Hey Tara, I enjoyed this piece. Thanks for sharing your writing, as well as the poem. I find I'm often in this "space" between notes. Not at all oblivious to what's "happening" but personally unable to "act." An interesting and thoughtful piece. Thanks again.
Thank you, Peter. I have struggled with this question more times than I care to count. And when I put my hand on the Gilbert poem so soon after reading about Biden's speech, things just went click. Poetry will do that, right? :-)
Absolutely! I'm definitely one who feels that good poetry is the highest form of written expression...but what do I know. I just love a good poem. I need to read more...it's a different reading experience for sure. Thanks again for sharing:)
Thanks for this essay Tara. I’m a big believer in knowing what you can and cannot affect. Essentially the Serenity Prayer.
So in addition to avoiding hate I think we do have a responsibility to use what energy and resources we have to help others.
So if you cannot affect the course of a war I say it IS better to look toward opportunities where you can make a difference and know it is a positive one.
My knowing details of what’s going on in Ukraine and Gaza and Sudan does nothing positive.
Agreed! When I worry that I'm not doing enough about something, I sometimes ask myself: Is it necessary for all people to try to alleviate all problems that come to their attention at all times? Put that way, I never fail to see the absurdity of the expectation. Thank goodness for the Serenity Prayer to make it easy to remember.
Tara, I am new here and glad to be. How interesting that you chose “Peaches” instead of the more obvious and approachable “A Brief for the Defense.” After reading “Peaches” three of four times, I am perplexed. It’s the most challenging poem I’ve seen by Gilbert. The ship, the song, the unsatisfying peaches he ate anyway. A mystery.
Rona, I'm so glad you brought up that poem. Every line in it is separately quotable on the issue of this post. This may be my favorite: "To make injustice the only / measure of our attention is to praise the Devil." (Here's a link so folks can read two poems for the price of one: https://poetrysociety.org/poems/a-brief-for-the-defense.)
This brings up the funny story of how this post and this poem got together anyhow. I was scanning my bookshelf for a collection of essays by June Jordan, intending that the post today would be about what the last generation of protestors could teach the current one. But I had moved my June Jordan books, and they were not where I expected. Instead I pulled down The Great Fires, and this poem in today's context struck me this way. Without today's context, the poem is a bit too existential for my taste. There is so much uncertainty in it. The assertion "there had to be a reason why people bought them" seems hollow; there also might be no reason for anything whatsoever. "A Brief for the Defense" is a bit more assertive in favor of "delight," with lovelier images. But it was this humble, wavering, lonely poem with tasteless gray peaches that caught my attention while I was looking for something else. And I rather like that. Poor, sorry little poem! You see why I described it first and saved the copying of it for last. It's a challenge. :-)
I like your backstory here, Tara. I wasn’t familiar with the poem and it does seem in a way not to know what to do with itself, just like the Saturday between Good Friday and the resurrection Sunday. Everything present on that Saturday, the pain, the looking at it, the looking away, all the other options of how we could spend, and do spend, our time - that all seems very human, which goes back to your focus on boosting confidence in humanity. I see the man on the beach, thinking about the peaches and see myself too, doing similar things in different circumstances, and I have compassion for myself and for the rest of us, just trying to be here and figure it out. Thanks!
Yes - well said. I don’t know the exact composition date of this poem, but it may be a widower’s poem (like others in the book). The man seems rather at a loss.
Very nice piece. Jack Gilbert's The Great Fires may just be one of the best 5 books written in the last 50 years. Not a stinker in the whole book. Just fantastic.
I’m a fan of it, too! Do you remember “Married,” about repotting Michiko’s avocado after her death? I bought the book around ‘97 and never forgot that indelible poem. Do you know the one I mean?
I love this, Tara! I'm a firm believer that we can't be much good to others when we're stretched beyond our capacity, whatever it might be in each moment. (We've discussed my thoughts on comfort at length.) For me, on those sorts of Saturdays, if I'm beyond my capacity to turn towards the suffering, I like to turn towards relating well with whom/what ever is in my capacity to do so (including the self).
I don't look away but I cannot stare. I want to honor my people massacred on Oct. 7 and those still in captivity. Unfortunately, I cannot avoid the hate towards me personally, around the world, because I am Jewish.
Fun fact: Jack Gilbert shared pages with me in Quarterly West for my first literary publication. As you know, I also love his poem about divorce, "Failing and Flying."
Recovery is a recurring theme for my series, and I have not yet reached a clear understanding of what it means to be present in the way that you describe here, making peace with Saturdays (or other little pockets of calm), without intentionally retreating from or blocking out larger concerns. I know that for me, personally, focusing on the enormity of my personal challenges or the weight of past choices is often paralyzing. And so some level of intentional amnesia is necessary to moving forward. But that can grow to be a comfortable way of staying detached from urgent concerns.
I do love the immediacy of food, of gardening, of abundance, of the imperative to preserve that abundance so it's not wasted. Typically food involves others, too. One way of controlling what we can control. Though I am also mindful that my home, my garden, my access to clean water and fresh air, are also privileges that many are denied.
If we think about the enormity of Biden's Friday-Saturday-Sunday metaphor, it's almost impossible to imagine "making peace" with Saturday, isn't it? When we think about those earth-shaking times, even food can become dull, and action is almost impossible. Another poem that comes to mind is Emily Dickinson's "After great pain, a formal feeling comes." That may be the best description I know of this Saturday feeling.
Thank you for the link to "Failing and Flying." That's another of his classics. Icarus/divorce is pretty ingenious. I hope you are getting some good days in your garden.
Thank you for reading, Alicia! Glad you enjoyed this juxtaposition of texts. I like your metaphor of dialing to a different frequency. That's a good way to put it. There's just no telling what any one person can manage at any given time.
I saw the sneak peak of Jack Gilbert and the title of this post re: suffering, and I was a sucker for diving in headlong. I had not read this poem. First, permit me to say, this piece will linger in me for days. Thank you for that.
This poem reads like Schrödinger wondering about the cat in the box: alive or dead. In Shrödinger, the answer is both. And there's something about positioning this poem in response to Biden's "Saturday" reflections that is not only poignant but as much a signifier for a paradigm shift away from duality. Here is what will linger for me, with thanks to you: Is the question about right or wrong or can we or can't we? Is it perhaps about looking at looking? What is in that inner agonizing pause of recognizing that to look right now is more than I can bear? What happens when we come to that pause, see it, lean in a little, come to our own unbearable flesh-on-the-bones humanity, right then and there – acting (or not) aside? Might Sunday be a new way?
Thank you for this. Beautiful piece. You've boosted my confidence in humanity.
Thank you, Renée, for so thoughtfully engaging with this essay. I think Jack Gilbert's poem does lead us away from duality. If we stay with it, longer, past the right/wrong, can we/can't we options, the poem does, I think, circle back on itself when he is unable to find "them" again. I've interpreted that as peaches, but if "they" are also the people who've gone away, then even the diverted thought (memory) lands him back in his unavoidable condition (present isolation). To develop this line of thinking, I'd want to get into biography - the death of his wife - and other poems about that loss in this book. That's a longer post. It's also why I like juxtaposing this poem with Biden's speech. The way "Saturday" feels on Saturday is like this poem - like it's impossible to imagine ahead to Sunday. So much is unknown and frozen. That's just how it is with us: Impossible to bear or explain how to bear, yet also borne. And there you go, past duality, as you said.
Tara, thank you for your thoughtful response to my inquiry – amongst your many thoughtful responses here. I do sense with you that the poem circles back in the last line, i.e., unable to find 'them' again--them being ambiguous. "Impossible to bear or explain to bear, yet also borne." Yes. If your essay here offers any glimpse of a future project (i.e, "To develop this line. . ."), you can count me as an eager anticipator.
The mystery is why I read poetry. I love this one, Tara. Thank you for showing us how a commencement speech and a poem can come together in something new and thoughtful and beautiful.
Thank you, Verna! That's a beautiful compliment. I'm so glad you enjoyed this poem and speech together. It's a bit bold to drag authors in directions you're sure they never meant to go (into company with an unknown other text), but I do think we readers have that prerogative, as long as we do it respectfully.
Hey Tara, I enjoyed this piece. Thanks for sharing your writing, as well as the poem. I find I'm often in this "space" between notes. Not at all oblivious to what's "happening" but personally unable to "act." An interesting and thoughtful piece. Thanks again.
Thank you, Peter. I have struggled with this question more times than I care to count. And when I put my hand on the Gilbert poem so soon after reading about Biden's speech, things just went click. Poetry will do that, right? :-)
Absolutely! I'm definitely one who feels that good poetry is the highest form of written expression...but what do I know. I just love a good poem. I need to read more...it's a different reading experience for sure. Thanks again for sharing:)
Thanks for this essay Tara. I’m a big believer in knowing what you can and cannot affect. Essentially the Serenity Prayer.
So in addition to avoiding hate I think we do have a responsibility to use what energy and resources we have to help others.
So if you cannot affect the course of a war I say it IS better to look toward opportunities where you can make a difference and know it is a positive one.
My knowing details of what’s going on in Ukraine and Gaza and Sudan does nothing positive.
Agreed! When I worry that I'm not doing enough about something, I sometimes ask myself: Is it necessary for all people to try to alleviate all problems that come to their attention at all times? Put that way, I never fail to see the absurdity of the expectation. Thank goodness for the Serenity Prayer to make it easy to remember.
Tara, I am new here and glad to be. How interesting that you chose “Peaches” instead of the more obvious and approachable “A Brief for the Defense.” After reading “Peaches” three of four times, I am perplexed. It’s the most challenging poem I’ve seen by Gilbert. The ship, the song, the unsatisfying peaches he ate anyway. A mystery.
Rona, I'm so glad you brought up that poem. Every line in it is separately quotable on the issue of this post. This may be my favorite: "To make injustice the only / measure of our attention is to praise the Devil." (Here's a link so folks can read two poems for the price of one: https://poetrysociety.org/poems/a-brief-for-the-defense.)
This brings up the funny story of how this post and this poem got together anyhow. I was scanning my bookshelf for a collection of essays by June Jordan, intending that the post today would be about what the last generation of protestors could teach the current one. But I had moved my June Jordan books, and they were not where I expected. Instead I pulled down The Great Fires, and this poem in today's context struck me this way. Without today's context, the poem is a bit too existential for my taste. There is so much uncertainty in it. The assertion "there had to be a reason why people bought them" seems hollow; there also might be no reason for anything whatsoever. "A Brief for the Defense" is a bit more assertive in favor of "delight," with lovelier images. But it was this humble, wavering, lonely poem with tasteless gray peaches that caught my attention while I was looking for something else. And I rather like that. Poor, sorry little poem! You see why I described it first and saved the copying of it for last. It's a challenge. :-)
I like your backstory here, Tara. I wasn’t familiar with the poem and it does seem in a way not to know what to do with itself, just like the Saturday between Good Friday and the resurrection Sunday. Everything present on that Saturday, the pain, the looking at it, the looking away, all the other options of how we could spend, and do spend, our time - that all seems very human, which goes back to your focus on boosting confidence in humanity. I see the man on the beach, thinking about the peaches and see myself too, doing similar things in different circumstances, and I have compassion for myself and for the rest of us, just trying to be here and figure it out. Thanks!
Yes - well said. I don’t know the exact composition date of this poem, but it may be a widower’s poem (like others in the book). The man seems rather at a loss.
That makes sense.
In answer to your question in the title, yes.
If you thought otherwise, there'd have been some decades differently occupied, no?
Yes, but YOLO.
Haha! I had to look that up. Evidently I’m not much of a daredevil. 😂
Very nice piece. Jack Gilbert's The Great Fires may just be one of the best 5 books written in the last 50 years. Not a stinker in the whole book. Just fantastic.
I’m a fan of it, too! Do you remember “Married,” about repotting Michiko’s avocado after her death? I bought the book around ‘97 and never forgot that indelible poem. Do you know the one I mean?
Yes, I know that poem well:
I came back from the funeral and crawled
around the apartment crying hard,
searching for my wife’s hair.
For two months got them from the drain,
the vacuum cleaner, under the refrigerator
and off the clothes in the closet.
But after other Japanese women came
there was no way to be sure which were
hers and I stopped. A year later,
repotting Michiko’s avocado, I find
this long black hair tangled in the dirt.
Whoof!
Yes! Now THAT is a poem!
I love this, Tara! I'm a firm believer that we can't be much good to others when we're stretched beyond our capacity, whatever it might be in each moment. (We've discussed my thoughts on comfort at length.) For me, on those sorts of Saturdays, if I'm beyond my capacity to turn towards the suffering, I like to turn towards relating well with whom/what ever is in my capacity to do so (including the self).
Yes, “relating well” narrows the field, doesn’t it? (To what can I relate well today?) Well said.
Beautiful poem. Thx for sharing.
I don't look away but I cannot stare. I want to honor my people massacred on Oct. 7 and those still in captivity. Unfortunately, I cannot avoid the hate towards me personally, around the world, because I am Jewish.
I’m so sorry people are handling it that way! It’s awful. People are piling hurt on hurt. ❤️
“the only thing not to do on this figurative Saturday is amplify rage and hate.”
Such a pleasure to feel the truth of moral clarity in this moment. Thank you!
Thank you, Dan!
Fun fact: Jack Gilbert shared pages with me in Quarterly West for my first literary publication. As you know, I also love his poem about divorce, "Failing and Flying."
Recovery is a recurring theme for my series, and I have not yet reached a clear understanding of what it means to be present in the way that you describe here, making peace with Saturdays (or other little pockets of calm), without intentionally retreating from or blocking out larger concerns. I know that for me, personally, focusing on the enormity of my personal challenges or the weight of past choices is often paralyzing. And so some level of intentional amnesia is necessary to moving forward. But that can grow to be a comfortable way of staying detached from urgent concerns.
I do love the immediacy of food, of gardening, of abundance, of the imperative to preserve that abundance so it's not wasted. Typically food involves others, too. One way of controlling what we can control. Though I am also mindful that my home, my garden, my access to clean water and fresh air, are also privileges that many are denied.
https://poets.org/poem/failing-and-flying
If we think about the enormity of Biden's Friday-Saturday-Sunday metaphor, it's almost impossible to imagine "making peace" with Saturday, isn't it? When we think about those earth-shaking times, even food can become dull, and action is almost impossible. Another poem that comes to mind is Emily Dickinson's "After great pain, a formal feeling comes." That may be the best description I know of this Saturday feeling.
Thank you for the link to "Failing and Flying." That's another of his classics. Icarus/divorce is pretty ingenious. I hope you are getting some good days in your garden.
I love the balance of engaging in aligned action and choosing to turn the dial to a different frequency!
Thank you for reading, Alicia! Glad you enjoyed this juxtaposition of texts. I like your metaphor of dialing to a different frequency. That's a good way to put it. There's just no telling what any one person can manage at any given time.
Tara,
I saw the sneak peak of Jack Gilbert and the title of this post re: suffering, and I was a sucker for diving in headlong. I had not read this poem. First, permit me to say, this piece will linger in me for days. Thank you for that.
This poem reads like Schrödinger wondering about the cat in the box: alive or dead. In Shrödinger, the answer is both. And there's something about positioning this poem in response to Biden's "Saturday" reflections that is not only poignant but as much a signifier for a paradigm shift away from duality. Here is what will linger for me, with thanks to you: Is the question about right or wrong or can we or can't we? Is it perhaps about looking at looking? What is in that inner agonizing pause of recognizing that to look right now is more than I can bear? What happens when we come to that pause, see it, lean in a little, come to our own unbearable flesh-on-the-bones humanity, right then and there – acting (or not) aside? Might Sunday be a new way?
Thank you for this. Beautiful piece. You've boosted my confidence in humanity.
Thank you, Renée, for so thoughtfully engaging with this essay. I think Jack Gilbert's poem does lead us away from duality. If we stay with it, longer, past the right/wrong, can we/can't we options, the poem does, I think, circle back on itself when he is unable to find "them" again. I've interpreted that as peaches, but if "they" are also the people who've gone away, then even the diverted thought (memory) lands him back in his unavoidable condition (present isolation). To develop this line of thinking, I'd want to get into biography - the death of his wife - and other poems about that loss in this book. That's a longer post. It's also why I like juxtaposing this poem with Biden's speech. The way "Saturday" feels on Saturday is like this poem - like it's impossible to imagine ahead to Sunday. So much is unknown and frozen. That's just how it is with us: Impossible to bear or explain how to bear, yet also borne. And there you go, past duality, as you said.
Tara, thank you for your thoughtful response to my inquiry – amongst your many thoughtful responses here. I do sense with you that the poem circles back in the last line, i.e., unable to find 'them' again--them being ambiguous. "Impossible to bear or explain to bear, yet also borne." Yes. If your essay here offers any glimpse of a future project (i.e, "To develop this line. . ."), you can count me as an eager anticipator.
Thank you for the encouragement. :-)
The mystery is why I read poetry. I love this one, Tara. Thank you for showing us how a commencement speech and a poem can come together in something new and thoughtful and beautiful.
Thank you, Verna! That's a beautiful compliment. I'm so glad you enjoyed this poem and speech together. It's a bit bold to drag authors in directions you're sure they never meant to go (into company with an unknown other text), but I do think we readers have that prerogative, as long as we do it respectfully.