Well penned 🙌🙌 You always bring something deep and personal to the conversation that helps us to connect with you and the poem and the wider world. Your expressive writing can give the impression that this is easy to do, but I know that it isn’t, so thank you. As an aside, the poem that you wrote about in this issue reminds me of the Conversation by the poet AI (Published in the Paris Review back in 1980):
Ai
Conversation
For Robert Lowell
We smile at each other
and I lean back against the wicker couch.
How does it feel to be dead? I say.
You touch my knees with your blue fingers.
And when you open your mouth,
a ball of yellow light falls to the floor
and burns a hole through it.
Don’t tell me, I say. I don’t want to hear.
Did you ever, you start,
wear a certain kind of silk dress
and just by accident,
so inconsequential you barely notice it,
your fingers graze that dress
and you heat the sound of a knife cutting paper,
you see it too
and you realize how that image
is simply the extension of another image,
that your own life is a chain
of words
that one day will snap.
Words, you say, young girls in a circle, holding hands
"And so I hear in this repetition from today’s poem a kind of bell tolling. I hear a grounded-ness, an attempt at prayer — that relentless, musical belief in the impossible."
I've experienced the impossible time and again in my 74 years. Yes, it is musical. And not lonely.
In the context of the ongoing sorrow of war, thank you for everything in this post. Will be watching "A Hidden Life" soon. I've put it on hold at our public library.
Beautiful, Devin. Not-hereness is something I was afraid of until the death of my mother and daughter in an accident. It may sound counter-intuitive, but since then death - my own at least - doesn't bother me at all.
I’m a student who has recently come back from a solo trip to front line Ukraine. I’ve just published a new piece on my experiences and thought readers here may appreciate it. Please do see what you think. https://irongoose.substack.com/
Well penned 🙌🙌 You always bring something deep and personal to the conversation that helps us to connect with you and the poem and the wider world. Your expressive writing can give the impression that this is easy to do, but I know that it isn’t, so thank you. As an aside, the poem that you wrote about in this issue reminds me of the Conversation by the poet AI (Published in the Paris Review back in 1980):
Ai
Conversation
For Robert Lowell
We smile at each other
and I lean back against the wicker couch.
How does it feel to be dead? I say.
You touch my knees with your blue fingers.
And when you open your mouth,
a ball of yellow light falls to the floor
and burns a hole through it.
Don’t tell me, I say. I don’t want to hear.
Did you ever, you start,
wear a certain kind of silk dress
and just by accident,
so inconsequential you barely notice it,
your fingers graze that dress
and you heat the sound of a knife cutting paper,
you see it too
and you realize how that image
is simply the extension of another image,
that your own life is a chain
of words
that one day will snap.
Words, you say, young girls in a circle, holding hands
and beginning to rise heavenward
like white, helium balloons
in their confirmation dresses,
the wreaths of flowers on their heads spinning
and above all that,
that’s where I’m floating, Florence,
and that’s what it’s like
only ten times clearer,
ten times more horrible.
Could anyone alive survive it?
"And so I hear in this repetition from today’s poem a kind of bell tolling. I hear a grounded-ness, an attempt at prayer — that relentless, musical belief in the impossible."
I've experienced the impossible time and again in my 74 years. Yes, it is musical. And not lonely.
In the context of the ongoing sorrow of war, thank you for everything in this post. Will be watching "A Hidden Life" soon. I've put it on hold at our public library.
Thank you for this--I need to read more Franz Wright.
Love Franz Wright and love your meditation on "On Earth." So glad to have discovered your Substack. Sincerely, Jess
Ahhhhh.
...the relentless musical belief in the impossible... I love that. Thank you for this poem and for the questions that move us all closer together.
Beautiful, Devin. Not-hereness is something I was afraid of until the death of my mother and daughter in an accident. It may sound counter-intuitive, but since then death - my own at least - doesn't bother me at all.
Returned to read your heartening essay from years ago. Thank you for that link.
I’m a student who has recently come back from a solo trip to front line Ukraine. I’ve just published a new piece on my experiences and thought readers here may appreciate it. Please do see what you think. https://irongoose.substack.com/