Wendell Berry's "1993, I"

Thoughts on finding ourselves daring to try for love.

I.

No, no, there is no going back.
Less and less you are 
that possibility you were.
More and more you have become 
those lives and deaths 
that have belonged to you.
You have become a sort of grave 
containing much that was
and is no more in time, beloved 
then, now and always.
And so you have become a sort of tree 
standing over a grave.
Now more than ever you can be 
generous toward each day
that comes, young, to disappear 
forever and yet remain 
unaging in the mind.
Everyday you have less reason 
not to give yourself away.


from This Day: Collected & New Sabbath Poems (Counterpoint, 2014)

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I have found it really hard to write this little newsletter this week, for obvious reasons. But also, maybe, for less obvious reasons that are still related to the obvious one. I struggle, for example, with adding even more words to the growing amount of words that are offered (and sometimes not so much as offered as, instead, thrown into the mix) to make more sense or less sense of a moment such as this one.

And I struggle, too, with what happens, often, in moments of precarity and difficulty in regards to poetry — how poems become part of what are thrown into the mix, shared with or without context, shared sometimes with the sense that a poem alone might save us, which some people attest, or with the sometimes spoken or sometimes unspoken idea that a poem is a worthwhile replacement for action. And yet, I struggle, finally, with my own criticism just now, how it demeans poetry into a single thing — this poem that sits before you — without accounting for all that the work of such art might stand for or illuminate or exist alongside.

Indeed, I don’t think poems can save us, nor do I think such language of saving and being saved is useful for our time. I’d rather think of other verbs: empower, challenge, free, question, mystify, embolden, frustrate, enlighten, illuminate.

But I do think poems can — and have for me — keep us open to possibility, particularly radical possibility. And just as I turn to poetry for a reminder of the need for such openness, which is a kind of radical hope, I keep the memory of the real, lived work of many poets alive in me, as well. I am reminded that poems are not passive things to be consumed passively, but rather that they can serve as active reminders of the work of trying to reconsider the possibilities in this world, or of the work of trying to redirect one’s focus toward light, or the absence of light, or of the work of maintaining witness, or of the work of, literally, doing work. They serve in this way if we consider them actively, and if we consider the active work on the part of poets, those whose politics shaped not just their work, but the world at large.

And so I think of Mosab Abu Toha’s consistent activism on the part of the people of Palestine, how he has ceaselessly documented the violence enacted daily on his home and on the lives of those he loves, and how his poetry centers the narratives and feelings of those same people he bears witness to and cares for. Think of the care at work in the opening of his poem, “Ibrahim Abu Lughod and brother in Yaffa,” how it does the radical work of naming, simply naming, people and places that exist daily on the margins, at risk of being lost:

The two walk toward the beach,
barefoot.

With his soft
index finger,
Ibrahim starts to draw
a map
of what
used to be
their home.

And I think of how Audre Lorde and June Jordan lived the work of their poetry as activists and professors at CUNY. Here’s a worthwhile bit from an introduction that Alexis Pauline Gumbs wrote for one of Jordan’s letters to Lorde:

SEEK (an acronym for Search for Education Elevation and Knowledge) is a program at CUNY that was conceived as a series of remedial classes for students who had come to the college from underperforming high schools. But the program’s early faculty—including Jordan and Lorde, as well as other revolutionary writers like Toni Cade Bambara and Adrienne Rich—did not simply teach their students to assimilate into the norms of the system that had dispossessed them. Instead, they developed their pedagogy to heed what the students were seeking: ways of learning that honored the communities they loved at home as well as those struggling against colonialism globally. Jordan and Lorde and their SEEK colleagues taught their students to interrogate and transform the very meaning of education.

Gumbs later names the “poetic effectiveness and personal integrity” and “political generosity” of both Jordan and Lorde, whose poems, sure, if we are picking at things, maybe did not save anyone (though perhaps they literally did), but were certainly borne out of a love and care and generosity that lifted, freed, and empowered so many.

I think, too, of Mark Baumer, the poet and environmental activist who was struck by a car and killed while walking barefoot across the country to raise awareness of effects of climate change. Baumer’s activism was ceaseless and unrelenting, and he wrote poetry in the midst of all of his work. His poetry, then, was part of his work, which was the work of elevating, liberating, educating, caring, and trying. In one poem, he wrote:

The use of the mind can no longer understand all the pain in the world. We seem to be in trouble. 

There, in those words — the poet as someone who seeks and warns at the same time.

I think of how Philip Levine’s What Work Is — both the collection and its titular poem — serve as moments of poetry that center the lives of the marginalized and disenfranchised. And I think of how the collection, according to an article in Jacobin, began as a way to use poetry to address something that happened in the world:

The impetus for the collection was a news report about Vincent Chin, a Chinese-American man who had been murdered by Ronald Ebens, a plant supervisor at Chrysler, and Michael Nitz, his stepson, an autoworker who had been laid off. The pair had wrongly identified Chin — who was celebrating his bachelor party in Highland Park — as Japanese and beat him to death. At the time, anti-Japanese racism was high among autoworkers due to Japanese automobile imports and the fall in US market share.

And so, for Levine, a poem was not merely a poem, but was instead a way to frame and funnel his anger and heartbreak towards a more just world. Levine’s politics lived at the center of his poetry. According to that same article, when asked by Bill Moyers what really pissed him off, Levine said:

American capitalism. Its heartlessness. And American racism. The conditions that are imposed upon the poor by the rich . . . you never get over it.

And I think, too, of the poet who wrote today’s poem, Wendell Berry. A poet who lived out the generosity and intention and justice at the heart of his poetry by moving away from the material and social riches of fellowships and job prospects in academia to return home to Kentucky and become a steward of his land, where he still lives today (and was the subject of one of my favorite profiles ever written, by one of my favorite profile writers, Amanda Petrusich).

Berry is prolific as a writer. And demanding. And generous. And challenging. And unafraid. And wonder-filled. And knowledgable. And loving. And angry. And sometimes bitter. And sharp. And even funny.

I disagree with him about many things (and if you, like me, love Berry and at times take issue with some of his positions, I’d encourage you to read this review of his work by the wonderful Daegan Miller, who is generous and pointed and so, so smart). I disagree with his distrust of movements and his sometimes conservative attitudes and allegiances toward family values. But I love him still. I love his consistency, truly. I love his prolific nature. I love his moral clarity, and how grounded his morals are in his life, which is a life of the land and of real care for the living things around him. I love how he sometimes writes up (and sends) witty rebukes of opinions he reads in New York-based magazines, and how he attests, in those same rebukes, that he still subscribes to those magazines. I love how a life can look like Berry’s even now. And I love how his words — his poetry, his essays, his stories — remind us of that possibility, and so become, in some way, just as alive as his life is.

And I love, finally, Berry’s belief in love. Here’s something from The Need to Be Whole:

It is love that leads us toward particular knowledge, and it helps us to learn what we need to know.

And here’s another thing, too, from the same book:

If we worked for the world’s life, in good faith, with sufficient love … [i]t would make us happy as soon as we began to do it.

And here, in conversation with Berry — is something June Jordan wrote to Audre Lorde:

In the middle of our fighting for freedom we found ourselves daring to try for love across racial and sexual lines of vigilant taboo.

And so, when I read today’s poem, I do not read it as part of some passive experience, as part of some attempt to dull my anxiety or worry into a kind of manufactured ease that will soon become anxiety or worry again, waiting to be dulled once more. Instead, I read it as both a reminder and an illumination.

And I hold, especially, these final lines close:

Everyday you have less reason 
not to give yourself away.

Here, Berry, ever the poet, twists that double negative right into the heart. He could’ve said the easier thing that meant the same thing. He could have said everyday you have more reason to give yourself away. But he didn’t. He said it just a little bit wonky, so you could spend a little more time with it, and so that you, in spending such time, might be reminded of the way that time — precious thing — is one of the ways we measure our love, and of that way that love — so precious thing — is what we offer when we give ourselves to each other.

As I have sat through this week, reading and processing and reading some more, I have often grown angry at the way the news of Trump’s election has been delivered and analyzed. I’ve grown angry at the way analysts have said that the left needs to move to the middle, as if the middle is this place of magical togetherness and as if progressive policies that center the needs of the disenfranchised might not also appeal to those in this middle place. I’ve grown angry at the way we have normalized the very idea of genocide as a political issue, rather than as a grave injustice. I’ve grown angry at how the rightward trend of Black male voters and Latine voters has been used, at times, to cast blame on such voters rather than to be curious about what drove such a shift. I’ve grown angry at blanket statements and generalizations and disparaging clips of people yelling at women and at so many other things. I’ve grown angry, often, because such moments feel like wildly demeaning reductions — of the value of specific people, of the value of curious thinking, of the value of consideration, of the value of so much more. I’ve grown angry because it is hard to watch people who are holding and balancing and trying to carry so much suffer at the hands of people who are only willing to hold so little.

And so, Berry:

You have become a sort of grave 
containing much that was
and is no more in time, beloved 
then, now and always.

Beloved, right? I am trying to hold on to that word now. How the facts of our feelings, the facts of our love and care, are never made any more or less important because of the time in which they are felt and shared. They are always as important as they are. But maybe we talk about them a little more now. And live with them a little more at the center of ourselves.

I have been grateful to spend this week at work — a sentence I sometimes say, but not always. But I’ve been grateful to work in a school this week. I’ve been grateful because school means children and children have feelings, and feelings are myriad and not just limited to one single thing. And so, this week there has been no shortage of worry, but there has also been no shortage of laughter, and surprise. There’s been a whole range of everything. But I’m especially grateful to work in a school this week because it has reminded me, each day, of what can be so difficult about elections — not just the polarization, but also the generalization, the way people are often considered with such generic simplicity, made out to be incapable of holding contradiction at the heart of their lives, even if such holding is difficult. And it has reminded me of what can be wonderful, and difficult, and illuminating, and empowering, and challenging about the work of, well, working with people — the relational work that defines, in part, our lives.

I get the sense that people who make broad claims — whether on social media or television — about entire populations of voters and people have never worked in a school before, where a single classroom of kids from roughly the same area might have wildly different perspectives, sources of information, biases, preconceptions, ideologies, and more. It would be a colossal failure on my part to assume such kids are all the same, whether because of their zip code or their race. Just because my school is located in the poorest congressional district in the country doesn’t mean all of my students are immediately leaning toward one specific conception of their politics. This is one of my very favorite parts of my job — the deeply specific encounters I have, each day, with difference. How a classroom of 30 students might have just as many kids reading at a 12th grade level as at a 5th grade level. It doesn’t make the work any easier, but it reminds me of how patient and kind — truly, truly kind — I have to be understand such difference and then, slowly — far more slowly than I ever thought slow could move — allow it space to grow towards something together.

To be reminded of this very fact of difference the day after the election, when, to be honest, I was hoping for just a kind of aching, comforting solidarity of grief, was not immediately the greatest feeling. It meant that I had to lean again into my patience, which is, again, an act of love. And, even then, I wasn’t the best at trying to allay some worries while allowing for others while addressing some biases while correcting more misinformation. But I found more joy than I expected to in the work of it. I was surprised into laughter when I thought I only had worry in me, and I was reminded of the depth and extent of people’s fears, which is another way of being reminded of all the space that our collective care can fill.

And I know joy’s not always the point, but it’s part of the point. And I’m holding on to that. Because we will be giving a lot of ourselves over these next years. And the giving is full of love, yes. But it is hard, too. To find joy in the midst of it — even at the worst of it — might allow for more of it. And we’ll need all of it.

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Some ongoing notes:

1. Some small joy — the Journalism class I teach at my high school published our first issue of our public-facing newspaper/magazine the other week. It’s free to read here.

2. Writers Against the War on Gaza has circulated a letter organizing writers, editors, and artists, urging them not to work with “Israeli cultural institutions that are complicit or have remained silent observers of the overwhelming oppression of Palestinians.” You can find (and sign, as I have) that letter here.

3. Awhile ago, I started following Workshops 4 Gaza, an organization of writers putting together donation-based writing workshops and readings in support of Palestine. You can follow them here and get more information about them here.

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.