Anis Mojgani's "To the Sea"

Thoughts on taking each other seriously.

To the Sea

Sometimes when you start to ramble
or rather when you feel you are starting to ramble
you will say Well, now I’m rambling
though I don’t think you ever are.
And if you ever are I don’t really care.
And not just because I and everyone really 
at times falls into our own unspooling
—which really I think is a beautiful softness
of being human, trying to show someone else
the color of all our threads, wanting another to know 
everything in us we are trying to show them—
but in the specific, 
in the specific of you
here in this car that you are driving
and in which I am sitting beside you
with regards to you 
and your specific mouth
parting to give way
to the specific sweetness that is
the water of your voice 
tumbling forth—like I said 
I don’t ever really mind
how much more 
you might keep speaking
as it simply means 
I get to hear you 
speak for longer. 
What was a stream 
now a river.


from The Tigers, They Let Me (Write Bloody, 2023)

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I love, first, how this poem rambles its beginning — which is, as you notice, about the fact of rambling — and repeats the word ramble (or some form of it, as I have just done) three times. And I love how the first word of the next sentence that follows that first sentence of rambling begins with the word and. And I love, too, how the first word of the next sentence that follows that sentence, a sentence that spans nearly the rest of the poem, is also the word and, which is a conjunction, as a word like but is too, which is a word, I should say, that also appears in this poem, which is important to note, I think, simply because the word conjunction literally just refers to a joining of things, a with-ness, one could say, which is part of what this poem speaks toward: one person welcoming the stream-becoming-river of another, and how, if we are each rivers, there is a body of water — bigger than each of us — that we flow into together.

I think that body of water is called the sea. And so I love this poem that maps out the way to that sea.

And if this poem is a map, as some poems are (blueprints, too, I imagine — blueprints toward a feeling), then I love the way it maps. I love the long line of its opening. And then I love the “unspooling” the poem enacts, which it enacts just at the moment it says that word: unspooling. Pretty cool, right? It moves to this em-dashed aside that names the “color of all our threads” and then, after that aside, it begins to unspool, to shorten its line, to look — in some ways — like a ball of yarn sitting atop the yarn that dangles from it. A poem can do that, can’t it? It can look like something. And this poem does look like so much. It looks like a rambling, if a rambling could be a thing and if such a thing could be a poem, and it looks like a ball of yarn let loose, if a ball of yarn could be a poem, and it looks like a river flowing out from or into a body of water, if a river could be a poem, and it looks like a map, if a map could be a poem (or if, as I suggested earlier, a poem could be a map).

And it’s funny, after the rambling of the poem’s opening, and after the aside of that long em-dashed moment, Mojgani unspools the poem with these lines:

but in the specific, 
in the specific of you
here in this car that you are driving
and in which I am sitting beside you
with regards to you 
and your specific mouth
parting to give way
to the specific sweetness that is
the water of your voice 

The rambling has given way to the specific. One, two, three, four times. The long line has given way to the short. And maybe, amidst all this giving way, a forgiving has happened, as in: I forgive you your rambling, or I forgive you yourself — not because the person this person is speaking to has any reason to be sorry, but rather because they have no need to be sorry. And so: you are forgiven. Because sometimes forgiving just means granting. As in: I grant you your rambling. As in: I grant you yourself. And maybe I love it — yourself. No, I definitely do.

And so, maybe it goes without saying, but I figure I’d say it, and even let myself ramble a bit in my own saying — but I love this poem.

I think of a much shorter poem of Mojgani’s that this reminds me of, titled “5 Months.” It reads, in full:

Every corner of my heart loves you

In a field of fields you are the largest field
In a field of moons you are the most moons

Yeah, when I think of those lines, I think of these final lines from today’s poem:

it simply means 
I get to hear you 
speak for longer. 
What was a stream 
now a river.

And I think that part of what this poem today is saying is: in a poem that is a river, you are the most river.

And I think that part, too, of what this poem today is saying is: if you listen to anyone, they will become a river right in front of you, not just any river, but the most-river, and if we are each our most-river, because we are each being listened to, then we are flowing into — together — the most-sea.

Imagine that literal map, huh? A bunch of most-rivers flowing into the most-sea. Pretty awesome, I think.

The child-like intensity of the joy inherent in today’s poem is part of why I continue to read poems. It is a joy that reminds me that such a thing is a thing you can say — that you can say in a field of fields you are the largest field. That you can compare yourself to a moon. That you can make a poem that looks like anything and feels like a map. That you can ramble and then control. That you can put that dichotomy, that forever-contradiction, within a thing, and then let that thing be what it is: a poem. It is joy, I think, that lives at the heart of that making.

And even when it is hard, that thing we have made — I think joy lives there, too. I think of another of Mojgani’s poems, “Hon…,” and how it reads:

Love me stupid.
Love me terrible.
And when I am no
mountain but rather
a monsoon of imperfect
thunder love me. When
I am blue in my face
from swallowing myself
yet wearing my best heart
even if my best heart
is a century of hunger
an angry mule breathing
hard or perhaps even
hopeful. A small sun.
Little & bright.

Right there at the end, after the imperfection and the anger and the trying, there is something small, something Little & bright. Joy lives there, then. In the midst of all that making.

I believe that because, even when it is not joy that brings me to the blank page, I turn to the blank page to play with something. To play with a line that has been flirting with my head all day. To play with an image — two dogs in raincoats I saw just this Wednesday. To play with a feeling I don’t quite know how to put into words (sorrow, especially, is good for that). And so I play with it. And even in that sorrow — if sorrow is the feeling — there is joy in the playing that results in something having been made. I know this especially because, when I don’t write, and when I sit in something, or let the image float around in my head until it disappears? There’s no joy there.

Amidst all that talk of making and playing, it helps, then, to be reminded — through a poem like today’s — that we are not simply one thing. That we are not just what we say, for example. That we are — as Mojgani writes — “the color of all our threads,” which is another way of saying that we are the gestures we make as we talk and the sound of our voice as we talk and the sometimes-said apology about what we are about to talk about. We are that, too. Spit it out, people sometimes say. I know I’ve said some variation of that before. I know I’ve said it when I’ve been impatient, inconsiderate, wanting to get on with it, wanting to get to the point, as if the point is the only thing I need — not the whole stone it was whittled from, not the branch that made the stick it sits atop. It helps to be reminded that the point is not the whole point.

I think of how my friend Nick sometimes laughs — hard, guffawing, wildly — to himself before he tells a story that he thinks is funny. I think of how that’s the most beautiful thing to witness, how that’s the part that makes me laugh the most, no matter the story. If you took his laughter out of the telling, I’d miss it. I’d miss it dearly. So no, the point cannot be the whole point. Don’t get on with it. Don’t get to the point. Take your time.

I am probably thinking of all of this because I just started back at school the other day, for a few weeks of professional development we all do before our students come back. And, as is usual in these weeks, many of the mornings are spent team-building and trust-building and all sorts of building. And we spend a lot of time talking about our values and the values of our school and where we want to go and who we want to be. It’s fine; it’s the usual.

But the other day, I was struck by a question we were talking about, which was something simple, something like what is something a teacher did for you in the past that you remember and carry with you? And I sat there, remembering. And I remembered. I remembered a teacher I had, Mr. Rissetto. He taught this class on ethics and was the faculty head of the school newspaper. And more than anything else in the world, what I remember about him is that he took me seriously. I used to eat lunch in his room, which, if I remember correctly, had a bunch of photos of him holding fish he had just caught. He had these massive forearms, the size of a giraffe’s neck. And I’d eat lunch in his room and just pepper him with concerns of mine. And I’d pepper him with ideas for the newspaper. And I’d lay down my anxieties and my worries about the future. I’d make pros and cons lists on his board — about anything and everything. And he took me seriously, in all of my worry and my joy and my childishness and my love and my passion and my whatever-else. He’d let me write about something. He’d listen. He’d treat my concerns as if they were real — because they were.

And that’s part of what this poem does today, isn’t it? It’s there when Mojgani writes in the specific of you. There, in that attention, is a real seriousness. It’s a seriousness that lets the light in, that lets the joy in, that lets whatever needs to be let in, in. That’s a gift, I think. To take someone seriously as who they are. And to be taken seriously. That, especially. That can make a life. It has made mine many times over. If you’ve read this far, you’ve probably, by some wild grace, taken this wild rambling a little seriously. Thank you, seriously, for that.

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Some notes:

1. Consider donating to the work of Doctors Without Borders to support their ongoing work in Gaza.

2. As I will continue to mention, Writers Against the War on Gaza has been a powerful resource that has, in these days, reminded me of all the various potentials for solidarity in this moment. You can follow them on Instagram here. Here, too, is a link to the New York War Crimes page — their ongoing publication.

3. If you’ve read any of the recent newsletters, you’ve perhaps noticed that I am offering a subscription option. This is functioning as a kind of “tip jar.” If you would like to offer your monetary support as a form of generosity, please consider becoming a paid subscriber below. There is no difference in what you receive as a free or paid subscriber; to choose the latter is simply an option to exercise your generosity if you feel willing. I am grateful for you either way. Thanks for your readership.