The Conference Call You Never Want To Miss
Log Entries of Words to Hang Onto
An email arrives in your inbox…the one you never expected with an invitation to a gathering that you didn’t know you needed. A rush of nervousness goes through your veins, and those butterflies that seemed to have gone to a far away land during the pandemic find their way back into your body, your gut feeling is not too respond; to pretend that the invitation went into your spam folder. No, it is not an invitation to your high school reunion, no need to worry if you aged or can not fit into the same clothes as a decade or two ago. And no, it didn’t come from your boss who doesn’t think you work enough because you are working remotely from home. It is not those people that you need to impress after all. With the world in a lock down, your only decision is to say “yes," click “send” and show up in front of your screen; or say “no,” quickly shut off your computer and go back to another Netflix show; maybe make your 1000th sourdough bread instead,
Poetry Jam Log #1: "Impossible friendships” by Adam Zagajewski. Theme: Friendships of every kind impossible, possible, including those with dead people, the postman, old man in the cafe … “And friendship with yourself —since after all you don't know who you are.”
“Your meeting starts in twenty minutes.” The voice comes somewhere from the depths of the apartment from your almost nine year old. He knows the drill ever since you accepted the invitation to join the weekly poetry meeting. Some people go weekly to places of worship, you, instead, find yourself in a small room with your door closed, shutting the whole world for an hour. The beings that you venerate come in a form of framed faces on your computer screen; they often speak in tongues.
That first e-mail that you received from a friend invited you to “slow down” with poetry in presence of people that you didn’t know. Slowing down when you are already taking a break from the world due to the pandemic sounds, well, “different.” Literature you love, but poetry is tricky. With memories from the semester that you studied the American classics, you are afraid that you won’t understand the words. The language of poetry is detected in-between the lines. All your insecurities come up and now you will be judged by people in Berlin, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and New York that you have never met before. However, you remember that influenced by Beyoncé’s Lemonade video, a book of poems has been sitting on your bookshelf for the last two years. You are not even a fan of the pop diva, but words from Warsan Shire’s book “Teaching My Mother How To Give Birth” caught your attention. However, now you wonder are the poems too pop-y for this intellectual crowd? You will have to read them out loud to find out.
Poetry Jam Log #2: “Old Spice” from “Teaching my mother how to give birth” by Warsan Shire. Theme: Aging, illness and death. A grandchild not being able to connect or understand how to help their dying grandfather. “Your grandfather is from another generation - Russian degrees and a school yard Cuban national anthem, communism and religion. Only music makes him cry now.”
Two weeks into it, only reading poetry and talking to your new virtual friends makes you happy now. You wish that you could start each morning with more words, you become insatiable You want to share your experience with your other friends and you create a new group. Now, you are the one who knows everyone from New York, Rome, Croatia to Stockholm. When they meet for the first time confused about what is going on, it is obvious that they are the rookies. What are the rules of the game? Someone always says *I am not comfortable with poetry.* You, now a pro, smile. It will all be ok.
Letting the group develop organically means that some come prepared to talk about the poems they choose, others are maybe a bit silent at the beginning, but the new group has a lot to say. Translating the read words into life, the conversation sprouts into many directions. Others ask if they can get the poems beforehand because English is their second language. With two poetry groups under your arm, you know that this special meeting is not about going to that prom and showing off your knowledge and accomplishments. In the pandemic, what you missed the most was spontaneity, enjoying something like being in a movie theatre surrounded by people you don’t know anything about, not their roles, or what they do, or how old they are, or what their affinities are, you miss the power of reciprocity; something that the contagiousness of the virus prevented you from experiencing.
Poetry Jam Log #3: Fable by Claudia La Rocco. Theme: Women as social outcasts, the world becoming neglected and unadventurous. “She saved up her courage to ask the Moon if she might come for a visit, and clear her head. “This country,” she wrote, “this country is a disaster, The gay bars play the History Channel. Stream of consciousness turns out to be a gutter.””
You show up week after week even if you just quit your job and are having a hard time finding something new; you show up even if the middle eastern conflict had missiles exploding above your head in the midst of reading a poem; you show up even though you realized that returning “home” is not an option anymore, you show up even after the 100th mini breakdown because you can’t be with your family; you show up even if you have school papers to finish, work battles to fight, corona all around you, you show up.
You show up because together with your new community this is a moment in which you can utterly enjoy the lightness of your own being. The exchanged words are the thin thread that connect you to your own humanity. And every Tuesday and Wednesday for an hour, you never miss the call because you know that even when corona didn’t rule our lives, it was hard to find a group of spirited folk like this one. This weekly ceremony created by your poetry fellows, dead and alive poets as well as the support from your family provides you with a feeling that the post-pandemic “new normal” might just be a better world. So what are you waiting for?
You show up.
Poetry Jam Log #4: Exultation is the Going by Emily Dickinson. Theme: Sensation of escaping, soul travel towards freedom. “Exultation is the going of an inland soul to sea, past the houses - past the headlands - into deep Eternity -“
Instructions on how to create a poetry group ceremony:
Find a mix of people preferably that don’t talk to often with each other
Create a weekly reoccurring event through Google Meet or Zoom that can download in your calendars.
Find a poem that you like, want to read for the first time or don’t understand, or just want to roll the words off your tongue
Let the members choose if they want to introduce the poem or say nothing when it is their turn
Have a link to the poem to share so that you can all follow along while the person who brought the poem reads it out loud
If you, the “organizer,” can’t show up one night, insist that they meet without you, let the poetry ceremony become a beast of its own
Simple rules:
Come on time and in good spirits
Be kind towards each other
No need to be great or good at reading/comprehending poetry, all comments and observations are welcome!
Have fun!
Resources where to find poems:
Poetry Foundation: https://www.poetryfoundation.org
Granta: https://granta.com
Entropy: https://entropymag.org
Paris Review: https://www.theparisreview.org/poetry
Links to poems mentioned in the above text:
Impossible friendships by Adam Zagajewski (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57092/impossible-friendships)
Old Spice from “Teaching My Mother How To Give Birth” by Warsan Shire (https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/3246076-old-spice-every-sunday-afternoon)
Fable by Claudia La Rocco (http://minusplato.com/2017/03/live-art-stone-heart-claudia-la-roccos-medusa.html)
Exultation is the Going by Emily Dickinson (https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/exultation-is-the-going/)
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