Jim Moore's "It Is Not the Fact That I Will Die That I Mind"

Thoughts on all of this.

It Is Not the Fact That I Will Die That I Mind

but that no one will love as I did
the oak tree out my boyhood window,
the mother who set herself
so stubbornly against life,
the sister with her serious frown
and her wish for someone at her side,
the father with his dreamy gaze
and his left hand idly buried
in the fur of his dog.
And the dog herself,
that mournful look and huge appetite,
her need for absolute stillness
in the presence of a bird.
I know how each of them looks
when asleep. And I know how it feels
to fall asleep among them.
No one knows that but me,
No one knows how to love the way I do.


from Lightning at Dinner (Graywolf Press, 2005)

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I know that I have often written about Jim Moore’s poetry, but I have to say that, earlier this week, it was this poem by Jim Moore that I turned to, not out of some belief or desire that poetry might save me from some awful, sorrowful, angry feeling, but rather because I knew that, in Moore’s poetry, which is true of so much of the poetry that I love, I might encounter a way of looking at the world that could remind me that there is, in fact, a world, and that it is, in fact, a world we share, and that such sharing amidst the fact of our individuality, an individuality that Moore describes with such compassionate precision in this poem, is one of the great and beautiful things about being alive, something that is echoed not just in this poem, but also in something else that came to mind upon reading it, James Agee’s prologue to A Death in the Family, where he writes of his family (“all my people,” he calls them) and their gentle voices that are “like the voices of sleeping birds,” and where he writes, “here they are, all on this earth; and who shall ever tell the sorrow of being on this earth,” and where his words are both testament and elegy, and the truth is that I sat with today’s poem open at my desk at school for the past few days, bringing the book with me on Thursday morning, the day after Renee Nicole Good was murdered by an ICE officer in Minneapolis, and the truth is that I read it again and again, struck, again and again, as I was, by that apt depiction of a dog’s “need for absolute stillness / in the presence of a bird,” a depiction that still makes me marvel at one of the many absolute delights of this writing-thing, which might be to conjure up, in language, an apt-ness for the indescribable, to get as close as we can to describing the thing that is impossible to describe, how a dog does do that, standing immeasurably still at the slightest sound or the quickest scurry of a squirrel up the bark of a tree, and the truth is that I read this poem again on Friday, as my students sat in a circle and talked about Frankenstein on the last day of our unit for that particular novel, remarking, as one of them did, about the difference between obsession and devotion, or, as another did, about the insane privilege of definition that those with power have, how they get to define who or what is an outcast in this society of ours, and what to do about such outcasts, and the truth is that I read this poem again this weekend, and that I have been thinking about it, I think, not as a source of comfort but rather as a source, almost, of unapologetic attention that fuels my rage, a language of compassion that sits opposite the dominant and awful and vindictive language of our country, because, well, on Wednesday night, watching the news in a kind of fury, and seeing the video of this woman’s murder, a woman, I know now, who was a mother and a poet, though such things should not determine the scope or permission of our care, though they should, at the very least, remind us of the way that each of us are these human beings so full of many dimensions wholly unknown to others until they are fully known, I made the mistake of navigating to a different corner of the internet, something I don’t ever recommend though it is something I try to do every so often to try to witness the whole breadth of whatever is happening in this thing we call a society, where I read, under the news that hyperlinked the same video I had just watched, the responses of first dozens and then hundreds of people who, with a seemingly at times fervent glee, rationalized and justified the murder of Renee Nicole Good, some of them saying that she deserved it and nearly all of them neglecting to offer, on the anonymous internet, even the vaguest form of condolence or sorrow, and, later, having scrolled through this kind of sinister sadness, I thought of these people as I read the lines of today’s poem about how “no one knows how to love the way I do,” which is both a celebration of one’s inherent individuality and also a celebration of the varied and beautiful and wildly and insanely wonderful thing that humanity literally is, this strange and absurd group of us alive, oddly and inconceivably, at exactly the same time, each with our own way of loving, which is to say our own way of living, some of us even finding each other and loving each other, oddly and inconceivably, in the midst of the great and big crowd we live in, for the forever-ness of time that our mortal lives sometime seem, and I wondered if the people on this corner of the internet, those who seem to jump first to justifying or rationalizing every action of those whose power permits and even indulges in the use of violence on those with less power, whether in Minneapolis or Gaza or anywhere in between, ever thought this way about love and individuality and the beauty of each person, before I realized that, even if they once did, they probably do not anymore, nor does the president of this godforsaken country, nor his appointees, nor those who seem to worship him, and I know that this has been true for a long time, a very long time, yes, I understand that, but for some reason what happened this week, with the videos that offered such a tragic look at the deeply inhumane project that is ongoing in our country, where someone can be shot three times by a currently-uninjured someone who is in the process of side-stepping a motor vehicle in full view of so many people, and where people, upon watching the video, don’t just neglect the very notion of apology or sympathy or empathy but move instead, with quickness and even glee, to such violence’s justification, made me rage in a way that I did not think possible, which I know is a kind of rage that so many people have experienced for so long, this rage not just of injustice but of godawful patronization, this rage of being lied to and being made to feel powerless for simply knowing the truth, this rage of feeling isolated for believing that people deserve better, this rage of feeling like an outcast for thinking even remotely critically, and I have held onto that rage for the past few days, trying not to let it fester but thinking instead about how to let it inform the way I live, and though I do not have an answer for that question, I do know that part of my answer lies in the politics of this poem, which is a politics that centers love as part of its mission and practices that love through a conscious act of looking, which is to say a conscious act of care, and I do know that part of my answer also lies in accepting that rage may be a part of my lifeblood moving forward, as it has been for so many, and I also know that part of my answer lies in understanding that anyone who values care and looks critically enough for the truth may find themselves feeling isolated and cast out and powerless, which means that we must (truly, we must) find each other in this time, because it is only in finding each other amidst that isolation and powerlessness that we foster any kind of notion of hope, which is a radical but essential word in this current moment, which is a current moment, sadly, where, though I do not like generalizing, there seem to be two poles of belief, where one group believes that people quite literally deserve to die at the hands of others and where another group believes that people do not deserve to die at the hands of others, that they instead deserve to live among others for the short and fragile and mortal time they have, and, look, all I have to say about that is: if at some point your eyes look at a video of someone getting murdered in broad daylight and your mind’s first instinct is to say but what if or but what about, I would urge you to stop, because I want you to be a person who understands that you are the only person who loves the way you do, which means that every person you see, whether in a video or in the broad daylight just outside the reach of your outstretched hand, is the only person who loves the way they do, and, honestly, if you refuse to see that, and if you choose instead to attempt to justify rather than mourn the death of someone whose love is a shiny, remarkable gem polished under the light of the same sun where you and I both stand, you are just like the millions of others who have abandoned the radical and wildly special individuality of their love to instead become people who hate other people in exactly the same way.

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1. On Monday, January 26th, I am reading at Brookline Booksmith in Boston, where I’ll also be in conversation with the wonderful Myles Taylor. Details here. I’d love to see you there.

   

2. In the past few newsletters, I announced that I am teaching two workshops for the Adirondack Center for Writing. The first workshop, “Rewriting Your Life,” a 5 week multi-genre workshop, for anyone writing poems, fiction, or essays has reached capacity, though a waitlist is available. There are a few spots left for the second, which I’m wildly excited about, and which is called “A Line As Long As the Heart Is Wide.” It will be a deep dive into Larry Levis’s poetry in celebration of the release of his Collected Poems early next year.

3. My novel, Pilgrims, is out in the world, and I am deeply grateful. Thank you for reading it and sharing it and all sorts of things. If you are interested, you can buy it here. Consider writing a review on Goodreads if you’d like. Consider asking for it from your local library. I appreciate it. Thank you a million times over.

4. The word ceasefire seems to be just a word. As news outlets report, Israel has violated the terms constantly, and, as the Gaza Sunbirds posted awhile ago, the language of ceasefire does not mean a language of peace, and, as Doctors Without Borders stated, it certainly does not mean that help is not needed. Consider donating to Doctors Without Borders here as they continue their work in Gaza. And please consider following and supporting the work of The Sameer Project (link here) and The Gaza Sunbirds (link here) as they provide on the ground support for Palestinians in Gaza.

5. 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.