Poetaphobia: Emptiness

Poetephobia: Stephen Dunn

People distrust poetry. I’d say dislike, but to dislike something you need to encounter it on more than a cursory basis, where as distrust is reserved for things we’ve never really been exposed to. Oh, there were probably a couple of lame ass lines an old High school English teacher made you read which were written by a guy who likely died before your grandfather was born.

When people have fear and trust issues, one way to treat them is called immersion therapy. So today starts your immersion into modern poetry, some of which is more than cool, especially Stephen Dunn, who we’re starting out with and will hear plenty from in successive posts.

One of the buzzwords surrounding poetry right now is accessibility. In other words: can any dummy pick up the poem and understand it?

In the days of TS Eliot and Ezra Pound (I hate them I do) everything was encrypted in imagery that read like a secret code. Too many high school English teachers love this crap, and say things like, “In this poem the teacup symbolizes the poet’s mother.”

Hey here’s an idea: if he wants to talk about his mother, why doesn’t he stop being a pussy and talk about his mother.

Luckily, modern poetry has forgone Pound’s famous dictum: the image is the object. (Where as advertising loves this dictum so much it’s adopted a variant of it as its core mantra: image is everything. Sometimes, minutes into a commercial, I still don’t have a clue what they’re selling.)

Plain speak is the gift of a true modern master–like Stephen Dunn. It’s his ability to capture an idea or emotion in simple everyday words that makes his poetry so wonderfully accessible and makes him a truly deserving award winning poet (Pulitzer, etc)

Don’t believe me?

Emptiness

I’ve heard yogis talk of a divine
emptiness
the body free of its base desires,

some coiled and luminous god
in all of us
waiting to be discovered…

And always I’ve pivoted

followed Blake’s road of excess
to the same source
and know how it feels to achieve

nothing, the nothing that exists
after accomplishment.
And I’ve known the emptiness

of nothing to say, no reason to move,
those mornings I’ve built
a little cocoon with the bedcovers

and lived in it, almost happily,
because what fools
the body more than warmth?

And more than once

I’ve shared an emptiness with someone
and learned
how generous I can be—here,

take this, take this…

Plainly spoken, but really powerful. I love the last stanza of this poem. It’s one of those amazing descriptions of the program you stumble upon, and think EXACTLY. I can’t even begin to fathom how many times I’ve sat in a meeting feeling empty, and found myself generously reaching out with whatever I have in order to fill the emptiness. Here take this or this or this…

It’s one of those strange paradoxes of the program—like you have to give it away to keep it. Emptiness does make me generous of spirit, willing to share almost anything in hopes of getting something in return.