Dear Friend,

What if we really could “write poems and save the planet,” as poet laureate Ada Limón suggests in her introduction to this beautiful collection? What if we could read poems and save ourselves?

As I neared the end of You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World, I began to feel the urge to write my own “you are here” poem, which is the project Ada Limón set for herself and the contributing poets. I haven’t yet looked into the digital space of that endeavor, but I have big plans (don’t I always) for my writing life in the new year, and I wonder if beginning with a “you are here” poem might be an interesting way to start?

Small Steps, Like Prayers

“We love in the only ways we can,” says the title of Carl Phillips’ contribution. The line struck me the way a similar line from Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower struck me when I first read it some twenty years ago. When Charlie asks why people stay with those who hurt them, his teacher responds, “we accept the love we think we deserve.” And aren’t these two clues in the same puzzle? How do we love and how do we allow ourselves to be loved?

I wonder, as I think many of the poets in You Are Here might wonder, how much good we could do for the world and ourselves if we took the time to love the planet, love our immediate surroundings, and love ourselves a little bit more, too. After all, if we truly valued ourselves and our families and friends, would we allow the planet to continue down the path we’ve set it on?

No One Sang Until One Person Began

Maybe it’s just the holiday season and the Will Ferrell movie, Elf, being so fresh in my mind, but when Erika Meitner offers the above line of hope in her poem, “Manifesto of Fragility / Terraform,” I couldn’t help but think of Buddy and Jovie saying, “the best way to spread Christmas cheer is singing loud for all to hear.” Someone has to be the catalyst. Someone has to be the North Star. Just yesterday, former President Jimmy Carter, one of my personal heroes, passed away. He’s one of the last of my self-appointed mentors, who include Mr. Fred Rogers, Thich Nhat Hanh, and my late grandfather, Lyle. My first thought was, who do I look to, now that they’re all gone? I think that’s the wrong question, though. If they taught me well, the question should really be, how do I live as they did? I hope more than anything, after all, that my niece and nephews have their own worthy teachers to learn from and model, and to reach for when things get bad. My heroes could probably never be theirs, but isn’t the more reasonable question, what can I offer?

Carolyn Forché, in “Night Shift in the Home for Convalescents,” reminds us, as many poets in this collection do, of the swift passage of time, and the end of all things. As a Buddhist practitioner, impermanence is a lodestone that I reflect on and live from regularly, but when she writes, “all that you remember must be written down” for the loss of someone leaves “no canopy of hope,” only things, it’s such a profound reminder about both presence and legacy. One can be here, now, and commit fully to the experience of life, but also make part of that living an exercise in preparing the world for a time when you’re no longer in it.

Prayer-Portraits-Poets

There’s so much to say about this collection, especially since I missed all of my posting deadlines and left this reflection for the very end, but one thing I have to note is how brilliantly structured it is. Ada Limón’s expertise is clear, here, as in dividing the book into approximately four equal parts for the reading, I discovered thematic elements to each section’s sets of poems. Although these are not marked or noted anywhere in the text or index, they were, to me, clearly there, and it was a beautiful progression, from themes of winter and apocalypse to grief, loss, and regret, to a conclusion of poems expressing life–birds and fire, insects and all the beauty in one’s own backyard.

The collection ends with Ruth Awad’s poignant and hopeful, “Reasons to Live,” where she writes the final lines, “if only you’ll let the world soften you with its touching.” So, we return, in the end, to the explorations that introduced and reoccurred throughout the collection: The will to choose. To love and let yourself be loved.

Up Next

I hope you’ll join us on January 1 as we kick-off the next month’s read: The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. I wanted to begin the new year with something hopeful and reflective, but also accessible. In February and March, we’ll be reading Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust! Look for that extended schedule with reading/posting dates and cross-collaborators to come soon.

Meditation

“Rarely, if ever, are any of us healed in isolation. Healing is an act of communion.” –bell hooks

May you be healthy, happy, and safe in the new year.

Love,

~Adam

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