Autism Screening Questionnaire: Social Interaction Difficulties reminds me a lot of Ae Hee Lee's Conversation with Immigration Officer! They are both poems that use a generous combination of poetry and mystery to respond to bureaucratic language and reductive questions.
"... What I mean is: what if it is mystery that unifies us, rather than certainty?..."
Your post today is deeply moving for many reasons.
It's a day of coincidences. While walking by Bellingham Bay/ the Salish Sea some years ago, I would often see an older couple, about my age, taking their beloved grandchild out in a stroller. After seeing each other now and then, we began recognizing each other as regular walkers by the bay and would say hello and then eventually to stop and talk. They were the parents of Oliver de la Paz who was then teaching in the English Department at Western Washington University. There were changes in my life at that time and, as a result, I had to stop walking at that time of day and didn't see them again.
It is only since reading your Substack and a few others that I have a renewed engagement with poetry. I had not read anything by Oliver de la Paz before today.
Today is my grandnephew's 10th birthday. He is a few years older than Oliver de la Paz was in the photo that inspired the sonnet. To Pablo I say:
What a brilliant poem, and a wonderful meditation on light. I've had the ending of Jane Hirshfield's "Meeting the Light Completely" stuck in my head recently.
I enjoy this poem, but do find it strange that the Speaker is addressing his former child-self and wishing him a good future… since the Speaker already knows how that future turns out.
Autism Screening Questionnaire: Social Interaction Difficulties reminds me a lot of Ae Hee Lee's Conversation with Immigration Officer! They are both poems that use a generous combination of poetry and mystery to respond to bureaucratic language and reductive questions.
"... What I mean is: what if it is mystery that unifies us, rather than certainty?..."
Your post today is deeply moving for many reasons.
It's a day of coincidences. While walking by Bellingham Bay/ the Salish Sea some years ago, I would often see an older couple, about my age, taking their beloved grandchild out in a stroller. After seeing each other now and then, we began recognizing each other as regular walkers by the bay and would say hello and then eventually to stop and talk. They were the parents of Oliver de la Paz who was then teaching in the English Department at Western Washington University. There were changes in my life at that time and, as a result, I had to stop walking at that time of day and didn't see them again.
It is only since reading your Substack and a few others that I have a renewed engagement with poetry. I had not read anything by Oliver de la Paz before today.
Today is my grandnephew's 10th birthday. He is a few years older than Oliver de la Paz was in the photo that inspired the sonnet. To Pablo I say:
Dear child, may you rise, wayward, into the sky.
May you stay unified by the light, spellbound.
What a brilliant poem, and a wonderful meditation on light. I've had the ending of Jane Hirshfield's "Meeting the Light Completely" stuck in my head recently.
Thank You— a lovely poem and an inspiring contemplation. Just what I needed for this morning…
I enjoy this poem, but do find it strange that the Speaker is addressing his former child-self and wishing him a good future… since the Speaker already knows how that future turns out.