Category Archives: Grief Recovery

A Tribute to Love and Loss at Salamander Cove

"Inconsolable Grief" by Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoi

The September issue of Salamander Cove focuses on love and loss. I am honored to have my poem, “To Friends Not Knowing What to Say”–which first appeared in Iota 85–take its place alongside spare and stunning tributes by Chris Agee, Anna Ross, Dave Jarecki, Laure-Anne Bosselaar, Jim Murdoch, Jamie Dedes, and Charles Bernstein. I found the juxtaposition of these pieces deeply moving, and applaud the editor for focusing her selection “not on the fact of death but on the depth of the sense of loss of certain special beings, or almost-beings, who are no longer with us.”

Longer poems are interspersed with short pieces from Chris Agee’s “Heartscapes” series, featured in his remarkable collection Next to Nothing. The effect is like that of Haibun, a form perfected by Bashō that juxtaposes a prose piece with a haiku, enhancing the reader’s attention to both the longer and shorter piece through the interleaving of the two forms. Here, too, I found myself pausing to find my breath as I made my way through this series of poems.

Beyond Survival

5 Replies

My grandmother’s glass cabin, perched high in the Sandia Mountain Range of New Mexico, is a place I would visit each summer of my childhood without fail. This is my first time back since I left home for college, and with it, left childhood. Everything seems, although familiar, smaller as well–the drive up the mountain shorter, the cabin diminished, the ponds shallower and grasses shorter even than they were in my late adolescence.

New Mexico represents a spiritual home to me much more than the barren Sonoran desert where I spent the remaining eleven months of each formative year. As such, I wanted to bring my wife here more than anywhere. And I brought my adult self, too, as a bemused observer, along with a paperback copy of Christian Wiman’s collection of essays entitled Ambition and Survival: Becoming a Poet.

This place is dense with evocative glimpses of earlier selves. I have been rifling through internal snapshots like an old-time flip book, hoping the rapid succession of annual impressions might create a trajectory of motion that I could identify as “my development.”
Continue reading →

Christian Wiman’s Riven Verse

4 Replies

“There are keener griefs than God. / They come quietly, and in plain daylight, / Leaving us with nothing, and the means to feel it.”

-Christian Wiman, “This Mind of Dying”

Though this year’s edition of Poetry International is packed with poetic delights, the portfolio section on Christian Wiman knocked me out. Though the name sounded familiar, I recalled little of Wiman, except I suspected that by admitting this publicly, I would be admitting a hefty dose of ignorance. (My instincts here were right; turns out he’s the editor of Poetry. I even quoted one of his essays in a post I wrote last year.)

But the upside of ignorance is an untainted first impression, and here is mine: that I found a poet unabashedly touching upon God with neither irony nor simple-mindedness, sounding out complex and compact verse with intoxicating musicality. Here, I thought, is a modern Gerard Manley Hopkins completely unafraid to strike his note.

Here also, I thought, in fact, are the kind of poems I might one day write myself if I knew I did not have much more time to live. With this strange thought fresh in mind, I Googled Wiman, mostly to see if I could pre-order his third book, Every Riven Thing. Instead I discovered an article in The American Scholar, wherein he describes how falling in love and, soon after, being diagnosed with a terminal disease led him back to the fierce new kind of poetry now resting in my lap.
Continue reading →

Unclehood

1 Reply

Photo: Per H. Olsen

When I created the “Fatherhood” category on my website nearly five years ago, I knew that becoming a dad marked a rite of passage. It never occurred to me that our son James might only live three days, or how having and losing him in such short succession would change me. No man accurately anticipates the full impact of fatherhood. And as much as I knew the birth of our son would better me, I never expected that by his departure I would also gain in courage, compassion, and strength. Truly, it is a remarkable being, who both by his coming and going can have touched my life so profoundly.

I crossed both the equator and the International Date Line this week to meet another remarkable being–my new nephew. He is my wife’s sister’s child, and, like James, he seems to have inherited his lip line from that side of the family. But unlike our James, his eyes are open, and everything about him is inquisitive and alive. It feels both precious and surprisingly natural to spend time with him–hoisting him up to get a better look at the tropical fish at the aquarium, feeding him spoonfuls of mush, and pushing him through the rainy streets in his waterproof pram in search of great fish and chips.

And so, I embrace a new rite of passage, into unclehood. Continue reading →

Off to See the Wizard

3 Replies

Val and I leave tonight for Sydney, Australia to visit her sister, sister’s husband, and our new baby nephew. As a friend and fellow bereaved father pointed out, there is more to this adventure than just a holiday down under. Though I have held one very special little girl since the passing of our son, meeting James’s male cousin, who shares some of his genetics, does seem like another milestone in my journey from grief to hope.

I disciplined myself to take just one book of poems from the shelves that line the walls of our small cottage. I am taking Marvin Bell’s Nightworks. His strong voice and piquant musings are a comfort to me on long trips. If there were something like a break room for great philosophers, where they could congregate, sip coffee, and chat, Bell’s poems capture bits of what we might overhear. This book seemed like the perfect companion with which to cross the dark Pacific.

Between friends, family, and marsupials, I don’t know how much I will be blogging in the next two weeks. But watch out for photos on Flickr, and I’ll be back in the Northern Hemisphere again soon.

Next to Nothing by Chris Agee

5 Replies

In his most recent collection, Next to Nothing, Chris Agee fuses voracious verbal intelligence with well-tuned musicality. But this is not why I am compelled to re-read this book. Written in the years following the death of his four-year-old daughter, Agee’s elegies ring with veracity, transcending reportage of paternal grief even as it details, in quiet and careful ways, sentiments and sensibilities I know from my own experience of loss to be true beyond true beyond achingly true.

One poem in particular, from the “Heartscapes” series, stopped me on the page:

Your Face

swims
in the window
where I wave
at the childminder’s
new child

Continue reading →

If There is Something to Desire by Vera Pavlova

1 Reply

“You desire to know the art of living, my friend? It is contained in one phrase: make use of suffering.”

-Alexander Nikonov

I have Kit Stolz to thank for turning me on to Vera Pavlova. I devoured her first collection in English, aptly titled If There is Something to Desire. Keen, startling, and erotic–poems of such love and longing have not made as deep an impression on me as since I first discovered Pablo Neruda. And it occurred to me: I have been attending the erotic in poetry with shyness and apprehension. For example, although I love and support the Artists’ Union Gallery, each year when their erotic poetry fundraiser reading rolls around, there is always some good reason I cannot attend.

Toward the end of my study in the Pacific MFA program, the poet Marvin Bell suggested in one of his lectures that instead of writing so many elegies to the dead, we might do well to write more love poems to the living. It occurred to me in that moment that I could be rightly accused of giving too much attention to Thanatos, at the expense of Eros. My recent reading of Vera Pavlova only added evidence to the prosecution. In fact, she might be speaking directly to me when she writes, in poem 15, in her characteristically direct manner:

Do you know what you lacked?
That dose of contempt without which
you cannot flip a woman on her back
to make her flounder like a turtle,
to make the heartless fool realize:
she cannot flip back on her own.

Continue reading →

Blogging the End That is the Beginning

7 Replies

Tonight Val and I got to spend some time with Ken Jones, a friend of ours who was also a fellow resident during the nearly four years I lived in the seminary. He is now receiving hospice care in his room, lovingly supported by his wife. When we entered the room, he was arranging a music play list for his memorial service from his hospital bed, his glowing MacBook Pro resting on the over-bed table. Ken has also been blogging about his journey with cancer, and what now seem likely to be his final days with us in this world.

Western writing often treats death in fiction, but rarely have I read the words of an author knowingly in their final stage of life. Yet there is a longstanding tradition in Zen, practiced by monks and samurai alike, of writing death poems. The best of these poems capture the essence of one’s life, turning an aesthetic and philosophical gaze upon the often taboo subject of death. It occurs to me that this is similar to what Ken is doing with his blog.

Continue reading →

An Unexpected Dedication

3 Replies

Robert Peake reads a poem next to "Elliot" the bear

Photo by Randy Graham

I broke away from work to attend the dedication ceremony for my neighbor Mark Benkert’s new memorial sculpture to the Aliso Street Bear (a.k.a “Elliot”). In introducing me to read the poem I wrote dedicated to the bear, Mark also mentioned something remarkable about the process of sculpting the memorial.

For both Mark and I, the loss of the bear resonated deeply with the loss of our sons. As Mark was inscribing the letters “J” and “B”, the initials of his son, Jonah Benkert, the “B” also read much like a “P”–and he mentioned that “J.P.” reminded him of our own son, James Peake. Needless to say that by the time I took the microphone, I was nearly unable to speak.

Yet I managed to read my poem, honoring the bear, our sons, our community. The rest of the dedication meant a lot to me–from written poems and prose pieces, to impromptu verbal tributes, a song, and drumming. It was also a moment of catharsis for our community, coming together once more to honor all that the bear brought to us.

To learn more about how to promote the peaceful coexistence of humans and animals in the Ojai Valley, please visit the Ojai Wildlife League website.

The Fourth Year

7 Replies

Our son, James, was born four years ago today. His brief life changed mine inexplicably. Since that time, I completed a Doctorate in Spiritual Science, and an MFA in writing poetry, since spiritual practice and poetic expression are two oars by which I navigate the underground waters of grief.

And looking back on the first, second, and third anniversary, I see a clear trajectory toward healing, and toward integrating this profound experience into my life–not as a tragedy–but as a source of strength. I recently found the courage to hold a baby in my arms again, and felt, in that moment, only joy. I have also discovered more of the blessings, strange as it sounds, of the complicated nature of grief.

This experience reaffirmed a few things for me: that art can make life meaningful, that compassion is always the most appropriate response, and that my wife is still the bravest woman I have ever met. Today, I say, once again: godspeed, my son. And thank you.

2009 Roundup Year-in-Review

Enlightened America

7 Replies

“…how amiable the gorgeous advantage of the newly born.”

-Marvin Bell, “The Book of the Dead Man (#42)”

I am somewhere over the Midwest as I type this, returning to the West Coast from a weekend in Boston. Val and I made the trip to attend a very special wedding. Seeing two dear friends–both kind, courageous men–exchange vows with each other, and blessings with all in attendance, renewed my understanding of what marriage is all about.

We stayed in the Omni Parker House Hotel, home to Emerson and Longfellow’s Saturday Club, and spent what little time we had on this trip getting acquainted with American history up close. We visited beautiful old churches, and made the trip up to Harvard–a school founded by Puritans to unite scholarship with spiritual pursuit. Continue reading →