Poetic Mixtape
A bardic jukebox gleaned from the oeuvres of literary greats
Every once in awhile—especially after writing too much—I find myself in a state I sometimes call “lassitude,” in which I can’t summon up much energy for anything constructive, in which I feel the inner I prefer not to emerge with perfect, Bartlebyesque clarity, and all I want to do is engage in activities that make me feel suspended—not necessarily in pleasure, but in distraction, closing my eyes and listening to podcasts or climbing the cliffs of Hyrule. It’s a bit like floating and a bit like drowning, a temporary cessation of the self that descends after much effort and much solitude. After a difficult week personally and a great deal of graphomania I’ve found myself in such a state—I am overwriting pieces of myself, making a ragged little palimpsest to go on with.
On a side note: a bit of a poll. I wonder if the newsletter is a bit overwhelming for readers. Three columns a week is a lot! If the schedule changed, and perhaps became a bit lighter—two columns a week perhaps, instead of three, or a rotating schedule—would you still subscribe and/or consider becoming a paid subscriber? (I’m thinking about, for example, writing the Tuesday/generally-heavy-politics column twice a month instead of four times, though the weekly sandwiches and Sunday’s culture columns for paid subscribers will continue until morale or the universe improves.) What do you want to see in your inbox—and what would impel you to read what you receive? I’m throwing open the comments and would love to hear all that you’ve got to say about just how many of the words pouring out of my brain you’d like to see on your plate. I do feel that the current state is a bit too much—for me and probably for you!
In the interim, I’m going to share some of my favorite poems, a bardic jukebox gleaned from decades of pecking at the great oeuvres of literary giants in sporadic fits and starts. I was most ardently in love with poetry as a teenager, when I could feel the world crouching over me like a gigantic thing I couldn’t reach, and poems seemed to offer greater glimpses into both the real and the ineffable than the thick canopy of prose.
Since then I have turned to poetry in times of great moment, in grief, joy and love, or grazed it in my travels through history and other literature. I long for it and find it at my fingertips, unlooked-for and ready and giving, prepared to be adored. I hear the voices of the dead in it, raised in fulsome song as if still alive, and flush with their power over the living. And all this from a few well-organized letters, the shiver of mind and mind in contact, death no impediment to such a communion. In this sense poetry—and all good art—subsumes a piece of one spirit into another spirit, though that is as far as I go on the subject of gods and souls. So consider this a literary mixtape, gifted, as all mixtapes are gifted, with equal parts earnestness and shy hope. Here are a few poems I visit and revisit, stepping-stone poems.
On a bad wistful day:
“The shrinking lonesome sestina”
by Miller Williams
When striving to adore solitude, a condition I often find myself in & fundamentally uneasy with:
“Danse Russe
by William Carlos Williams
When I feel small in comparison to the world, shameful at my joy, and meek at my own powerlessness:
“We Lived Happily During the War”
by Ilya Kaminsky
When, instead, I cast all such considerations aside and feel like an incurable romantic:
“Prose of the Trans-Siberian Railway and of Petite Jehanne of France”
by Blaise Cendrars
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When you are goddamn, goddamn, goddamn over it all:
“The Truth the Dead Know”
by Anne Sexton
When you are thrice-goddamn over it all but you are a tragic Russian:
From “Poems to Czechoslovakia”
by Marina Tsvetaeva
When, on the contrary, you are ready despite any inner exhaustion to provide and/or receive the blessing of another:
“martha promise receives leadbelly, 1935”
by Tyehimba Jess
When you remember the lists of birds you shared with someone you loved:
“The Old Flame”
by Robert Lowell
When finally and at last after a long time I have fallen completely in love:
“Variation on the Word Sleep”
by Margaret Atwood
When I am considering the shape of rain:
“Il Pleut”
by Guillaume Apollinaire
It’s Raining
It’s raining women’s voices as if they had died even in memory
And it’s raining you as well marvellous encounters of my life O little
drops
Those rearing clouds begin to neigh a whole universe of auricular cities
Listen if it rains while regret and disdain weep to an ancient music
Listen to the bonds fall off which hold you above and below
When you need a jolt of the courage to defy a dictator even, at the cost of all things, in soul-fatigue at oppression, in a glorious fatal blaze of protest:
“The Stalin Epigram”
by Osip Mandelstam
When you need a myth to hook your leviathan jaw:
“Vestigial Bones”
by Rajiv Mohabir
When you remember your dead all of a sudden, as if they have walked up to you and whispered something inaudible and you swear you felt breath on the nape of your neck:
“Surprised by Joy”
by William Wordsworth
This last to be held in reserve for a joyous day, a day of gratitude for all things above and below:
“Morning Song of Senlin”
by Conrad Aiken
I'm a mooching substack lurker. So many newsletters, so little time and I can't afford to pay for all the ones that strike my fancy briefly. You make me relate and aspire. Your writing has opened up my horizons. Poetry? I don't really "do" poetry, but this is where I'm starting (eons ago, on the bird app your recommendations for Discworld were spot on, I now trust you with these things). That's why I became a paid subscriber today, for the first and only time. If you write it, I will get around to reading it, eventually.
I'll read whatever you send out, whenever you feel like. I haven't read (heard?) a bum note yet.