Dear friends,
I saw a thing online the other day that went something like:
Thirty days has September,
April, June and November.
All the rest have thirty-one,
except February alone:
that has twenty-eight days clear,
but twenty-nine on each leap year.
And January, which has a thousand.
Now that’s a poem. Very clever — I actually LOLed, and then groaned. Anyway, I’m writing this to you on January 17th, just past the mid-month-hump. Whether the month’s flying or dragging, hallo. It snowed in New York the other day (and many other places); here, today, there are a few inches left, and a cold bright sun.
One of the questions that came through from you was “what makes a poem?” You asked it in a variety of ways: what makes for a good poem? How do you know something is a poem? What’s a poem supposed to do? What is a poem anyway? Do poems need to be in a particular form? What lovely questions.
What makes a poem? Being etymologically interested, I remind myself that the Greek source of our English word “poem” means something like “a made thing.” So what makes a poem? What makes a making? Already, for me, I’m thinking beyond the question of a particular poem, and wondering what it means to make something. Making is a way of living: from propagating the species to making shelter, or safety, or treaty, or peace, or galleries, or museums, or schools.
Or cake.
Poems, like all forms of art, have various schools of thought and practice, influenced language, era, and politics. Greek poetry not only rhymed but also had very specific syllablic counts for each line (which is why Sappho’s fragments are so brilliant. As a woman she couldn’t attend formal poetry training, but the surviving fragments of her poetry demonstrate how she’d learned to house extraordinary imagination in complex form. Anne Carson’s translation is beautiful.)
After Sappho come sonnets, villanelles, and pantoums, Oh My! But it’s not accurate to imagine that hybrid prose-poems, or the non-rhyming form are in any way new. Depending on what language you’re reading in, poetry’s musicality is communicated in different ways: where rhythm and rhyme have shaped certain traditions, assonance or alliteration have punctuated another. What sounds new-fangled in one place is ancient in others. Poets these days are writing in many forms: received forms, free forms, punked-up forms (I think of Gail McConnell’s brilliant "Untitled / Villanelle"), sequences and concrete forms (Tyehimba Jess’ book Olio is a sonic and visual wonder).
So what makes a poem? In a way — and this is a limited answer — it is the poem’s relationship with absence. A poem is typically a short thing (unless you’re Jane Austen’s Mister Collins; I’m sure he’d have written very long poems), and even the Faroese saga ends. All writing — prose, poetry, analysis — must know when to stop, when description has done its work and the imagination takes over. A poem’s relationship to the blank space on the page is one of the things I look for. If the poem is being too complete, then I feel controlled, not guided.
Poetry Unbound episodes this week were about Kandace Siobhan Walker’s poem “Three Mangoes, £1” and Sandra Cisneros’ “When in Doubt.” Both very different poems, each making use of visuals and memory and tangible ideas. Kandace’s poem is about how the living engage with the dead, and how strange it is when someone can see that your heart is concerned with the memory of someone who has passed on. The empty of the heart is present in the empty of the poem. Brilliant. She’s skilled, but what she does in the poem is not just skill, it’s trust, too: trust in herself, trust in the reader, trust in language, trust in empty. Sandra Cisneros dances between the horrible and the human; the ordinary and the overwhelming. Her poem is funny, too, and its repeated refrain of “When in doubt…” forms a music that means the reader is almost compelled to write something of their own: the blank space of this poem becomes a place inviting response.
What makes a poem? A poem does. And what a poem does makes a poem. And what you do with a poem makes a poem.
Is there a poem that uses space in a way you trust, in a way you can engage with, or imagine yourself into? What is it, and why does it work for you?
As part of the paperback release of the Poetry Unbound book, I’ll be back on the road for bits and pieces over the next months. I’ll see you there, if you’re nearby.
PS: And friends, this is the final week that the wonderful Amy Chatelaine will be editing the Substack. She is many things: digital chaplain, copyeditor, all around kind and good person. We worked together in Corrymeela, and for the last few years at On Being. Farewell! And thank you, Amy.
The Latest from Poetry Unbound
Episodes 5 & 6
You can also listen on Spotify, poetryunbound.org, or wherever podcasts are found.
Poetry in the World
When I was poet-in-residence for The Church of the Heavenly Rest in Manhattan, I wrote a book titled Being Here (pre-orders will ship January 23, and you can secure yours here; all proceeds go to support the American Friends of the Parents Circle). To mark the publication, there’s an online event, as well as an in-person event in NYC (which is also live-streamed). Both are free, details and registration below. If you can’t make either launch, or are interested in a preview, here’s a short conversation I had with Being Here’s contributing editor.
Being Here Book Launch: A Conversation with Pádraig Ó Tuama and Philip Metres | The Interwebs (Free)
Tomorrow (Monday, January 22) at 7:30pm ET, I’ll be in an online conversation with poet Philip Metres about poetry, prayer, and the overlap between literature, language, craft, and religious text. Registration here.
Being Here Book Launch, Reading, and Signing | New York City (Free)
Tuesday, February 6 at 6pm ET, join me for an in-person book launch at The Church of the Heavenly Rest (if you’re in or around NYC, they’re at 1085 5th Avenue). If you’re coming in person, you can RSVP here, and it’ll also be live-streamed here.
Additional Events:
New York City
Kitchen Hymns Poetry Reading | Maryhouse Catholic Worker Building, East Village
On Friday, February 9, I’ll be reading poems from a new book of mine, Kitchen Hymns (forthcoming in Oct 2024 with Copper Canyon Press and CHEERIO). More details to come.
*Please note that for copyright reasons this event won’t be recorded or Zoomed.
Person Place Thing with Randy Cohen | Columbia School of Nursing
On Wednesday, February 14, I’ll be at Columbia School of Nursing as a guest on the podcast and public radio program Person Place Thing with Randy Cohen. Join us from 3pm-4pm ET for the live recording — attendance is free but registration is required. Register here.
Chestertown, Maryland
Kitchen Hymns Poetry Reading | Raimond Cultural Center
On Friday, February 23, I’ll be giving a reading from Kitchen Hymns at Raimond Cultural Center. Attendance is free, but reservations are required. Register here to join me at 7pm ET.
*Please note that for copyright reasons this event won’t be recorded or Zoomed.
“Conflict and Poetry: a conversation” | Raimond Cultural Center
The following day, Saturday, February 24 from 10am-1pm, you can join me for a workshop exploring poems, form, and some prompts. Registration is $20, and includes a light lunch. Register here.
Australia
Poetry & Prayer: Three Talks on Spiritual Direction | online
In March, I’ll be giving three interactive talks with the Joint Spirituality Centre Development Online Series. I’ll be in Ireland, they’ll be in Australia, you’ll be wherever! The cost of registration is AUD$225 (about US$150), with the option to pay what you can. The talks won’t be recorded, and will include break-out sessions and time for group feedback. March 5, 7, and 14 (7pm Melbourne time; 3am ET). Learn more and register here.
At the risk of being too literal, the poem that comes to mind this morning as I sit with your inquiry is one I read for the first time a couple of months ago. Hala Alyan’s “Revision.” In it, she includes brackets, ones which are not filled with words. There is space. They are absent. And yet...
When I read the poem the first time, part of me wondered what words, if any, Alyan imagined in those brackets as she wrote the poem. With subsequent readings, I experienced the empty brackets more as an invitation into deeper layers of my consciousness, into my imagination.
I experience her use of the word “redacted” as a kind of presence of emptiness, absent presence, in the poem itself. Some of the questions, the question marks marks too. ("Why aren't you leaving?" "Why aren't you resisting?" "How deep in the earth can you burrow with your four hearts?"). And I experienced a deep space, an invitation to go inside myself with the lines:
We bear what we bear until we can’t anymore.
We invent what we can’t stand grieving.
(What happens when I can't bear it anymore? What do I invent? A son? What do we collectively invent when we can't bear it anymore?)... So although her poem doesn't include too much "white space" between lines, I found lots of space within those brackets, the question marks, and within some of the words themselves.
The poem: https://www.guernicamag.com/revision/
I typed it out below, but every time I try to either copy-paste or directly type it in, the formatting seems to be more spaced out (like 1.5 line space) than it is in the original. And since it's a poem, and this inquiry was about space, it seems important to point this out! If anyone knows how to fix this, I'd love to know. Ty!
-
Revision
"I heard you in the other room asking our mother, 'Mama, am I Palestinian?' When she answered 'Yes' a heavy silence fell on the whole house. It was as if something hanging over our heads had fallen, its noise exploding, then - silence."
- Ghassan Kanafani, in a letter to his son Fayez
I don't mean to hate the sparrows.
I don't mean to close my eyes and see fire, a flood of concrete,
leaflets the size of grotesque snow.
I don't mean to rehearse evacuation that isn't mine:
from the grocery store to the house, from the house to the river,
from the river to the airport. Here are the rules.
There is a road and it's gone now.
There is a sea and you can't drink its water.
How far can you carry a toddler? A middle-aged dog?
How far can you go in sixty-five seconds? Eleven?
If you have a favorite flower, now's the time to redact it.
If you have a mother, now's the time to move her to the basement.
If you don't have a basement?
I don't mean to profit from this poem but I do.
I don't mean to say I but I do. Here are the rules.
The rules are redacted.
[ ] is [ ].
[ ] is a red herring.
[ ] is a billboard with 583 names.
Here are the rules.
I had a grandmother once.
She had a memory once.
It spoiled like milk.
On the phone, she'd ask me about my son, if he was fussy,
If he was eating solids yet.
She'd ask if he was living up to his name.
I said yes. I always said yes. I asked for his name and it was [ ].
I dreamt of her saying:
[ ]
[ ]
[ ].
How deep in the earth can you burrow with your four hearts? Here are the rules:
There is no bomb shelter. There is no ship.
You can leave. Why aren't you leaving?
You can resist. Why aren't you resisting?
On the phone, my grandmother would call me her heart.
Her soul. Her two God-given eyes.
She'd ask if I wanted to visit Palestine again.
I never brought her back any soil, but she liked one story,
so I'd tell it again, about the man I met at the
bus station, a stranger until he spoke Arabic,
calling me sister and daughter and sister and I told her how
he skipped work and drove me past the
gardens to the highest point and we waved to Beirut.
I waved to her, and later she said she was waving back.
Never mind her balcony faced the wrong direction.
Never mind the sea is a terrible blue.
Never mind there never was a son. Here are the rules:
If you say Gaza you must say [ ].
If you say [ ] you must say [ ].
Here are the rules.
If there is a microphone do not sing into it.
If there is a camera do not look it in the eye.
Here are the rules.
You can't redact a name once it's been spoken.
If you say [ ] you must say [ ].
If you say Gaza you must say Gaza.
If you look, you must look until there is no looking left to do.
Here are the rules. Here's my mother-given name, here's my small life.
It is no more than any other. Here's my grandmother, dead for five years.
She's speaking again. She calls when I'm not expecting.
Keef ibnik, she says. Where is he now? Let me say hello.
What could I say back? He's good, I tell her.
I pretend to call a child from the other room.
I pretend to hear the sea from here. I wave back. Here are the rules:
We bear what we bear until we can't anymore.
We invent what we can't stand grieving.
The sun sets on Gaza. The sun rises on Gaza.
On your [ ].
On your blue pencils.
On your God-given eyes.
He's good, I tell her. He's good.
He's crawling. Mashallah, mashallah.
Together we praise the sea and the son.
Together, we praise how much he's grown.
Always always Hafiz, "Someone Untied your Camel: https://jackysunchaser.wordpress.com/2010/04/30/someone-untied-your-camel-by-hafiz/ - the words, the images conjured - the gentle voice and soft landing