The poetry of gesture
What’s the opposite of an empty gesture? A full one? An overflowing one?
Dear friends,
Today, I will go from Texas (where I’ve been sharing some poetry at a conference) to Oklahoma. I’ve never been to Oklahoma before, and my longstanding and immediate association with that state is the Choctaw Nation. The Choctaw Nation aren’t only based in (what is now called) Oklahoma: alongside the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, there is also the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and the Jena Band of Choctaw Indians in Louisiana. And, of course, there are many other Indigenous Nations whose homeland Oklahoma is, too.
In 1847, when Ireland was gripped by what we call The Great Starvation (there was plenty of food in Ireland; the occupying powers were shipping it out to other places for profit; ships often being loaded with food by starving people), the Choctaw Nation sent a donation of $170 dollars for the relief of the hunger.
$170 dollars. That is a lot of money.
This was a mere sixteen years after the Choctaw Nation had been afflicted with displacement and war through the Trail of Tears.
There has been increasing connection between Ireland and the Choctaw Nation in the decades since: recently scholarships, exchanges, and dialogues have taken place. There’s a gorgeous sculpture by Alex Pentek near Midleton in Co. Cork honouring the generous donation made during a time of turmoil. Troubled people to troubled people. All gestures have limits: and this one did not alleviate the problem, but it was a reaching out, an attempt. We say comhartha for gesture in Irish — a sign, a characteristic.
They can add insult to injury.
What’s the opposite of an empty gesture, though? A full one? An overflowing one? A gesture filled up to the brim? With what?
Someone who had kicked me brutally — decades later — presented me with a pair of shoes. A beautiful pair of shoes. I wore them till the soles were as thin as paper. I hung them on the wall.
Sometimes I think a gesture is not full, or empty. It — like a poem — is a made-thing. Something small and made that continues to make: it does not change the past, but it tries to make something now. Maybe it’s a seed. Maybe it can grow. Maybe it can move from gesture to symbol to action to change.
I’m curious what gestures have shaped your life. What their smallness was then, and whether they proved to be meaningful as time and action and reflection occurred in their after.
Friends, I was so moved to read all the You comments last week. Yes. And I will look forward to the small stories of gesture (empty, full, planted, stilted, growing, changed) this week. Thank you.
PS: This week’s On Being interview is with the incomparable Latanya Sweeney — looking at the questions of character and power and population through the complicated lens of technology, AI, and what it reveals about us.
Poetry in the World
U.S.A.
Book Are Magic | Brooklyn, NY
On the 20th of November, I’ll be in conversation with the brilliant Nick Flynn on his new collection of poems, Low. Tickets are $10, and will include either a book copy or giftcard to the bookshop. We start at 7pm ET, and will also be live streamed on YouTube for those who are unable to join in person. Details and registration here.
EUROPE
Journeying Into the Common Good | Patmos, Greece
Together with Krista, Allison Russell, JT Nero, and Joe Henry, I’ll be one of the speakers at a small salon on the revelatory Greek island of Patmos next summer from June 27 - July 7. More details here.
Your post immediately brought to my mind Danusha Lameris' poem "Small Kindnesses". I keep it on the wall near my desk, to remind me to make a gesture once in a while myself. The smallest of gestures can be the fullest.
Small Kindnesses
I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat,” “Go ahead—you first,” “I like your hat.”
From Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection (Green Writers Press, 2019).
In by best and very limited French, I told the two women I'd approached on the grounds of the cathedral in Lausanne, Switzerland that we were lost and needed to find our hotel. The day was hot, the hike had been longer than we'd anticipated. It was the end of the afternoon. "Weary" barely captures our condition in that moment. They both spoke English and without hesitation they guided us down back streets, took us on a subway and walked us to our hotel. The lively conversation took our minds off our aching feet and hips. At one point, I asked what they had been doing that afternoon. Evelyn looked at me and said, "We were waiting for you." The fullness of this gesture still brings me to tears.