Poet’s Introduction

I have been thinking more lately about how a poem is not made to teach others what the poet knows, but for the poem to teach the poet what is unsayable. I have found myself revising these two poems dozens of times, and it was only in the last few revisions that I discovered the question that was really driving me in both is what is the role of the poet, particularly now in America? 

“Musophobia” highlights the tension between the poet and the making of empire. I am interested in the role of mice in poetry—from the “wee, sleeket, cowran, tim’rous beastie” of Robert Burns to Emily Dickinson’s “Grief is a mouse—” to the “Mice” of Eileen Myles. Why do mice appear so often in poetry? I think it’s because like mice, poets are inconvenient, and they can tell us a lot about ourselves if we disrupt the automatic meanings attached to them.

“The Remains of the Wolfman” is a eulogy of sorts. When my sister’s ex-husband died, I discovered that bodies with no one to claim them has become a pervasive problem in the United States (and, to be fair, in other countries too), particularly since the Covid pandemic. I thought of how her ex-husband had loved his body, and also how dying so alone is a horror that most of us can’t bear to contemplate. Of course, I thought of “The American Way of Death” and how our customs around this have changed and are still changing, but how utterly capitalism in particular can turn any one of us into pure objects.  

As I think about the absurd role of the poet, the death of poet Renee Good at the hands of our own government, and what seems like our increasing powerlessness, I think about the words of Nikolay Nekrasov: “You may not be a poet, but you obliged to be a citizen.” I recognize that I am obliged to be a citizen, but of what country? Whose citizen are you when borders shift, as they did for Nekrasov, who was born in Ukraine but is considered a Russian poet? Or when your country attacks itself? Or if your country, the only one you have, has never acknowledged you as one of its own?  

And as for being a poet, I only feel like one when I’m immersed in writing, which happens less and less often. Still, I find comfort and truth in the words of Wisława Szymborska’s poem “Possibilities”: “I prefer the absurdity of writing poems to the absurdity of not writing poems.” 

What is the poem you are working on now trying to teach you? Your job in revision is to clear away the noise and debris until you can hear that lesson. Then you use that to start working on the next poems. If the lesson is too easy, don’t let the poem off so lightly—go back, dig in, keep listening to it.  Bask in the absurdity.

Musophobia

My mother has a mouse problem
and no patience for my elaborate,
humane solutions. At our next visit,
she hands us a jar with the lid on tight
and a young mouse trying to clamber
to the top. My wife cries as we take it
to the community garden and dump it out
among the kale and zinnias. That night
over dinner we marvel that the mouse survived
in the sealed jar, that she escaped
good intentions and bad ideas this long
only to end up sticky with peanut butter
in a strange garden, predators able to smell her
a mile away. It’s hard not to see her as a hero
of sorts—the clever ancient enemy
of stored grain which was literally
the seed of empires—a hero always happy
to find an easy meal only to find her troubles
multiplied. Or if not a hero, perhaps a poet,
because isn’t this the muse in the mouse
—the nagging hunger, the blind hope,
the mad dash far from all you know?

The Remains of the Wolfman

My sister says she got a call from the state:
her second husband Tommy is dead.

I have this one memory of him: he’s
in his twenties, sitting on their couch,
happy in only his red briefs
his flat abdomen and ready thighs,
a rubber wolfman mask
(which neither of us mention)
hiding pockmarks but not his dark eyes
that never lingered like flies on me.
In his velvet drawl he confided
I like scary movies—

On the small TV, the opening scene:
a woman listening to a man on the phone
wanting her—or anyone—to claim
a man’s body. She has no money,
she says, and besides she hasn’t
seen the man in thirty years
she explains until her words
are transformed into a howl.

Poet’s Introduction

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about dehumanization (cheerful, I know). But the longer I live, the more I think this is the real basis of all – not just most, but all – of the evils we see in the world. And so, when people talk about poetry of witness or documentation, that means to me a poetry of rehumanization. What is important is not that people agree about things, especially in a democracy; what is important is that people are always deeply aware of the humanity of others, whether they agree with them or not.

Authority

is a nineteen-year-old boy
with short-cropped hair
and stubby fingers
and a uniform and a gun

he is watching a woman
his eyes wide
she is younger than she looks
squatting by the metal fence

what is the worst that can happen
if he ignores her
what is the worst that can happen
if he acts

he shifts his weight
like a nervous student
one with an important test
the teacher forgot to attend

and what is she doing
neither laughing nor crying
her whispering is too soft
to be called singing

For Peace

There is the peace of the moment
..before the pull of the trigger,
....and the peace after.

There is the blank white peace
..of the silent snowfield,
....motionless and cold,

the small red peace
..of the rabbit not crawling
....away from the fox.

There is the peace of the tree
..lying shattered after the storm,
....damp wood slowly rotting,

the peace before the footsteps
..and the opening
....of the door.

There is no peace for the winner—
..the victorious wolf, licking
....its red paws—

Peace belongs to us, lying
..frozen in the snow, hands
....still bound behind our backs—

The peace of the small hole,
..the ragged-edged cut—
....the peace of silence

settling upon us,
..flake
....by flake.

Prescriptions for Self-Help

For despair: wailing and weeping
until your voice blends in the cacophony
and your tears mingle in the dirt

For suffering: dancing out of yourself,
spinning, stomping, passing partner
to partner until they are infinite

For anger—the kind of powerless anger
that leaves you bone-weary and frail:
singing and never stopping

Not even after you die, whether they
fill your mouth with dirt
as they bury you, or whether

they wrap their hands, a noose,
around your throat, until
there’s no air left in this world—

They shake the dust off their hands
after a job well-done; one wipes a drip of sweat
from their forehead—walking home,

they pass under fragrant pines, birds
singing—something familiar tickles their minds,
although they haven’t realized it yet—

years later, your skull safely away,
your vocal cords rotted into dust,
they pass a group of children playing—

their jumprope song becomes an itch
in the brain, impossible to scratch,
impossible to ignore. No one would say

you are the winner here, if
they even knew your name. But
each day, sleep eludes them a little longer.

For guilt—the kind of inescapable guilt
that leaves you bone-weary and frail:
nothing

nothing but listening and never stopping,
listening forever in case the song becomes forgiveness,
forgiveness, forever, nothing

Notes

“Authority” first appeared in the 2024 Wisconsin Poets’ Calendar.