Tag Archives: Hope

“Hope is the thing with feathers”

-Emily Dickinson

Barack Obama Hope Poster by Shepard Fairley

Try courage instead

This Thanksgiving, I was keenly aware of my gratitude for an absent member of our family. Had he lived, our son would have been four years old. I am truly thankful for his brief presence in our lives, which activated my paternal instincts, and gave me a deeper respect for my own forefathers. The three days I spent with him in the hospital, and the subsequent years I have spent coming to terms with his short life, taught me something important about how to live my own life. My wife put it succinctly one morning: “You don’t need hope if you have courage.”

We admire saints and martyrs (including the secular ones) not because they hoped for success in their own lives, but because they faced the circumstances of their lives with a sense of higher purpose, and great courage. And while they often had visions of a better future, they were prepared to act courageously whether or not they would ever see these visions realized in their lifetime. Likewise, our American ancestors, whom we honor by feasting at Thanksgiving, may have hoped for a better future for their children. But it was their daily application of courage that I admire most.

I was talking with a friend recently about how perilous it may have been for our current president to have run his election campaign on a message of hope. Continue reading →

Why They Are Called ‘The Humanities’

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“Then what are we fighting for?”

-Attributed to Winston Churchill, in response to a suggestion that arts education be cut to fund the war effort.

There has been a furor over recent cuts in humanities education at the university level in America. Most of the counter-arguments for keeping the humanities alive play out the “transferable skills” angle. My wife, a piano teacher, knows these arguments all too well–that learning to play an instrument accelerates childhood brain development, and that music actually teaches certain kinds of mathematical reasoning (such as fractions). Likewise, with literature, English departments often underscore the importance of “soft skills” like communication.

But in the end, this line of thinking only lends strength to the argument to, for example, replace courses in Shakespeare with more practical courses in business and technical writing. It is also not difficult to imagine games designed by psychologists to more effectively deliver specific, developmental results than learning to playing Bach partitas ever will. Clearly, the argument that the humanities can deliver practical, bottom-line results is problematic. Why, then, are they so critical in difficult times?
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The Blessings of Complicated Grief

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“No motion has she now, no force; / She neither hears nor sees; / Roll’d round in earth’s diurnal course, / With rocks, and stones, and trees.”

-William Wordsworth, “Lucy”

Knots Yesterday marked the anniversary of the birth and death of a poet-friend’s son. Today we finished packing baby items originally bought for our own son, James, to pass along to our nephew-to-be in Australia. No life is simple. But while most Americans are firing up their grills or caravanning to the beach to enjoy the easy pleasures of a three-day weekend, I find myself sifting through a tangle of thoughts and feelings that seem, well, complex.

The clinical term for a sometimes-debilitating sadness that persists long after the moment of loss is “complicated grief.” The Harvard Medical School Family Health Guide online says that “the disorder is more likely to occur after a death that is traumatic–premature, sudden, violent, or unexpected,” and the Mayo Clinic website cites “risk factors” such as “being unprepared for the death,” and “in the case of a child’s death, the number of remaining children.”

Loss is never simple. However, if I were to try to define a corollary to this condition, called “simple grief,” an illustrative example would be the death of a grandparent who had been sick for some time, and who had lived a long and happy life. Such a loss fits the framework of most cultural beliefs about the natural and acceptable cycles of life and death. The death of a child, or suicide of a loved one, however, do not.

And so, the complication, for me, became existential. Without the agreed-upon societal mythos about life and death to guide me toward resolution, I have had to come to terms with, and make meaning from, this experience anew. A lifetime of spiritual studies taught me that any situation, no matter how intense, could be used to learn and grow. Losing our son, and not being able to have another child, tested this belief intensely.
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Jekyll and Hyde and Publishing

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“The self that writes may need to be a delicate and protected creature, but the self that submits to magazines ought to be as tough as a rhino’s butt.”

-Christian Wiman, editor of Poetry

Organization is one thing. Discipline is another. The discipline of getting up early before work to write poems has saved my life. However, if I want anyone other than my lovely wife to encounter these poems, I have to submit them to journals and contests. It is far more enticing to just write another poem. Or goof off on Facebook. Or stick needles in my eyes. In short, I’m still working on the sufficient thickness of rhino hide, strategically located and cultivated, to make this a dispassionate process.
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Generativity and Letting Go

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“We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”

-Joseph Campbell

Recently, we began the process of giving away baby items bought or given to us for our son, James. Since he never came home from the hospital, they remain unused. Several months ago, we moved them out of the shed, into a closet at my parents’ house. But the time has come for another step. We are beginning to pass these items on to friends and family who are becoming parents. We have been unable to have another child, and are not in a position to adopt. And so, in the same gesture of giving that celebrates the new parenthood of people we care about, we also acknowledge it is unlikely that we will raise a child of our own. Neither of us ever thought it would be this way.

Since our young neighbors moved in across the street with their infant and toddler, I have been unable bring myself to exchange more than a passing smile or wave on this otherwise friendly block in our quaint small town. More than two lanes of quiet asphalt stretch between us. As much as I realize, rationally, that I sometimes idealize the hard work of child-rearing, it is tempting still to wish for a different life. And yet, over the past three years, I have had the opportunity to face down some of the deepest questions about my life, and how I must make meaning in it anew.

Perhaps a branch of my family tree will end with my name on it. But I have not lost the chance to influence my world for the better. Sharing my love of poetry is one way. As I slowly wake from the long dream of grieving, I am sure I will find others. For now, we are taking small steps toward the next crossroads–one bag of diapers, one box of clothes, one bassinet at a time.

Mark Doty: Phoenix Aflame

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“What did you think, that joy / was some slight thing?”

-Mark Doty, “Visitation”

It is now a matter of public record that my company recently laid off 40% of staff. But numbers do not do justice to the sense of loss. Today I rifled through comments written in our software source code management system by ex-members of my programming team. Sprinkled among the technical remarks were little witticisms and the occasional wry geek joke, artifacts of camaraderie among the ash.

I have been cauterizing the wounds of loss with poems–more reading than writing lately, and catch-as-catch-can. I could not have willed my way toward a better book in this challenging time than Mark Doty’s Fire to Fire. Doty captures the fierce and sometimes terrible beauty of life with musical phrasing, stanzaic integrity, and the courage to look and look, deeper and deeper, into the human world. It is from loss that these poems are written, but their trajectory is towards awe–the hope that springs from amazement, the amazement that springs from deep observation, the deep observation that settles in the ashes of loss.

Doty’s carefully-measured stanzas seem to propel his poems like an engine–which is, after all, a series of well-timed explosions. Each little engine links together to drive us into the depths of the poem–be it the shell of a turtle, the smoky glitz of a cross-dressing bar, or the heart of a man care-taking his dying love. Doty is not afraid to hold with the poem until it opens up, frequently busting the page barrier in little epics that never feel watery, or strain to make a point. It is an inner fire he seeks in each poem, heating up line by line and phrase by phrase–his technique a poetic kiln. Thank you, Mark Doty, for firing your ovens, and plying your craft–producing stunning reminders of the beauty that can rise from flame.

Submit! Submit!

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“Publication–is the Auction / Of the Mind of Man–”

-Emily Dickinson

I must admit I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with sending out poems to awards and periodicals. Actually, that’s not true. It’s more of a hate-hate relationship. The difficulty lies on two fronts: practical and psychological. So, this weekend, determined to let a few more poems from my manuscript finally have a chance at seeing the light of day, I enlisted my wife’s help. She, after all, sees nothing unusual about sending poems she likes to journals with a similar sensibility, and waiting patiently for the reply. After all, they are not her poems.

For me, it’s been a morass of spreadsheets and angst. Though otherwise detail-oriented, I found rounding up the information necessary to send off poems akin to a multivariable calculus exam. You see, the mind-games and doubt have somehow transformed a mildly laborious process into something Kafkaesque. So, making the process simple and methodical has been a key for me to stick with it. Poems, after all, don’t publish themselves.

My process involves maintaining spreadsheets: of poems I have already sent out, when, to whom; and of journals that might like my work. I have recently taken to rating them by the degree to which I think the sensibilities of the periodical might match my own, and by my perception of their reputability. So, then I sort the list (sensibility first, reputability second), and ratchet down one by one, checking submission periods, guidelines, and the number and format of poems to send.

For choosing the poems, I pick from a folder on my computer of poems I both think are done, and are worth publishing. I have a a single, huge document full of continuous writing, and a separate folder with individual files of single poems from that document with which I would like to tinker before declaring them done. Once done, if they’re good, they make it either to a place I call “fossils” (i.e. stuff I might mine later, but not worth publishing) or the to-publish folder I mentioned above. Once the to-publish folder starts looking really full, a combined sense of guilt and duty prompts me to submit a few poems.

This is my method. I have tried to make it as simple as possible so that, like the tasks assigned to astronauts waddling through the vacuum of space, the procedures are so methodical and well-rehearsed that I can execute them even when gazing into the yawning black void. I’d love to know what other people do, what works–both practically and psychologically–to keep putting work out there for consideration. Do you view it as a necessary evil? A pleasant delight? Do you have some other system that really works?

Like it or not, in the end, sending out poems is a part of the process. Making that process bonehead-simple, and doing it even (sometimes especially) when I would rather, instead, be writing a new poem or, better yet, wasting time on Facebook, is an exercise in detachment, perseverance, and yes, you guessed it, continuing to hope.

Poetry and the Economy

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The Economy I had the poignant duty of sending out the email newsletter announcement last night that the 2009 Ojai Poetry Festival has been cancelled. The current financial situation has affected our founders, our prospective donors, and our hopes for ticket sales considerably. So, the committee is conserving its resources in hopes of reviving the festival in 2011. Having already sent hundreds of emails and made numerous updates to the website in anticipation of such a great lineup, I am, needless to say, disappointed.

And yet, I am heartened by the absolute flurry of poetry events passing through in recent weeks. A small but formidable group of women poets are hosting a reading in a beautiful backyard just around the corner from me. The names of two fellow students from long ago found their way to me in announcements of their separate readings. Others seem to be driving up and down the California coast reading poems associated with their recent prize, or book, or just because there seems to be a hungry market for poetry right now.

In some cases, the marketplace of poetry does intersect with the financial marketplace. Those poets who have managed to in some way cobble together a lifestyle of writing and teaching poetry are likely influenced by the recent economic downturn. Yet there exists a separate marketplace for poetry wherein supply can be measured in willing voices, and demand in eager ears. This marketplace seems to work almost inversely to the financial marketplace, in that difficult times bring us back to the necessity of art.

Writing poems is, in many senses of the word, “free.” And during times when it can be difficult to be generous materially, opportunities to be generous with one’s time and creativity seem to represent an outlet for hope. Attending readings, buying and borrowing books of poems, is generally inexpensive. Yet the payoff is significant. From a small investment of time, an enrichment of perception. Therefore, as the stock markets, and other markets, continue to rattle and roll, I say let us all invest our human currency–in reading, writing, and listening to great poems.

The Shed

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Today, we tackled the shed, a routine suburban act of tidiness for most couples. But the reason we hadn’t used most of the stuff in our shed since we moved in over a year ago is piled up against the back wall: the stroller, the diaper genie, the car seat, and the chest of drawers we refinished by hand, every drawer filled with baby clothes. We have been unable to have another child in the two-and-a-half years since the birth and death of our son, and today, we decided, in order to stop avoiding more than momentary forays into the shed for a critical item, that it was time to move the baby stuff into storage.

The chest, with all that it symbolized as an act of preparing for parenthood, we decided to set aside until we could find it a new home. That meant going through each drawer, re-packing the small hats and shirts and vests and the impossibly small socks. What got me was the smell. I realize that brand new baby clothes don’t actually smell like babies–it is, in fact, the other way around–but the two have become closely associated for me, and somehow my nose has secret wiring straight to my heart. I again recalled Keith’s post last year about the cap his son wore to keep warm, and how he and his wife tried in vain to hang on to what he left behind in that cap–his smell.

Moving the baby stuff offsite was also a way of accepting that we may not be able to have another child. Facing this has meant riding out a second wave of grief, with many of the same effects as when we first lost our son. In the past two-and-a-half years, many new people have come in to our lives–new friends, neighbors, and colleagues at work–who know nothing about our James. And so, I find myself, at times, living in two worlds at once. Occasionally, the disparity between what others can see, and what I carry inside, is brought into startling contrast by, for example, a giddy new mother, unaware of our past, eagerly accosting us about our plans for “starting a family.” I respond with a sheepish grin, and change the subject. They probably think this means I don’t like kids.

Life was never what we thought it was supposed to be about. A shed piled up with junk is about more than clutter. The name “shed” somehow seems fitting–as though I have cast off a heavy coat or, like a snake, shed a skin. Or reached, perhaps, a watershed in recovering from grief, choosing once again to direct myself, despite so much uncertainty and disappointment, toward renewal–and with it, a strange kind of hope.

The Likelihood of Hope

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Keith Woodruff has a poignant article on his site about his new relationship to statistics since the passing of his son. I, too, have experienced a profound thinning of the security blanket of probability since our own loss. Every time I got on a plane to and from Oregon, I was keenly aware of how I now neither can nor want to go back to the kind of drowsy false security of my privileged first-world life; nor can I bear to live under constant threat in my mind.

Our nation likewise had the psychic fabric of its imperviousness rent by the attack on the Twin Towers by airplanes. It was an immeasurable tragedy. Yet other countries suffer such losses in greater numbers and more frequently; other families lose more children than those who see adulthood. How can we live, awake to such fragility, without, in the process, being crushed?

Poetry is a kind of faith. The audacity of poem-making, in a world saturated with throw-away words, a preference for television and music, and suspicious indifference to all but the ironic–is itself a profession of belief. To commit one’s life to this art in such times is as irrational as any religion. Truly, we write against the odds.

Tonight I have been reading the poems of Ilya Kaminsky–a Russian poet from Odessa, deaf since early childhood, who, a year after arriving in America with little English, lost his father suddenly. He writes about Mandelstam, Akhmatova and others who survived the un-survivable, writing poems for which they could be killed or worse. Here is a fierceness of faith in humanity. What we pass on to each other in such thin books of poems is some likelihood of greater self-understanding–and a precious likelihood of hope.

Robert Peake

Postcards from London