Dear friends,
The two poems on Poetry Unbound this week — “Replay” by Selina Nwulu and “Blouse” by Nithy Kasa — each deal with the past. The speaker in Selina Nwulu’s gorgeous, sensuous, sexy poem remembers being flirted with by other women, and wonders: what if a different life could have ensued, with a different direction of love, a different direction of being gazed upon, and gazing back, even gazing on herself? She looks at what might have been, like an old video tape, playing and rewinding and pausing and replaying.
And Nithy Kasa recalls a blouse, something like an heirloom… a blouse her grandmother had, which was subsequently passed on to her own mother. Now, a world away herself, and without the blouse — lost — she makes one herself, but modifies it, and feels the fabric of it on her own body as she wears it in front of a lover, recalling generations of her family in the past.
Time and the body. Sensory memory and the remnants of the imaginations of chances taken, or lamented. Each of these poems presents a sophisticated vision of how it is that large, universe-scale concepts like time are housed in the mind, in the craft of making, in the choices that are made, in the recurrences of imagination.
I am not someone who spends a lot of time in regret. I know that, no matter what I might fantasize about the past, I can’t change it.
While I try to avoid regret, I do spend time in the past: looking and looking and looking at what was done (by and for me; by and for others). Sometimes wondering. Sometimes worrying. “The Past is such a curious Creature” Emily Dickinson says, and I find Selina Nwulu and Nithy Kasa’s poems to each be explorations of this curious phenomenon of the past. A creature: looking back, blinking, alive, independent, breathing, asserting itself.
Decades ago, I made a choice about staying in a job. It was a job that brought many wonderful colleagues — plenty of whom I’m still in touch with — but it was a job that also demanded a cost: silence about sexuality; complicity in certitudes I didn’t conform to internally; an impoverished imagination about the “them” that were on the other side of the “us.” I look at that choice not with the luxury of regret, but with curiosity, wondering how it’s working its way out in me now, and how I can live with everything that was made alive by the choices.
That’s my question for you this week:
What’s your relationship with the past? How is it alive? How have you changed it, or tried to? How do you live now?
I’d love to hear this in stories, not theories — as much as you can bear to share.
Friends, thank you. And this letter praises the you that you are because of the pasts you’ve made it through: reveled in, regretted, or somewhere in between.
Pádraig
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Poetry in the World
England
The “You” of Prayer; the “You” of Poetry | London
Londoners, join me this Thursday, June 29 at the Meditatio Centre for an exploration of prayers and poems through the lens of the lyric address — the “you” at the heart of this most intimate of conversations. If you’re unable to join in person, there’s an online option (and a recording will be sent to all who register). 6:30-9pm, details and registration here.
Poetry Unbound at St. Luke’s | Brighton
This coming Friday, I’ll be in Brighton at St. Luke’s Prestonville for a reading and chat around the Poetry Unbound book. Would love to see you there: June 30, 7pm. Details and registration here.
U.S.A.
Open Your World with Poetry | Rhinebeck, NY
I’ll be back at the Omega Institute in New York leading another weeklong retreat, October 1-6. Discussions, readings, and writing sessions exploring the place of poetry, craft, language, and form in our lives. Each day, you’ll examine poems — some well known and other lesser known — and explore the artistry behind them. You’ll delve beyond the how of a poem and look at the why of a poem. Why did it need to be written? What does this poem explore about being human? What is the intuition and intelligence of this poem? What is its hunger? There’ll be prompts for you to respond to. Open for all who love writing or reading poetry — or want to! While the format and numbers will be similar to 2022’s event, we will include small groups, and the poems and prompts will be different to the previous year. Details, registration, and information about scholarships here.
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In my teens and early adulthood I had undiagnosed and untreated bipolar disorder. My life was full of good things, too, not just the difficult things. But when I was in college, I partied hard--in all of the ways that phrase can be used. I used to have so many regrets about the ways I sought relief and release from the effects of the gymnastics meets taking place in my mind, body, and soul.
After I had my own children, I learned how to give myself (and those earlier versions of myself) the same compassion and care I so easily gave to my daughter and son. Then, when my daughter was four years old and my son was two, I had a huge manic episode that required hospitalization in an inpatient psychiatric facility. I finally received the diagnosis, meds, therapy, and spiritual direction I'd needed for more than 15 years.
Madeleine L'Engle once said something like "we are all the ages we've ever been." I love that. I love that every version of me is still me. Now, memories of my partying self make me smile. I take a deep breath and honor that bright young woman who needed more care than she knew, more care than anyone knew. I lift my wine glass or coffee mug or LaCroix can to her and say, "Cheers. We got through that, didn't we."
Just last Wednesday, I “changed the past.” A few years ago I was in a relationship, with a powerful neurotic hook, that ended poorly. I ended it with what I thought was a heart of compassion, and was met with the hurling of poison, or so it felt that way to me. The narrative of that relationship had been how I was the listener 95% of the time, how he was unreasonably critical at times, how I had to ask to be paid attention to as he was so mired in his own woes me suffering. Though the volume of the narrative had become quieter and quieter over time, it still had this taste of bitterness, of being wronged. Then, last Wednesday! I was sitting in a guided meditation and the teacher asked “think of someone who has offered you patience.” To my complete shock, this particular ex popped into my head, and a specific memory. I was cooking eggs at his place, and doing so in a carefree way, wanting the yellows to stay unbroken, but they broke so I just swirled it all together. He made a cutting sarcastic remark at how this was the result of my American education. At the time, I felt the sting of his comment, as it was yet another example of not being seen, of being mis-seen, and of being summed up in a oversimplistic way. By some kind of magic, in the meditation last Wednesday, he came into my mind, and that specific memory, and I thought, “wow. given how he was, everything had to be “perfect” or not done at all (eg, didn’t like to dance because he didn’t think he was a good dancer), it must have involved profound patience to be with me, who cracked eggs carefree, or as he might see it, carelessly). I suddenly then recalled how when we first started dating, he was making a soup for me, quite nervous as it was early on, and when it was time to crack eggs into the soup, I noticed he was almost frozen. He muttered that usually his son cracks the eggs. I offered to do it, and he accepted, and that was that. Recalling this opened up so much compassion for this man. AND, then I remembered a story he had told me once as we lay in bed.. of how when he was a youngster, maybe 9, or 11, I can’t recall, his parents sent him to stay with his uncle to protect him during a time of political unrest in his hometown. He shared, quite vulnerably, how on one occasion, his uncle bashed his head against his cousin’s head as punishment for taking an extra dessert. On Wednesday after meditation, walking in the streets of Manhattan, I remembered that story, and then his inability to crack the eggs, and then his remark (that I had been quite insulted and hurt by) about how I cracked the eggs. And suddenly it all made sense. Tears rolled down my cheeks as I had this different understanding ... the past changed. Then, as if I were simply a character in a play, I walked into Whole Foods to pick up some blueberries, and this song “kiss me” by sixpence was playing, and without launching into a whole other story (that also transformed in that very moment from disappointment and hurt, to - joy! sounds crazy but it’s true).... it was a song that held significance for me as I had planned to sing it to him, but never had the chance. How the past just changed!!!! I have felt so liberated, so humbled, so grateful. And how wonderful to have this opportunity to reflect on it here and now. Thank you so much Pádraig for your wizardry and wisdom!
“I look at that choice not with the luxury of regret, but with curiosity, wondering how it’s working its way out in me now, and how I can live with everything that was made alive by the choices.” -- wow. thank you.