Madeleine Cravens's "Leaving"

Thoughts on the pleasure of error.

Leaving

Not the pleasure of lovers but the pleasure of letters,
a pleasure like weather, delayed and prepared for,
not the pleasure of lessons but the pleasure of errors,
of nightmares, of actors in the black box of a theatre,
not the pleasure of present but the pleasure of later,
the pleasure of letters and weather and terror, asleep
by the lake, unable to answer, the pleasure of candles,
their wax on the table, not the pleasure of saviors
but the pleasure of errors, not the pleasure of marriage
but the pleasure of failure, the pleasure of characters
like family members, their failures and errors, their
laughter and weather, the pleasure of water, terrible
rivers, not the pleasure of empire but the pleasure
of after, our failure to keep an accurate record, not
the pleasure of tethers but the pleasure of strangers,
the terrible strangers who will become your lovers,
not the pleasure of novels but the pleasure of anger,
your failure to answer all of my letters, the pleasure
of daughters, the pleasure of daughters writing letters
in April, the failure of orchards, the terror of mothers,
not the pleasure of planners but the pleasure of errors.


from Pleasure Principle (Scribner, 2024); first published in The New Yorker (link here)

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Yeah, look. I fucking love this poem. Do not excuse my language. I mean it.

This poem above was excerpted from Madeleine Cravens’s forthcoming Pleasure Principle, a book I’m deeply excited to read, not just because of this poem today, but because of what I’ve read of Cravens’s work. In one poem, “Saint Markella’s Cathedral,” Cravens writes:

This is the best trick of divine architecture—
that I will exit the church and try to live
better, a bit more devoutly, taking pleasure
in everything, a plate of sliced potatoes
fried in oil, a carafe of cheap white wine.

In another of her poems, “Voicemail from La Jolla,” Cravens writes:

Womanhood felt like an incorrect container.
But it might have also been the future
which appeared ill-fitting.

In both of these poems, Cravens writes with a keen sense of the “ill-fitting” nature of the world — the way it promises, for example, easy tricks and easy endings. Or the way — as today’s poem suggests by arguing the opposite — that this world does not promise pleasure from error, or failure, or uncertainty, or anything that actually does seem to more accurately mark how it feels to move through the world. So much of what is promised in this life feels more ill-fitting than anything else, when you really think about it. Big little lie this world often is — so yes, I like the idea of foraging for pleasure in what is in between what we are often told to make of this life. In cracks and crannies, mistakes and mishaps, frayed and fragmented pieces.

And I think that’s what I love about Cravens’s work. Not the ease, but the pleasure, a word that holds ease inside of it, amidst so much other sound and filling. Go ahead and read today’s poem aloud to yourself. Do it. I’ll wait. Read the whole thing. Feel the words in your mouth. A word like pleasure, even. Feel the texture of saying such a word, how it moves and takes shape between your tongue and your mouth’s roof. Hear the echoes. The rhymes. The rhythms. The words singing and colliding and meshing into one another, doubling back and turning and twisting and moving forward. The poem itself is a pleasure. It’s not just about pleasure; it is also an enactment of pleasure. It’s a joy to read aloud. It moves against the mouth; it gives the voice texture; it befuddles and amuses; it wonders; it makes a statement with and against the world.

Sometimes we write, I think, to show how joyful it is — this act of expression. We write to play, even when it feels hard to play, and especially when playing — amidst so much else — feels radical. This poem, among so much of what it also is, is a testament to that joy.

And I love, too, how this poem today moves toward that joy. Here is a bit I love:

not the pleasure of saviors
but the pleasure of errors, not the pleasure of marriage
but the pleasure of failure

In the lines that immediately follow are so much else I love, for so much of the same reasons:

the pleasure of characters
like family members, their failures and errors, their
laughter and weather, the pleasure of water, terrible
rivers, not the pleasure of empire but the pleasure
of after

In Cravens’s poem today, the word error — in either its singular or plural form — repeats itself four times. And the word failure —in either its singular or plural form — repeats itself five times. It’s hard not to notice such a focus, such a generosity toward what we often try to correct. Yes, I read in today’s poem a kind of anti-correction — a move away from correction and toward acceptance, where pleasure can be, and where joy often is.

The poem, too, operates in this way by posing its own examples of corrections. Much of the poem is structured in a way that states not this, but that. I loved looking through it in that regard. Here is a list of all today’s poem pushes against, all that it corrects, all that it says “not” towards:

• not the pleasure of lovers

• not the pleasure of lessons

• not the pleasure of present

• not the pleasure of saviors

• not the pleasure of marriage

• not the pleasure of empire

• not the pleasure of tethers

• not the pleasure of novels

• not the pleasure of planners

Though I’d disagree with some of these on pure sensual principle — few things, for example, have been more pleasurable to me in my life lately than the joy I just felt before starting to write this, the joy of being married in and sitting in the same room as the person I am married to, each of us reading a novel as the world turns its little turns and goes on in its big and little ways outside the window of our apartment — yes, though I’d disagree with some of these not’s on the basis my own subjective experience, I do understand, perhaps, the point of what Cravens pushes against this poem, and, through such positioning, moves us towards.

Planners, for example, and lessons, and saviors, and empire — these things promise us a degree of certainty in our lives. For empire, the certainty is in exploitation and conquest, a certainty of riches unequally distributed and terribly gained. For planners and lessons, the certainty is in the conquest of the future, the portioning of yet-to-be-lived time into a series of goals that can be ticked off, learned, tested, and completed.

An overwhelming focus on the present, too, can be more painful than pleasurable; yes, for all the seizing the day and living in the moment, there are days and moments when I’d rather rest than live, when I’d rather say no than yes, when I’d rather play than work. Sometimes I long for later. And, finally, for marriage, I know, there is an element of certainty, an idea of a relationship as a tether rather than as something fluid. I imagine, though I am quite newly married, that part of the joy of marriage — if it is lasting, and pleasurable, and joyful — must come through what Cravens hints at, must come through a fascination and real curiosity of one another’s “failures and errors.”

There’s a moment in Werner Herzog’s new memoir, with its absolutely bonkers and Herzog-ian title, Every Man for Himself and God Against All, that I have found myself thinking about again and again. In it, he writes:

If you harshly light every last corner of a house, the house will be uninhabitable. It’s like that with your soul; if you light it up, shadows and darkness and all, people will become “uninhabitable.”

I think of that when I think of today’s poem. Replace Herzog’s idea of light with the very idea of perfection, with certainty, with knowing everything, with any notion of correctness sold to us as a marker for how to live a fulfilling life in the modern world, and I would still agree with Herzog’s point. The pleasure of being alive is the perfection of strangeness, that in-between mystery of oddity and joy, of “characters / like family members,” of “laughter,” of “after,” especially what is after pain, or after work, or after labor, or after sorrow. What is after now, when now can be so hard. Yes, once again, sometimes I long for later.

And maybe that, too, is why I’m holding Cravens’s poem so close today. I think I am holding it close because it un-blueprints a life, because it directs our gaze back to the mess of this life and says let’s find pleasure in that, in whatever that might mean, in whatever we can smile about as we un-shame ourselves for calling ourselves a mess or for begrudging ourselves over some error or some failure. Yes, let’s find pleasure in laboring with others as we seek the “after” of empire. Let's find pleasure in forgiving and being forgiven. Let’s find pleasure in the long space between unanswered emails and letters, how they make the receiving a surprise all the more joyful.

The longer I teach, the more I realize that so much of correctness is a kind of scam. Grading, as I imagine it is for many teachers, is one of my least favorite parts of the job. But it is one of my least favorite parts of the job not for the labor of it — which I often do as I drink a beer at a bar while my laundry turns and washes itself next door — but rather for the strange judgment of it. I have my rubrics and my standards, yes. I know the kind of thesis that is awarded a single point on an essay for the AP Literature exam. And I know the kind of thesis that is not. I know what distinguishes good commentary from not-as-good, and what befuddles a line of reasoning in an essay such a way that an AP reader would detract from a student’s score. Yes, yes. I know these things. Multiple supporting claims and explored complexities and literary techniques and a potential consideration of alternate perspectives. Yes, yes. I know.

But even still, I am a smirky grader. I like befuddling work. I like writing that doesn’t know itself quite yet, and I like writing that does. I like writing that is messy, that is surprising, that is assertive, that is bold. I like the funny shapes that sentences make as students still try to figure out their style, or the surprise they make of language as they confuse and un-confuse themselves with it. I really do. I like it all. I like what is intentional and what is not, and I like the work of helping a student see — in their intention or their non-intention — the results of their writing, or their wonder, or their playfulness, however inspired or not. Though, I imagine and might assert — it’s all inspired, in one way or another.

And so it’s hard to put a grade on something. It’s hard to navigate an essay toward correctness, because, though I have a rubric in front of me, I think I believe in a messier correctness, one that is less based in some societal or academic standard and is more based in an awe of sorts, a style, a mode of attention and awareness, a deeply personal thing, inherent to each person, and so much a part of who we each are. What to do with that dissonance, then? I’m not sure. I think about it often.

The pleasure of being alive, as today’s poem reminds me, is not and cannot be grounded in one single notion or idea. Yes, it must be a pleasure of failure and error. A pleasure of self and a pleasure of people. And it must be a pleasure of that kind of boundlessness that makes up a self, that makes up people, that makes up the world. To borrow a phrase from another of Cravens’s poems, so many aspects of this world feel like “incorrect container(s).” And it’s funny, considering today’s poem is so wound up in correction and anti-correction, because there must be, I imagine, more pleasurable incorrect containers than the already-incorrect ones we find ourselves in. The correct containers are ones, I also imagine, that we will recognize in part for their incorrectness, for their fault-lines and cracks, for our need to shape and re-shape them to fit who we are and who we are always becoming.

A tangle of words, a self is. A mess of sentences. A fluid language. All this becoming-ness. All this failure. All this error. And the world, too! A tangle and a mess and a fluidity and a dying and a becoming and a failing and a living! Which is why, I think, we play so much at trying to describe it. It’s why we write and make art that does all the shit that art does, all that brilliant and in-between and beautiful shit. I try to smile at it all, sometimes. I try to walk away from shame. Toward forgiveness. I am trying, always trying, to find pleasure in my slipping and falling along the way. This little, lovable mess I make of my day.

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Some (more than a few) notes:

1. This article, in The Nation, resists the narrative of overlooking Palestinians, and asks a number of contributors “What does it mean to be Palestinian now?” It’s a worthy read, and a kind of witness.

2. I don’t talk about it much in my newsletter, but I designed and now teach a Journalism class at my high school, where each month I work with my students to create and publish our school’s first newspaper/magazine. The work of my students is available to read online, and we just released our third issue. You can read it here.

3. As I mentioned in past newsletters, the ad hoc coalition 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. I also recently donated to this fundraiser, in support of the Gaza Sunbirds — a para-cycling team that is reallocated their resources to offer on-the-ground aid in Gaza. Maybe consider donating if you have the means.

4. 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.