Poet's Petard # 9 – November 2021

Even our Poems are no longer Huggable

When I went to replace my ancient and wheezing fridge last year with a brand new one, my first question to the dealer was “will it take refrigerator magnets?”

Inside, a refrigerator is all about food and its preservation. But Outside –
Outside, a refrigerator is all about photos, magnets, greeting cards – and poems! My fridge gallery always includes a couple or three poems that quietly pulse into the room like a little camp fire, keeping the wolves at a reasonable distance. On my fridge is written, “Poetry: An Embraceable Holiness.”

Recently – meaning within the past six months – I have witnessed a notable shift in the poems I review for inclusion in my fridge gallery: No matter what a poem pretends to be about, it's been totally saturated in advance with an apocalyptic view of things: Climate Change, Pandemic, and the worldwide erosion of Democracy. We're drowning in it; we have all sprung leaks, so that freshness, joy, appreciation of raw beauty – formerly the driving engines of Poetry as an Art Form – are being temporarily overwhelmed by a kind of desperate stoicism. The bees have finally become immune to our smoke, and we have lost our protective veils.

Here are two examples – my current fridge poems – . A few lines should give you the idea of the seriousness of the infiltration.

“Listen, no one signed up for this lullaby.
No bleeped sheep or rosebuds or twitching stars
will diminish the fear or save you from waking

into the same day you dreamed of leaving –
mockingbird on back order, morning bells
stuck on snooze -- so you might as well

get up and at it, pestilence be damned.”

~Rita Dove ("Incantation of the First Order," Poem-a-day Oct. 18, 2021)

“Easy light storms in through the window, soft
                        edges of the world, smudged by mist, a squirrel's

nest rigged high in the maple. I've got a bone
            to pick with whomever is in charge. All year,

I've said You know what's funny? and then,
                        Nothing, nothing is funny.

Ada Limón, ("Lover," Poem-a-day Oct. 4, 2021)

And returning to the immunity-of-bees as a metaphor, here is a different slant on what happens when the world can no longer postpone presenting its final bill – complete with immensely generous (already used up) discount for all comers. This poem is beyond revenge, beyond justice even –  simply a new pathway to the heart's core.

Death of the Bee Keeper

Humming that swarmed his ears seemed also pain,
But the grass was soft, he old,
And it didn't matter, their thousand-stinging fury
As he lay under the sun,
His hands and feet cold.

Because of honey, he forgave them, even
This turning on a friend;
Hadn't he stolen their essential sweetness
Like a bear?
 

Their duty was death
As a means to a golden end.
And what is death – a singing helm of bees,
His full head a hive
For poison changed in one ripe thought to mead,

The slow savor of which
Made good his being alive.
And now the humming dimmed to his awareness
Of slowly simplifying
Toward what soon he'd be – earth, flowers,
Pollen that only wanted
Brief wings for flying.

from “Strountes” by Gunnar Ekelöf. Michigan Quarterly Review,
                        Vol. 7 #4. Tr. by Leonard E. Nathan