“One week away and the forest has changed. / Measured wind, consistent in its image. / First frost, day’s ghost, chattering red-toothed leaves.” A poem from The Maybe-Bird by Jennifer Elise Foerster.
Read MoreMy imagination wants to redeem the bareness of fact,
so I imagine the field he dies in as a place we might
have picnicked, imagine wind entering his clothes
and leaving again
Read More“Every day from the twelfth to the nineteenth, Alice went over to see Einar. He was lying in bed more often now, which made his feet easier to get at. She removed his socks and massaged his feet, lumpy as they were, because it felt so nice, she knew it did".”
—from “On Narrow Paved Paths” by Dorthe Nors in Wild Swims.
Read More“And I don’t know
what might bring peace on earth. But a man
fallen asleep at his desk while revising
a letter…”
—from “Love Succeeding” by Li-Young Lee from The Undressing
Read More“Her real life was beginning now, and she never doubted its meaning. Among the powerful and strange she would be mute and watchful. She would swim like a little fish, and learn to breathe underwater”
Read More“…the only remedy is to resolutely abandon the larger for the smaller field, to narrow one’s vision to one’s pencil, and do the small thing closely and deeply rather than the big thing loosely and superficially.”
Read MoreEcosystems kept collapsing in sight, out of sight, and I had to work hard to remember that loss and abundance co-exist, and both are true
Read More
Usually, Eva thought of herself as a good person. She stayed up at night worrying about the human condition in vague and specific incarnations. She made herself available to the people whom she loved, and s0me whom she didn’t. She gave money to every other homeless person and stopped to let stray kids remind her how much Jesus and the Hare Krishnas loved her, more for the benefit of their souls than hers. Still she wondered sometimes if it wasn’t all pretense—if, when she shut her eyes and wished restitution upon the whole wounded parade of humanity, she wasn’t really wishing away the world that created war and illness so that she might have a world in which there was room to feel sorry for herself. Every day she felt herself losing things it was unacceptable to mourn.
-Danielle Evans, Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self
Acts of barbarity can happen fast and on a large scale not when more people turn immoral or evil, not necessarily, but when enough people become numb. When we are indifferent, disconnected, atomised. Too busy with our own lives to care about others. Uninterested in and unmoved by someone else’s pain. That is the most dangerous emotion — the lack of emotion.
Perhaps in an era when everything is in constant flux. in order to be more sane, we need a blend of conscious optimism and creative pessimism. In the words of Gramsci, ‘the pessimism of the intellect, the optimism of the will.’
I believe in the transformative power of stories to bring people together, expand our cognitive horizons, and gently unlock our true potential for empathy and wisdom.
Do not be afraid of complexity.
- Elif Shafak, How to Stay Sane in an Age of Division
The first time I read Bonfire Opera by Danusha Laméris, my house was, for the first time in months, blissfully silent. My husband had taken the children on a bike ride, to donuts. It was not yet 8 am and the dog, cat, and I sat on the couch and I read the book cover to cover, pausing only 3 times. Twice to cry, once to refill my coffee. My pets were audience to the lines I couldn’t help but read aloud. The sunlight and the silence and the animals nearby created a perfect atmosphere for reading these poems (the only detractor was a distant weed-whacker, and even that brought contrast to the poems).
When I decided to read it again, I knew I needed to make it another beautiful moment. Aside from finding myself valuing these moments during a pandemic and worldwide pain, this is a book that deserves intention in its reading—though I believe that about most books. It doesn’t need intention or a beautiful moment (it would be incredible even read in a dirty bathroom stall at the world’s worse airport), but it deserves the reader’s intention, slowness, focus. I read this book for a second time on a 107 degree day, bright California light casting across my kitchen table, a cold cider at hand, a bowl of passion fruit picked from the vine outback nearby, watching my own garden wither in the heat while reading of Danusha’s lush garden, loss, grief, desire, and that bigheartedness that great poets bring to the page, to their readers, to the world. These are poems not just about seeing the world beautifully, but living beautifully in the world.
Below are two poems which stuck with me after both readings. Though, if I am being honest, this whole book is with me lately. Read it for yourself, let me know what you think.
