Category: poetry

By heart: The More Loving One by W.H. Auden

Eric Johnson
From W.H. Auden, Selected Poems

Wystan Hugh (W.H.) Auden was a giant of poetry in the twentieth century. He’s described as a genuinely warm, gregarious, and kind person who was funny and unpretentious while being rigorous with his writing schedule and a prolific creator.

This poem, my choice for May, certainly has a twinkle of whimsy. It’s clever and fun, yet also profound, poignant, and a bit mysterious. I’m enjoying puzzling my way through it.

Auden’s poem echoes nicely, I think, this one from the Sufi poet, Hafiz, that my wife and I had read at our wedding. (I keep this copy on my desk, and there’s another framed version of it above my wife’s nightstand.)

It’s a noble aim to attempt to give more love than you get. Imagine a love like that, shining on without expecting to be returned in full.

“Let the more loving one be me.”

(And Auden wrote this poem, by the way, long before the discovery that, because of the continually expanding universe, there will likely come a time, many eons from now and probably when humans are long gone, that no star other than the sun will be visible from our solar system. A dark, if sublime, imagining.)

By heart: Tell all the Truth but tell it slant— by Emily Dickinson

Eric Johnson
From The Best Poems of the English Language by Harold Bloom

For April I’m memorizing this little poem by Emily Dickinson, which both describes and demonstrates her approach to poetry and art in general. And maybe her approach to her own enigmatic life—indirect, oblique, original with a beguiling slant.

This approach is what the filmmaker Stanley Kubrick explains more explicitly:

“If you really want to communicate something, even if it’s just an emotion or an attitude, let alone an idea, the least effective and least enjoyable way is directly. It only goes in about half an inch. But if you can get people to the point where they have to think a moment what it is you’re getting at, and then discover it … the thrill of discovery goes right through the heart.” –Stanley Kubrick

Right through the heart. Creating the ground for that thrill of discovery to arise requires patience and insight and, yes, a level of artistry that I know I don’t regularly have the discipline to pursue. Slow down. Be gentle, with yourself and with whatever Truth you’re pursuing or revealing. The superb surprise might only ever be seen through a sly, shy, shining slant.

By heart: The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry

Eric Johnson

From Risking Everything: 110 Poems of Love and Revelation by Roger Housden

I’ve dithered away much of March with no poem calling to me. I have settled on this Wendell Berry poem, for its brevity and its aptness for times of uncertainty.

Though, has there ever been a time of certainty?

Of course, change and insecurity are constants. But the ability to rest yourself in the comfort and grace of the “day-blind stars” and the living green and blue world remains, regardless of the tempest of the events of the day and the incessant noise, noise which you can just turn off.

“Touch grass” the kids say.

Welcome to spring. New life, new hope is greening up all around you. Get out in it.

By heart: O Captain! My Captain! by Walt Whitman + Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address

Eric Johnson
1888 draft with Whitman’s handwritten corrections

I have an Abraham Lincoln problem. I’ve lost track of how many biographies on Lincoln I’ve read—this one more than once. I’ve got a bust of him on the window ledge by my office desk. He’s my automatic answer to the question “Who in history would you want to meet?” I have been in awe of him since I was a child in elementary school reading the little biography about him in our school library. And the more I learn about him, the more in awe I become. His intelligence and wit. His large-hearted wisdom and self-effacing humor and steely resolve. The effusive affection he engendered among those who got to know him well is telling. And, of course, he is the single most significant figure in the history of our nation, a nation that would not exist as it does now were it not for him.

Lincoln is a wonder, and that he appeared on the planet where and when he did is an excellent argument in favor of divine intervention in the affairs of men and nations.

Today happens to be Lincoln’s birthday. (It’s also Charles Darwin’s birthday, and that two of the most remarkable men of the 19th century were born on the exact same day in 1809 is one of history’s most charming coincidences.) So, this month, in honor of Mr. Lincoln, I have chosen to learn by heart Walt Whitman’s tragic poem about Lincoln’s death. (His death, and its ill timing, set the nation back in a way we are still recovering from, so maybe an argument against divine intervention.)

This poem is so sad. But, to balance out the pathos of that poem with something more positive, I’m also going to lock in Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, which, though not a poem, is a kind of civic art of the highest order. It is a jewel of simplicity and clarity and elegance reframing our national purpose.

From Lincoln: Speeches and Writings 1859-1865

By heart: Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

Eric Johnson
From Devotions by Mary Oliver

My poem to memorize for this month is another Mary Oliver selection, one of her most well known, and a good one for the start of the year.

It echoes last month’s David Whyte poem a bit, with his “Everything is waiting for you” and her “the world offers itself to your imagination”.

I pondered whether I should repeat a poet so soon, but I’m just going to do what I want to do, to let my disposition “love what it loves”. No obligations. No expectations. No master list of must-memorize poems. Just follow where the fascination and the delight leads. Good guidance in general.

By heart: Everything is Waiting for You by David Whyte

Eric Johnson
From Essentials by David Whyte

David Whyte is who you would cast to play a poet in a movie. He has a wise sage aura and an amazingly resonant, warm, comforting voice. (Go listen to Rick Rubin’s conversation with him.)

And it was listening to multiple David Whyte interviews that inspired me to begin memorizing poetry. Poems flow out of him—his own and others.

So, for December, I’ll have David Whyte in my head, reminding me that I’m a part of something so much grander than my own little constricted perspective usually allows and that “Everything is waiting for you.”

By heart: The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

Eric Johnson

I’m memorizing one poem a month. I learned Mary Oliver’s The Journey last month. The first couple of days I worked on it I felt like I was never going to get it. Then I kept at it, and it just clicked. And I found myself saying it out loud to myself as I walked, as I drove, as I did errands and chores. It’s been a delight to have it just there, in my mind, ready to summon. I even recited it out loud at the end of a presentation I did for a group of college freshmen because it fit so well with what I was sharing with them.

So, this month I chose probably the most famous American poem, Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken. There were actually a couple more Mary Oliver poems I was tempted to add to do a deep dive into her work, but I’m opting for Frost instead. It is a classic, and the rhyming structure is more traditional and hopefully easier to memorize than Oliver’s prose style. Choosing this one, though, is choosing, in opposition somewhat to the point of it, one of the most well traveled poems in the English language. But classics are classic for a reason, and it seems appropriate to add this one to the so far very little library of poetry in my mind.

From Risking Everything: 110 Poems of Love and Revelation by Roger Housden

Getting what you want

Eric Johnson

A tweet I saw today made me aware of this poem, written when the author was dying of cancer:

Late Fragment

By Raymond Carver

And did you get what

you wanted from life, even so?

I did.

And what did you want?

To call myself beloved, to feel myself

beloved on the Earth.

Simple. Direct. Poignant.

Isn’t this what we really want?

To love and to be loved.

All the rest is distraction.

I want to be a better friend to my dog

Eric Johnson

I heard this Billy Collins poem about dogs today while listening to the TED Radio Hour*:

I laughed, but now I want to be a better friend to my dog, Mosley.

*The TED Radio Hour is such a stellar podcast. If you haven’t discovered podcasts yet, this is a great one to subscribe to to get started. Every episode is solid.

The Revenant
by Billy Collins

I am the dog you put to sleep,
as you like to call the needle of oblivion,
come back to tell you this simple thing:
I never liked you – not one bit.

When I licked your face,
I thought of biting off your nose.
When I watched you toweling yourself dry,
I wanted to leap and unman you with a snap.

I resented the way you moved,
your lack of animal grace,
the way you would sit in a chair and eat,
a napkin on your lap, knife in your hand.

I would have run away,
but I was too weak, a trick you taught me
while I was learning to sit and heel,
and – greatest of insults – shake hands without a hand.

I admit the sight of the leash
would excite me
but only because it meant I was about
to smell things you had never touched.

You do not want to believe this,
but I have no reason to lie.
I hated the car, the rubber toys,
disliked your friends and, worse, your relatives.

The jingling of my tags drove me mad.
You always scratched me in the wrong place.
All I ever wanted from you
was food and fresh water in my metal bowls.

While you slept, I watched you breathe
as the moon rose in the sky.
It took all my strength
not to raise my head and howl.

Now I am free of the collar,
the yellow raincoat, monogrammed sweater,
the absurdity of your lawn,
and that is all you need to know about this place

except what you already supposed
and are glad it did not happen sooner –
that everyone here can read and write,
the dogs in poetry, the cats and the others in prose.

Dropping keys

Eric Johnson

Screen Shot 2014-07-10 at 2.58.52 PM

Catch yourself locking others up in your expectations, your dogma. And stop it.

Break out of the constraints others place on you. Be authentic. Be real. Be your rowdy, unfiltered self, regardless of what others want you to be and regardless of how imperfect you will be exposed to be.

Your freedom just might liberate someone else. Your vulnerability just might embolden those around you who are only going through the motions, who feel trapped in cages built by someone else.

The wise man accepts the beautiful messiness of life and does not try to fix others. He just wants them to be free.

Stop building cages. Start a jail break.

Mother’s Day gift: Sarah Kay’s poem

Eric Johnson

Need something thoughtful for a mother in your life for Mother’s Day this weekend? My daughters and I gave this lovely little book of Sarah Kay’s poem B to my wife a couple of years ago.

It’s the poem Sarah performed on the TED stage to much acclaim. I loved her dynamic presence on stage as much as her message.

Mothers and daughters will especially appreciate the message of this poem, but fathers and sons and any human would, too.

IMG_4862

Love and gravity

Eric Johnson

Gravity rules the universe. There would be no Earth, no solar system, no sun or stars or galaxies without gravity.

Gravity is attraction. The earth is pulling on the moon, keeping it close. The sun keeps tugging at the planets. Galaxies spin in infinity in its grasp. Gravity holds everything together.

Newton enlightened. Einstein clarified and corrected. And smiled.

What gravity is to the cosmos is what love is to the human experience. Love brings people together, puts hearts in orbit around each other. Connects and binds. Builds community and family.

It can be defied, with great effort if not with Saturn V rockets. It gives order and chaos at the same time.

We all are connected, biologically and cosmically. We are star stuff, held together and propelled onward by love and gravity.

Mary Oliver: West Wind #2

Eric Johnson

This is so good:

WEST WIND #2

By Mary Oliver

You are young. So you know everything. You leap into the boat and begin rowing. But listen to me. Without fanfare, without embarrassment, without any doubt, I talk directly to your soul. Listen to me. Lift the oars from the water, let your arms rest, and your heart, and heart’s little intelligence, and listen to me. There is life without love. It is not worth a bent penny, or a scuffed shoe. It is not worth the body of a dead dog nine days unburied. When you hear, a mile away and still out of sight, the churn of the water as it begins to swirl and roil, fretting around the sharp rocks – when you hear that unmistakable pounding – when you feel the mist on your mouth and sense ahead the embattlement, the long falls plunging and steaming – then row, row for your life toward it.