“Don’t tell me what the poets are doing. / Don’t tell me that they’re talking tough.”
– from “Poets” by the Tragically Hip
It is impossible (not to mention essentially pointless) to define poetry simply, to equate it to a single concept or function, and for this I am thankful. I understand that poetry, at its most basic level, is communication, which cannot even be confined to language. Some would argue that a daffodil is more poetic than most villanelles, and I see their point. I only remind you of the futility of definitions as a disclaimer for all the room I have here to hypothesize – to make assumptions about poetry based on my experiences with meditation.
I’d like to discuss the crucial though often neglected relationship between compassion and poetry – and I mean all of poetry: the poems, the process, the promotion and publication of, the rejection, the job searches, the teaching. Not all of us publish, nor do we all teach, but I’m coming at this from my position as an instructor, student, and poet with a happy amount of publications under her belt. I am not famous but have enjoyed meeting many new people through poetry. So what the hell does violence have to do with all this? How are poets violent and how might they practice compassion with themselves and others?
Like poetry, violence is also difficult to define. Sometimes it is visible, tangible even, but most often it is quiet, abstract, or subtle. It is always brutal. It is always ugly. As a pacifist, I’ve been interested in the significance of violence for most of my life. As a poet, I have always been fascinated by beauty, what it is, what it isn’t, and why we love it.
Before I married a soldier and began to study violence as it related to war and politics, I assumed it was more directly associated with military endeavors, and my position as a poet somehow made me nonviolent by nature. All my poet friends were hippies, so I assumed they were also peaceful. How cute! Imagine my embarrassment when I began practicing yoga during my first return to graduate school, when I read Thich Nhat Hanh’s essays on the five mindfulness trainings.
The first mindfulness training concerns reverence for life and the way we might care for it most effectively through nonviolence and nonattachment. As poets, we are violently critical of ourselves, often incapable of detaching from the so-called success we crave. We disguise our suffering in arrogance or smother it with addiction. Our poems are beautiful, but the profession of poetry, it seems, has a tendency to bring out the worst in us. We love to write but it’s never enough; we want publications and job offers and book deals and a clearer sense of our own authority. We refuse to forgive ourselves and others. As I contemplate my own struggles with negative self-talk, which is essentially violence to myself and consequently others, I have found that the practice of meditation can, over time, help dissipate a process that has led me further down a path of suffering.
Violence is not limited to the merciless brutality of combat and destruction; it also grows silently and persistently in the arts. I’ve written entire poems and essays while listening to the repeating call of what Maria Gillan would call “my crow,” that voice which sings so exquisitely about my faults, my stupidity and worthlessness, my bland, boring self. What the hell makes me think I can write about meditation when I haven’t been on my yoga mat in over a year? And why do I sound like I’m on some high tower in my field when the truth is I’m a PhD student who resembles a shabby workhorse more than established poet? Without meditation, I can easily cultivate the desire to knock myself down, knock others down when they’ve worked harder or better than I have, when they are given something I feel they don’t deserve, when I feel slighted, when I am fearful of my own poems being ignored or misunderstood, when I’m fed up and pissed off and sad. This kind of violence has the ability to lead me toward more pronounced cruelty, to negative actions against others, to a blind belief in my own way of thinking as right, absolute, or superior. Isn’t this the same path that leads to war?
The bottom line is, while many people believe that poetry is intrinsically compassionate because it is emotionally driven, it is a uniquely human craft that is therefore susceptible to our heartlessness, anger, fear, and greed. Is it possible to separate poetry from the poet? I don’t think so. Poems are only as genuine as the individuals who write them. The longer I meditate, the more mindful I become of how desperately I need compassion in order to write what is true and beautiful.
I have this beat up copy of Judith Laseter’s Living Your Yoga. It used to be white with orange California poppies on the cover but now it’s mostly yellow, the flowers bronze, the inside print a little blurry. Its spine is brittle, and when I lived in Colorado this book was on a shelf constantly exposed to sunlight; its pages are, to me, always warm. In the spirit of sincerity, I admit that I am never not reading this book. It’s seen me through two chapbooks, countless readings, hundreds of rejections, stressful lectures, academic papers, school applications, contest entries, intensive workshops, not to mention years of wondering if Tom was still whole in Iraq and Afghanistan while I was curled under the covers of our bed. In it, Laseter repeats what everyone from Natalie Goldberg to Jesus Christ have stated explicitly or indirectly implied: we must be compassionate with ourselves in order to love others.
I sometimes struggle to remember that compassion does not denote lenience. Compassion is not ‘taking it easy’ on oneself. Compassion is exercise. Compassion is often a test, especially when you first study meditation. Nonviolence is a way of practicing. If you are new to meditation and haven’t read much about compassion, I have a couple suggestions:
1) Read any of Thich Nhat Hanh’s books. I especially like Being Peace, Happiness, Fear, and Good Citizens.
2) If you’re the more academicky type and want more researchish writing about compassion, read Karen Armstrong’s work. She’s a former nun and religious scholar who’s written beautifully crisp prose about compassion and spirituality.
3) If you need to show compassion quickly and want an immediate plan of action, do what I do (and don’t judge me): pretend the person you hate is a shelter dog. I’m serious. That poet who flakes out on you when you need him to follow through, who throws you under the bus, who has opportunities handed to him, who always needs and always takes, who seems full of himself and pretentious and ignorant – he is now a shivering shelter dog. You can’t be a jerk to him. At least for now while this strategy is working.
Think of a poet you really have trouble tolerating. (Come on, I know you have one in mind.) Slow down and consider this person as wholly as possible: her physical presence, her poetry, mannerisms, credentials, the rumors that trail behind her, the sound of her voice if you’ve heard it, what you think she has and all her glaring faults.
I want you to imagine what you don’t know about her. The poems she hasn’t written, the rejections she’s received, the opportunities that have escaped her, the time she was left out or singled out, the way she responds to deep loss. For the sake of simplicity, I’ll call her my enemy. She practically makes me itch, but it turns out that her suffering is my own. There are poems I haven’t written because I don’t know how. Poems I’ve written badly. I have been rejected and I have been the victim of bad timing.
The first time Tom called me from Iraq to tell me he had landed safely but could see Baghdad burning from the air, I was standing next to the smashed back window of my car, staring at the beer can that had been thrown through the glass and exploded over the seats. I hope the poet who sees me as her enemy – that poet who finds my happiness undeserved – knows how I cried like a child on the side of the street where my car was parked and have yet to write a poem about it. I hope she shows me compassion. And I hope I can return the favor.
Tomorrow, I’ll discuss the concept of success in poetry. What it means to me, what it means in a more general, stereotypical sort of way, and how we might transform our desire for it into a more mindful energy that refocuses us on our poetry, our playfulness, and our need to connect with one another through story.