pagan poetry
(apologies to björk)
I wrote a lot of bad, angsty poems as a teen. I still remember thinking that comparing the moon to a pearl was brilliant. (I was definitely the first to make THAT comparison!!!!!)
In high school, I devoured e.e. cummings and Edna St. Vincent Millay. I watched 10 Things I Hate About You and immediately became a Sylvia Plath fan, along with every other angsty alternative girl in the late ’90s.
“Make anyone cry today?” “Sadly, no…but it’s only 4:30.”
Writing (and reading) poetry was a way to channel that quintessential teenage feeling of being misunderstood, of having feelings so intense and uncontrollable they had to be funneled into a creative outlet or I would burst.
In college, I still wrote poems, but they were silly and self-deprecating, about wanting to kiss a crush on a fire escape even though he was boring and didn’t know I existed. Things were changing. It wasn’t cool to take yourself and your emotions seriously; it was cool to be sarcastic and flippant.
I also started rejecting anything “feminine” because, in my naive misunderstanding of feminism, I thought anything feminine was inherently weak and pandering to the male gaze. (Learn to cook? I’m no ’50s housewife!) Poetry was both too serious and vulnerable for where I was in life. Like this poem by Joseph Brodsky, which absolutely destroyed me when my English professor read it in class:
I wish you were here, dear,
I wish you were here.
I wish you sat on the sofa
and I sat near.
The handkerchief could be yours,
the tear could be mine, chin-bound.
Though it could be, of course,
the other way around.
I wish you were here, dear,
I wish you were here.
I wish we were in my car
and you'd shift the gear.
We'd find ourselves elsewhere,
on an unknown shore.
Or else we'd repair
to where we've been before.
I wish you were here, dear,
I wish you were here.
I wish I knew no astronomy
when stars appear,
when the moon skims the water
that sighs and shifts in its slumber.
I wish it were still a quarter
to dial your number.
I wish you were here, dear,
in this hemisphere,
as I sit on the porch
sipping a beer.
It's evening, the sun is setting;
boys shout and gulls are crying.
What's the point of forgetting
if it's followed by dying?
(RIGHT!?!??! I apologize for destroying you too.)
I closed off part of myself because I thought poetry was weak and froufrou and Emily Dickinson, and I wanted to be tough and edgy and sullen. 😢 I didn’t like being so sensitive, because I felt so much pain.
Surprise, surprise: dulling my ability to feel pain dulled my ability to appreciate beauty, too. Thankfully, I give fewer fucks now. I cry more freely these days, because I know feelings will pass. Maybe part of it is turning 40 and realizing that I am who I am, I like what I like, and I’m too tired to pretend otherwise. I’m a sensitive marshmallow, and I’m never gonna be Rosa Diaz from Brooklyn 99.
In any case, I found a book of poetry at Goodwill for $3 and bought it.
It’s…not great. It’s basically the lowest common denominator of poetry (The Raven! Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? To be or not to be! and so forth). But it’s poetry. Reading poems feels like a secret little indulgence. Poems don’t really fit into capitalism. They’re not productive. It’s like watching clouds pass by or something—truly no “value” except the exquisite pleasure of words melting on your tongue. The rhyme and rhythm and alliteration and assonance takes me right back to 10th grade English class, and it’s delicious. It’s learning for learning’s sake, and it makes me feel smart (who doesn’t want THAT?!). The exquisite pleasure of looking up new words in the dictionary like “munificence” (generosity) or learning that Shakespeare actually wrote a ton of sonnets to a dude, meaning he was queer or a woman or both (!).
Anyway. Poetry is cool. Take it away, Edna:
P.S. OK, I can’t stop…here’s another one from Edna. Or should I say Miss St. Vincent MillSLAY?!?!?