The poets must

There are a lot of things that I’m reading and thinking about that I want to tell you about, but time seems to have shrunk lately, or maybe it’s just that casual words are harder. I was away for a few days and met a bunch of stunning brilliant people who kept giving me book recommendations and by the time I arrived home three books I’d ordered were already waiting for me. When, exactly, do I expect to read them? Well, I don’t know.

On Saturday morning, early before leaving Chicago my dear dear poet friend Joy Jacobson and I did a super quick intense writing and sharing in her hotel room on the 25th floor (view above). We read this poem by Denise Levertov, which I’ve been thinking about a lot lately, as I’ve been introducing myself as a poet, as the word has begun to shift in meaning.

Joy responded to the last few lines of the poem and I took the first line “A voice from the dark called out…” Read it a few times and then write, maybe not even directly in response to it. I discovered something big in the writing, and I hope you do too.

Making Peace

BY DENISE LEVERTOV

A voice from the dark called out,
‘The poets must give us
imagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar
imagination of disaster. Peace, not only
the absence of war.’
But peace, like a poem,
is not there ahead of itself,
can’t be imagined before it is made,
can’t be known except
in the words of its making,
grammar of justice,
syntax of mutual aid.
A feeling towards it,
dimly sensing a rhythm, is all we have
until we begin to utter its metaphors,
learning them as we speak.
A line of peace might appear
if we restructured the sentence our lives are making,
revoked its reaffirmation of profit and power,
questioned our needs, allowed
long pauses . . .
A cadence of peace might balance its weight
on that different fulcrum; peace, a presence,
an energy field more intense than war,
might pulse then,
stanza by stanza into the world,
each act of living
one of its words, each word
a vibration of light—facets
of the forming crystal.