Poetry As Survival

I’ve introduced chia seed puddings as a breakfast choice, and everybody seems to love them. You mix 2 Tablespoons of chia seeds with ¼ o a cup of milk (I used coconut) and let it sit for 10 minutes. A pudding like gel is thus formed. Top it with whatever you like. Today I topped mine with raspberries, dried fruit, seeds, nuts and unsweetened coconut flakes.

I shall lie down at home

and pretend to be dying.

Then the neighbors will all come in

to gape at me, and, perhaps, she will come with them.

When she comes, I won’t need a doctor,

she knows why I am ill.

I’ve written before on the importance of poetry in my life. And a poem like the one above, goes to the heart of me, like a shot of brandy goes to my core. It’s a 3,300-year old, Egyptian poem spoken by a male lover who is obviously plotting to get his sweetheart’s attention. Don’t we all, at least secretly, know exactly how he feels? In just six lines we get it. What takes prose hundreds of pages, a poem, when done right, can convey in a few breaths. How utterly lovely is that? What can compete with that kind of immediacy?

I confess that I stole this poem and the title of today’s entry from a book by Gregory Orr, called just that: Poetry As Survival. I love this book and this particular poem, but I also think a great many people are intimidated by poetry and feel the need to be guided into it. For which Orr’s book is perfect. It's actually a perfect read for anyone.

I read a lot of poetry to my son. Some of it we have memorized together. He has his own taste and preferences. For the longest time we read funny poems, and of course T.S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, but then this short Carl Sandburg poem struck a note.

The buffaloes are gone

And those who saw the buffaloes are gone.

Those who saw the buffaloes by thousands and how they

pawed the praire sod into dust with their hoofs, their

great heads down pawing on in a great pageant of dusk,

Those who saw the buffaloes are gone.

And the buffaloes are gone.

Last spring I decided to take up my studies in literature again at my alma mater in Sweden, and had to analyze poetry. It was very interesting, enormously satisfying on a cerebral level, but I soon realized that taking a poem apart, which feels a bit like skinning and deboning a fish, doesn’t reveal the heart of it. I suppose it would be the same as trying to unlock the beauty of a Rembrandt painting by analyzing the ratio of umber to ochre.

I’m always interested in other people favorite anything. Especially poems. Did you know, for instance, that Demi Moore’s favorite poem is Alfred Tennyson’s Flower in the Crannied Wall? Or that Bono from U2 always leaves a book with poetry by Seamus Heaney when he meets with politicians? Did you know Oprah Winfrey’s likes Phenomenal Woman by Maya Angelou? While Sting loves Ted Hughes’ The Thought-Fox? That designer Isaac Mizrahi lives for Shakespeare’s sonnets and actor Matt Dillon likes W.B. Yeats’ The Stolen Child?

Canadian author Margaret Atwood said that questioning the role of poetry is like questioning the role of food. That poetry is that necessary.

Do you have a favorite poem?

My favorite poem is by August Strindberg. It loses something in translation but here it is, it’s called Sleepwalking Nights.

On the Avenue de Neuilly

Stands a slaughterhouse

that I always pass by

when I walk into town.

The big open window

Gleams with blood so red

On the marble counter

Steams fresh butchered meat

Today on the glass door

Hung a heart, a calf’s heart I think,

Wrapped in frilly paper –

Saw it shudder in the cold.

Then my thoughts took flight

to the old Norrbro bazaar

where the gleaming rows of windows

are viewed by women and children.

There in a bookshop’s window

Hangs a little, calfskin book.

It is a torn-out heart

dangling there on its hook.