Tending to Endings (thirty-one)
Coping with loss has never been my strong suit. There have been times in my life when I have gone to great lengths in an attempt to avoid the repercussions: move across the country, take up a new obsession, fall in love. Sometimes I’d do all of those at once, as when, in my twenties, after fleeing a destructive relationship, I took up triathlons and found a new state, a new job, and a new boyfriend. Major changes provided temporary distractions, but of course ultimately were not up to the task.
Grief waits. One day you are plodding along an empty road in Nampa, Idaho, with only the high pitch of grasshoppers and the heat of high noon to keep you company. You are the sixty-fourth mile of a half Ironman, and the only thing left in your belly is loss. Your soul knows, you have not left anything behind—not the fear or the anger or the grief.
My friend Stephanie used to say it was time to worry about her when she would break out Mary Oliver’s book of New and Selected Poems. Oliver’s poems are something I turn to as well when my life is in transition, which generally means I’m in the midst of a great deal of loss.
Poetry gives relief but not distraction. Solace, maybe? A way through things that cannot be easily understood. Certain kinds of poems remind me in the middle of my grief that I am not alone. That wholeness lies beneath this hurt, the way a hummingbird coming into view on a long walk on a sad day reminds me that joy, too, is mine.
Since poetry is one of the ways I get through grief, I have wanted for a while to share some of my favorites. I realize poetry is not everyone’s thing, but years of teaching writers—third grade through adult—has made me think that poetry has a broader audience than many think with the right approach.
My friend, Mary Ellen, a poet who also taught middle and high school English for many years, once shared with me that she taught her students that poetry was not something to figure out like a puzzle. Instead it was a place to discover things, more like playing in a mud puddle where you might find a beautiful quartz stone and feel the cool earth squish beneath your fingers. I love this analogy of seeing poems not as problems to solve but as places to play.
Play cannot be rushed. In fact, play has to be an immersive experience in order to actually be play. Which leads me to another reason poems sometimes are forgotten. They take time. They aren’t skim-able. To receive a poem, I must slow down and open up. Which may be poetry’s other gift. The slowing, the opening as much as the poem.
My students and I would read a poem three times before we started talking about it: first silently and then aloud together and then again while we would underline words we liked the sound of or star things that jumped out at us or circled words we didn’t know. We always began talking about the things we noticed and things we felt rather than jumping to what the poem means. I have found this same process useful with art forms that I find more intimidating such as classical music or visual art. Rather than try and figure it out, I try to notice things, to take it in.
These days even the first couple lines of a well-loved poem calms me, meets my grief halfway, makes me feel known.
Before you know what kindness really is / you must lose things.
Kindness, Naomi Shihab Nye
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, / That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,…
Mending Wall, Robert Frost
August of another summer, and once again / I am drinking the sun…
The Pond, Mary Oliver
My favorite way to read poetry is not on a screen, but rather, from a book in the dark of early morning as part of my meditation time. Currently, one or two each morning from Linda Hogan’s Dark. Sweet. Hogan has been writing gorgeous poetry and prose for decades but she is new to me. I have a feeling I will carry her work within me like I do Mary Oliver.
To be held / by the light / was what I wanted, / to be a tree drinking the rain,
To Be Held, Linda Hogan
The world of poetry is vast, and I enjoy reading many different kinds for different reasons. The ones I’ve included here are some that have particularly helped me during hard times. And, of course, if you find one you love, all of these authors have collections available in print for you to read in the dark hours of morning.
A Ritual to Read to Each Other, William Stafford
Tear, by Linda Hogan
Widening Circles, Rainer Marie Rilke (translated and read by Joanna Macy)
Marie Howe wrote a gorgeous collection about grief and loss, What the Living Do. The title poem from that collections is here.
Donald Hall’s book Without is a full book of poems about his wife, Jane Kenyon, and their journey through her cancer. The title poem is here.
And here is one by Jane Kenyon that has long been a favorite from her book Otherwise: Let Evening Come, and another, Twilight: After Haying.
I subscribe to Brainpickings a weekly newsletter by writer Maria Popova. Most issues include at least one poem that would fit well in this collection as well as many other gems. Most recently an issue includes Patti Smith reading Emily Dickinson.
If you have poems or other forms of art you turn to during times of great change, I’d love to hear about them in the comments. You can also reach me at laura@laurastavoe.com.
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