Aimee Nezhukumatathil's "Letter to the Northern Lights"
Thoughts on the light we find when there is not light.
from Oceanic (Copper Canyon, 2018)
I love this poem both singularly and as a representation for what I love so much about Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s work — how it offers wonder of the world, wonder of love, and wonder of wonder itself, while also arguing and asserting itself all at once. This poem does all of that at once. It loves light just as it says there are better and different and more worthy kinds of light. It rejects certain kinds of wonders in favor of other, perhaps more ordinary kinds. And, in loving the ordinary so wholeheartedly, it allows the ordinary to transcend itself.
I love light. I often think of myself as the character in this Russell Edson prose poem that I shared on twitter today, particularly in relation to the final two lines:
Suddenly it is all so beautiful; the light is strange . . .
Something about the light! He begins to cry . . .
There is always “something about the light.” That’s what makes a poem particularly perceptive — how it chooses to shine its light, and on what. It’s why it’s hard to look at a William Eggleston photograph without crying. There is always something, always something about the light.
But what I love about this poem today by Aimee Nezhukumatathil is how it is, in essence, a giant fuck you (in some ways) to the Northern Lights, and to what they represent — that some light, some wonder, is more worthy than others. That conceit is refuted in Nezhukumatathil’s first line:
The light here on earth keeps us plenty busy…
And I love the examples that follow, which includes the Centralia Mine Fire — a fire that has been burning since 1962 in Pennsylvania, and will continue, some say, to burn for hundreds of years. A fire that began, most likely, because residents set fire to a trash dump which then set fire to a vein of coal which then burned forever and forced a once-town to become a ghost town. I think of that example, in particular, because of the way light exists as a consequence of human action. It’s a reminder that even in moments of wonder, and even in moments of generosity and pure, unadulterated awe, we are nearly always at the mercy of light.
Even in the examples that follow — “firefly, / strawberry moon, a tiny catch of it in each other’s teeth” — light is something stumbled upon, witnessed, almost-missed. Which means that it could be missed, which means that it could be un-witnessed, which means that it often is. Which means that it exists, with or without our knowledge or witness. Which means that it outlives us and out-births us. It goes on. It’s been going on. It travels time and space.
That pain of being at the mercy of light is recognized in the first half of this poem, as the speaker chases the sight of one specific light, almost at the expense of losing others. And so, in many ways, this poem becomes a poem that is against light, which I love particularly because of the way light and poetry so often exist in cahoots with one another. And no, to be specific, this poem is not really against light so much as it is against the singular pursuit of light, which is a kind of singular pursuit of wonder, which then offers some hierarchical divide between one wonder and the next. As the poem builds through the first half, you begin to feel this frustration seeping in, such as in the couplet:
and I guess you’re used to that — people falling
over themselves to catch a glimpse of you
Which leads into my favorite lines, the volta of this poem:
Aurora, I’d rather stay indoors with him — even if it meant
a rickety hotel and its wood paneling, golf carpeting
in the bathrooms, and grainy soapcakes.
Here, the speaker, fed up with the inaccessible, flighty nature of one particular kind of light, finally says you’re not worth it, and lists off, in defiance, a world “indoors” (read: without light) that might provide more illumination than light itself.
In this moment, this poem becomes less a poem about light and more a poem about how we orient ourselves to the world, and what in the world we orient ourselves toward. Where do we turn in this world? And how? It becomes a poem that offers a different way of noticing, and, having noticed, a different way of framing — or loving — what has been noticed. Why waste our time chasing the beautiful but inaccessible, the speaker seems to say, when we could be finding beauty in what is already here? And then, as if that weren’t enough, the poem then asks: and then what if you were in love when you found that beauty, what then? Ordinary wonder plus ordinary love equates to a kind of shared, deeply mined, deeply felt moment — one worth more than a flighty chance at the extraordinary.
I love when poems offer us these different ways of seeing. I mean, John Berger was not wrong when he wrote: “The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled.” And, because this is true, poems have the opportunity to offer some complication into that ongoing argument between ourselves and the world. Nezhukumatathil’s poem does that, not just by resisting a kind of extraordinary light, but also by turning the reader’s gaze back toward a kind of everydayness, a world we see so often we often forget its capacity to move us.
Perhaps the moment of wonder is not when we see something we have never seen before. Perhaps, more specifically, the moment of wonder can be a moment when we see the potential for love in something we thought we knew wholly, and, as such, spent a long time ignoring, or overlooking. Perhaps the moment of wonder is just a reminder, not a revelation. It is the world saying I’m here when you thought you had heard all you needed to hear. Poems often remind us that our relationship with the world is far from settled. To be open to that uncertainty — which includes so much possibility — is a beautiful thing. That alone is a kind of wonder.