poetry-schmoetry
welcome to poetry month, brought to me mainly by kc-from-kc.

last weekend i was at a memorial service for a close friend's mom, and one of the many moving readings was this poem by Marge Piercy below. the entire service touched me more than i'd expected it would (bad time to forget the tissues!) and it's left me with plenty more good stuff to chew on--including more poems to look up, which seems appropriate for poetry month.

To Be of Use
by Marge Piercy

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.

found marge piercy's biography interesting and inspiring. not only for her political and "aberrant" behavior, but also for the fact of her having to eke out a living like the rest of us mortals, but continuing to write through it all.
She finds it important to like the routine of daily life in order to survive as a political writer in the long haul. In the past, when she did not have support at home, she has felt as if she were fighting on all fronts at once with no base. One gift Wood [her current husband] has given her is that warm place of support. She is a writer who feels guilty if she is not writing or writing enough.
...
In her poetry, she bears thanks to what she has been given as well as bearing witness to what is withheld from us and what is taken away. Piercy doesn't understand writers who complain about writing, not because it is easy for her but because it is so absorbing that she can imagine nothing more consuming and exciting at which to labor. So long as she can make her living at writing, she will consider herself lucky.

incidentally (or perhaps not incidentally, but speaking of npm), the essay by Charles Bernstein on why npm is bad for poetry is a pretty funny bit of reading. it includes such tidbits as: "This program is intended to promote safe reading experiences and is based on ARF's (Artificial Resuscitation Foundation's) founding principle that safe poetry is the best prophylactic against aesthetic experience." and it certainly sums up my experience of poetry (tho i'm learning...):
Go ahead, don't read any poetry.

You won't be able to understand it anyway:
the best stuff is all over your head.

And there aren't even any commercials to liven up the action.

Anyway, you'll end up with a headache trying to figure out
what the poems are saying because they are saying
NOTHING.

Who needs that.

Better go to the movies.
Labels: marge piercy, npm, poetry

:: ewee 3:25:00 PM [+] :: 0 comments ::
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