the words almost feel like they are challenging any sense of discomfort in that tension. Like a bridge connecting two senses of space.
I wonder if the existential tension you beautifully depict is a variation of the ontological tension between identity and difference, being and becoming, immanence and transcendence at the paradoxical heart of being human? Are we not always until death do us part creatures of earth mingled with star-dust?
Most recently, my poems have centered on my aging parents—longing for who they once were and grief over their inevitable deaths. The tension surfaces when presence grabs the other end of the rope—the side of me that insists on loving them as they are now, the side that insists I enjoy the time we still have left.
Some days it's an exhausting tug-of-war and other days, the flag sags over the puddle of mud while my two selves catch their breath. Regardless of how messy things become, poetry is always willing to host the match.
We stay, we wander, it’s all part of The Journey. Our poetry, our lives, reflect it all…joys and gratitude, lamentation and sorrow. (While I am outgoing introvert, I do enjoy and find comfort in my obscurity.) Everything has shaped us, but we must choose to embrace it…poetry helps us choose. }:- a.m.
Debussy said music is the space between the notes. Is poetry the space between the words, the tension between the known and the unknowable?
Oh gosh. What a timely question. I've been struggling in recent weeks with your reading of David Whyte's "Leaving The Island". Not struggling with it as in... I didn't like your reading of it. Quite to the contrary. It made me realize that there is some poetry that I have a hard time accessing, and some poetry that I find immediately accessible. Recently I realized that there is a tension for me between the written language of the poem and the voice of the poem - or of the poet. I had a difficult time enjoying the poems in "The Bell and The Blackbird", but your reading brought me back to it. In short, I began reading it in your voice, Padraig, and BANG... it was newly accessible. I've heard David Whyte read many times, especially on On Being, and yet his voice did not work for me.
I had a similar but different experience in the last few years with Ada Limon. When I first began reading "Pretty Dead Things" I couldn't quite get it right in my head. I liked the language but couldn't here the voice in the poem. Then Ada took over on the Slow Down for Tracy K Smith and I began to absorb her voice through daily listening. Eventually I went back to Pretty Dead Things and could newly access it. What is this all about? Is it as odd as it seems if I access a poem through the voice of someone else or through the voice of that poet - rather than my own? I confess I feel a little guilty about this. It's not universal with every poet that I read. For example I don't have this issue with W.S. Merwin or Arthur Sze or Chrystal Williams or Donika Kelly... Help! What should I make of this?