January 2024 – Page 2

Mirror as Poem as Mirror

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Three Januaries ago, in the New York Times Magazine, Rita Dove selected a Jericho Brown poem about Jericho Brown called, quite simply yet not simply at all, “Dark.”

I say that because “dark” is one of those adjectives that can denote (and connote) many meanings, as certainly it does here. And though we often see identity poems dwelling on the concept of “self,” I have to admit that reading this poem makes me wonder whether it is really about “self” or not.

If the answer is “or not,” then Brown is onto something. Like race. And self-worth. And self-rationalizations. Even life! Here’s the poem:

“Dark”
by Jericho Brown

I am sick of your sadness,
Jericho Brown, your blackness,
Your books. Sick of you
Laying me down
So I forget how sick
I am. I’m sick of your good looks,
Your debates, your concern, your
Determination to keep your butt
Plump, the little money you earn.
I’m sick of you saying no when yes is as easy
As a young man, bored with you
Saying yes to every request
Though you’re as tired as anyone else yet
Consumed with a single
Diagnosis of health. I’m sick
Of your hurting. I see that
You’re blue. You may be ugly,
But that ain’t new.
Everyone you know is
Just as cracked. Everyone you love is
As dark, or at least as black.

It’s almost as if Brown has considered the navel-gazing question at great length, then wrote a poem about it through a looking glass darkly.

It’s something we all could do because, paradoxically, we often simultaneously love and loathe ourselves, being trapped as we are in these bodies we carry around each day (psychologists call it “baggage,” but that’s a heck of a word for a man’s mortal coil, don’t you think?).

As for self-loathing, I except, of course, those who live to be 100. The secret to their longevity? They don’t think too much, certainly about themselves. And they don’t write poems about mirrors looking back accusingly, either. That alone might cost you a couple of years.

“If It’s Darkness We’re Having, Let It Be Extravagant. “

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Christmas. It’s so entwined with childhood memories that people can get unreasonably sentimental about it. And while I like the look and the music and the food surrounding the holiday, I’ve never been a fan of all the work involved.

You know. Dragging out the boxes that either sit all year in the attic or the basement. Moving everyday items to make room for the four-weeks-only items. And, most feared of all, trimming the tree.

Putting the holiday dog on is one thing, but taking it down is another altogether. After the holiday passes, ye olde tannenbaum begins to feel like a visitor who’s overstayed his welcome. Moodwise, it no longer delivers because, without the anticipation, it has become stale goods.

It’s a cruel but necessary task, deconstructing a tree. And, once it and all the rest are finally done and packed and restacked in the attic / basement, there’s no cleaner feeling and no bigger sigh of accomplishment. Welcome, January! (Words you never thought you’d see.)

The poet Jane Kenyon decided to tackle this post-holiday mood in her poem below. Let’s read along as she conjures a few specific objects in the roles of the not-always-pleasant purveyors of memory:

Taking Down the Tree
Jane Kenyon

“Give me some light!” cries Hamlet’s
uncle midway through the murder
of Gonzago. “Light! Light!” cry scattering
courtesans. Here, as in Denmark,
it’s dark at four, and even the moon
shines with only half a heart.

The ornaments go down into the box:
the silver spaniel, My Darling
on its collar, from Mother’s childhood
in Illinois; the balsa jumping jack
my brother and I fought over,
pulling limb from limb. Mother
drew it together again with thread
while I watched, feeling depraved
at the age of ten.

With something more than caution
I handle them, and the lights, with their
tin star-shaped reflectors, brought along
from house to house, their pasteboard
toy suitcase increasingly flimsy.
Tick, tick, the desiccated needles drop.

By suppertime all that remains is the scent
of balsam fir. If it’s darkness
we’re having, let it be extravagant.

The last stanza says it all—and more: “If it’s darkness / we’re having, let it be extravagant.” This after the sound and smell of the needles’ death, hallmarks of the holiday’s annual demise, heralders of January’s annual welcome, winter notwithstanding.

The Cruelest Muse

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If you ask people what the top inspirations and subject matters of poetry are, they will likely guess first love (“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways”) and second nature (“Roses are red, violets are blue”).

Surprisingly, however, one of the most popular muses is the cruelest — death.

This came to mind yesterday when I picked up my copy of Marie Howe’s What the Living Do, an extended elegy to her younger brother John, who died of AIDS-related complications in 1989.

The collection contains snapshots of moments, both before and after his death, ones that collectively draw the reader deeper into her experiences, feelings, and self-doubts. Yes, it is love and nature, too — as all death must be — but the loss and the mystery are the drivers, the inspirations, and ultimately the beauty behind these works.

Here are two I read yesterday, the first about a dream after John’s death and the second a conversation with her brother before his death.

The Promise
by Marie Howe

In the dream I had when he came back not sick
but whole, and wearing his winter coat,

he looked at me as though he couldn’t speak, as if
there were a law against it, a membrane he couldn’t break.

His silence was what he could not
not do, like our breathing in this world, like our living,

as we do, in time.
And I told him: I’m reading all this Buddhist stuff,

and listen, we don’t die when we die. Death is an event,
a threshold we pass through. We go on and on

and into light forever.
And he looked down, and then back up at me. It was the look we’d pass

across the kitchen table when Dad was drunk again and dangerous,
the level look that wants to tell you something,

in a crowded room, something important, and can’t.

The Last Time
by Marie Howe

The last time we had dinner together in a restaurant
with white tablecloths, he leaned forward

and took my two hands in his hands and said,
I’m going to die soon. I want you to know that.

And I said, I think I do know.
And he said, What surprises me is that you don’t.

And I said, I do. And he said, What?
And I said, Know that you’re going to die.

And he said, No, I mean know that you are.

The last line of “The Promise” uses a concrete — the way close siblings learn to communicate silently with their eyes — to effectively speak to an abstract, death. What’s interesting is how she links it with secret passages of knowledge they shared in moments of high tension with an abusive father.

In “The Last Time,” death is carried from the brother to the sister to the reader. The punch comes in that last line.

The leap to a single last line after a series of couplets is a strategy that no poet takes lightly, because the lonely line, sitting in the open for emphasis, needs to be better than good if you’re going to try this strategy. Otherwise it looks like you’re trying to make something from nothing.

Two additional poems from this collection are shared in this NPR interview with Howe. If you don’t own a copy of What the Living Do, I’d say it’s in the Top Ten for poetry books you should. For reading. For rereading. And for further proof that death, for all its bad press, remains one of the most inspiring of the elusive muses.