I wanted to pass on to you this article by Jennifer Michael Hecht. She posted a variation of it, 1/11/2010 on Best American Poetry, and it's been getting around.
Her poems are fantastic. My personal spiritual beliefs differ from her's, but there's really no denying she's on to something with the whole "Don't kill yourself" thing.
Give it a read, and consider some of the wonders we have.
Here's a poem from her second collection, Funny:
Prosody on Comedy
Tragedy is when all the stage is all good will
and all will wrongly, like too many winter coats
in too few seats on the subway, no one will
give up a thing yet all feel a remote
and stinging sorrow for the standers. Still,
tragedy is the ship sunk, bobbing heads afloat
together in the drink, all happy now to fill
their lungs with air and dream of lifeboats.
No bouts now. All their coveted papers and pills
as wet as once were their eyes, dry as ghost's
now, a low slung. Comedy is why they're still
together, in an ocean wide as wind and sky her host.
As we float, the deepness of the ocean tugs our bones.
In comedy we rush the crowded stage and act alone.
****
The poem originally appeared in Poetry, and Funny was a winner of The Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry from the University of Wisconsin Press.
0 comments:
Post a Comment