poetry – Words Deferred

Meditation on Death

Among Buddhists, there is a type of meditation focused specifically on death. My understanding is that it is a reminder that our lives are transitory and temporary, and that we should accept and embrace that rather than fighting against it, clinging to what we have, and fearing the unknown.

This idea got me thinking, and eventually writing. I don’t know if what came out was exactly in the spirit of the meditation, but it did feel like it exposed some of my own personal truths. If you’ve ever wondered why this blog is called Words Deferred, this might serve as an explanation.

I don’t claim to be much of a poet, so I’ll apologize for the free verse, but it felt like the correct choice for this.

Sometimes, when I’ve stayed up too late again, 
and I’m climbing the stairs to bed,
exhausted,
the night’s darkness creeps in.

When I was in college, 
adults (real adults) would ask me what I was doing
with my life. 
I would tell them that I wanted to be a writer, 
but it’s hard to make a living, writing. 
I love computers too, 
so I got a degree in computer science.

I think I believed myself. 
And it was true.
It’s hard to sell stories, 
and it easy to get a job 
writing code. 
It pays well. 
It’s in high demand. 
It’s the sort of thing your career counselor would tell you to do.

I have no right to complain. 
I’m comfortable. 
I have a wife and children and I love them. 
We have a house in the suburbs and food to eat. 
We buy whatever books and games we want, 
and when I stay up too late, 
it’s not because I’m worried about money.

I find satisfaction in my job.
Sometimes. 
But not as much as in my writing. 
I don’t write as much as I feel I ought. 
When I go to bed late at night, 
I imagine myself dead, 
having written nothing of value.

Sometimes I want to shout to my children, 
“Don’t make back-up plans! 
Don’t have escape hatches! 
Burn the ships on the shores of your dreams, 
so you have no choice but to conquer them.”

There’s danger in having too much, 
in being too comfortable. 
That’s an easy thing to say 
when you’re not wondering how you’ll make rent this month. 
But that’s how I feel, 
late at night, 
when the darkness creeps in 
and I think about myself, 
dead, 
and the words I haven’t written.

Great Writing — Good Bones

I don’t read or write a lot of poetry. I’m more of a dabbler. However, I know that poetry is important.

Where fiction has all its twisted plots and detailed characters, poetry (at its best) is a distillation of pure emotion. It’s a few precisely chosen words, polished to razor sharpness so they can cut into your soul. Poetry shows sloppy fiction writers like me just how exacting each word can be.

Maggie Smith is a poet I found only recently, but her work exemplifies the things I like best about poetry. I don’t know if Good Bones would have hit me the same way before I had children, but it certainly hits me hard now.

Good Bones

Go read Good Bones, by Maggie Smith, at the Poetry Foundation website.

The Things We Don’t Tell Our Children

It starts with the things we don’t tell our children. Smith talks about the things she keeps from her children four times in seventeen lines. She keeps the things she did and doesn’t want them to know about. She hides that the world is at least half terrible. There’s a quiet desperation there: the world is bad and I’m part of it. I’m terrible too. I’d rather my children not know that.

Why is the world terrible?

“For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.” What an apt metaphor.

“For every loved child, a child broken, bagged, sunk in a lake.” Jesus fucking Christ. No wonder you don’t tell your children. While this is literally hyperbole, figuratively it feels true. If we take everything out there in the world and put it all on the scales of good and evil, does it balance out? An awful lot of the time it feels like it doesn’t.

Selling Something Broken

At the end, there’s a twist: “I’m trying to sell them the world.”

As parents, that’s what we do. Children ask a lot of questions, and all too often they’re asking about why things seem to be so awful. We each have our own internal parenting algorithm, refined over time, to provide information, sometimes truth, sometimes opinion. Maybe even lies, when we feel backed into a corner.

We tell our kids about the world, but we can’t resist “selling” it. We want them to be happy. We want them to make things better, even when we helped cause the problems and failed to clean them up ourselves. We need them to have hope, even when we ourselves don’t have any.

“This place could be beautiful. You could make this place beautiful.”

The Moral of the Story

Every time I read this poem, I change my mind about whether it’s supposed to be hopeful or despairing. Of course, it doesn’t have to be entirely one or the other, but I feel like I ought to be able to suss out an opinion. This is what keeps the oft-derided field of literary criticism alive: that feeling that we need to figure out what the work is “trying” to say.

Ultimately, I think the poem may not have an opinion. It’s just describing the way things are. There might be a lesson in there for us. When you write about something, you don’t have to inject your opinion, positive or negative. Sometimes you can just tell it like it is, a reporter on a made-up world. Leave it to the reader to decide how they should feel about it.

Writing Like Knitting

I wrote a poem today, which is not something I typically do. In fact, I didn’t intend to do it at all.

I was listening to Mike Birbiglia’s postcast, Working it Out. In episode 4, he talks about writing poetry with his wife, and Matt Berninger and Carin Besser of The National. They talked about all the people who are out there making creative work, but not showing or sharing it. Maybe not even having the desire to share. Mike seemed surprised and fascinated by the idea, and I also find it very strange to think about. Whenever I write, I always have the vague idea of a reader other than myself in mind.

They discussed working on a poem for years, “like knitting,” with no real concern or urgency for finishing it. In fact, specifically enjoying the not-doneness of it. Writing as a pass-time. Writing as a personal, private act, or peaceful meditation.

This idea really struck me. So even though I don’t write poetry, it felt fitting in the moment to write a poem about writing poems. I started writing, and before I knew it, a poem happened. I won’t vouch for the quality, but it was a fun little spontaneous act of creation. In fact, it was fun enough that I’m thinking I might delve into poetry again some time.

She Writes

She writes
Taps the keys
A poem, a secret, between her and the screen
Words are fluid
Day to day, month to month,
Year to year
Obsequious to whim and whimsy
To whatever mood takes her
That day
That year

The poems are not for others
They are hers
They are her
They are
A slow progression, knitting
Bonsai trimming
Cutting hair
No desire to share
To show
Not greedy
Just comfortable in the words
In the middle of making
No concern
For done