Poetry asks us to pledge to one another, I see you. Poetry has been for centuries our great social media. You are its great theme.
"I should have made my way straight to you long ago." - Walt Whitman
My life has been one of too much care, which ruins a person. To summarize: we are invisible to each other. Let's look into the first person's claim of being first. Let's look past the first person to see the second person.
"Then you, hey you." - Claudia Rankine
But let us pledge that it's not enough to see you, in the poem, in the world. Let's also set the poem humming so that the world may hum. Let me be you in the poem, and let me look up from the poem and still be you. Let me look up from many pages. Let me be you and you and you, and even you.
"Let's be simultaneous" - Christopher Gilbert
April to-do list:
1. If prose is called for, write a poem.
2. Write to someone, not to no one.
3. You will do.
"A challenge for you, You-ness/Add yours." - Thomas Sayers Ellis
- Jeff Shotts, Executive Editor, Graywolf Press
This one is simply a comment on poetry, but does it go beyond a comment to speaking of something about the essence of poetry itself? I'm sorry not to have more to say after this long, four-year gap in writing on the poem of the week blog... but. Couldn't help it. There's something of "I and Thou" in this poem. As if "thou" was the "second person" - the "thou" being an entire alternate way of perceiving others. Read, the last line. "3. You will do." What is referred to when Shotts writes, "you"? To be a little clever, who are "you"? That Shotts looks for a connection between the poem humming in oneself, and looking up, and seeing "you." Somehow that the poem contains this world of "you" (which is, like the second person, simultaneously personal and generic) and wants to connect it with our everyday... is hopeful.
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