Poem-A-Day #37 : Doesn't tho' look poetic?

Doesn't tho' look poetic?

Burned skin - not blackened - not chicken on a grill
          just red - blistered even - but red

It smells like a hairdryer left on until overheating

Cocoa butter - sand - the blankness of sky

          Words look poetic - letters aligned up down circular -
logic breaks before a podium and a room hanging on the ledge
of heard and not heard -

           language falls to its doom -

This is a sandcastle - not actually made of sand or castle
          but of the memories of the land

That is once held those things within it

It is the hangover of dinosaurs roaming the earth

Once this space had to deal with all of that weight - it's
sinister but true -

          The smell of that burning - of that oil in that car

Poem-A-Day #36 : O'Hara

O'Hara

MoMA the battlefield, the broken edifice

I am looking for O’Hara – there must be stains

Some part of his newspaper in a corner – something

about the day that Hart Crane died

There are only cell phones stalking the Van Goughs

Yoko Ono’s invisible instructions

            scream.

1.     against the wind

2.     against the wall

3.     against the sky

Sellers : When Breath Becomes Air

When Breath Becomes Air
Author: Paul Kalanithi
Publisher: Random House (1/12/16)
256p

This isn't about this specific man's life or death.

I know little about either, though his story has been all over various mainstream media outlets, I've actively only read the bare facts. I have little interest in stories that fall into the 'human interest' category. The kind of thing that is discussed in hushed tones on the Today show. I have little interest in these stories beyond the headline and one sentence break down.

These kinds of stories are culturally woven into us. Many people enjoy clicking on the links to stories about the person who saved the dog from the highway. The kid who was dead for a few minutes and what they saw there. The person who raised a ton of foster kids being thrown a big party.

We are drawn to tales that highlight our humanity. Our best selves. This is how we've ended up with a book published 10 months after a man's death topping the bestseller list.

It is important to note that Paul Kalanithi was neither a 'known' person nor a writer before his diagnosis with cancer. It's important because this book exists because of that diagnosis, and the marketability of it as a 'story'. The newly graduated doctor in his 30s suddenly realizing that his priorities are off that his life is actually at its end. What does he do, and by extension, what would we do.

I feel like I must defend myself from imagined readers up in arms over me trashing this dead man's book. Which, I'm not. By all accounts the book is an interesting look at being young, and educated, and expecting of a long life only to have it all thrown out the window by a diagnosis. These kinds of stories are important. They teach us something about what it means to live every day, what is important.

So no, I'm not going to trash this book.

I'm more interested in the posthumous book as a cultural trope.

We put a lot of power into 'last thoughts'. The final breath before leaving this world. Call it a religious hangover in a secular society. And yes, I know, that is debatable, but...

Why do we do this?

Is it an attempt to see the other side before we get there? Those who are very ill, who are near death, are thought to be - to quote from Tony Kushner - "at the very threshold of revelation." They can see into some space we, the healthy, cannot. Supposedly.

There is a whole genre of books by the dying. To the point that it is a morbid cliche that a diagnosis, especially in youth, can net you a book deal if you can write about your illness in an enlightening and comforting way.

That 'if' is key.

We don't want a book about how fucked up being in your early 30s and dying is. We don't want to see you suffering, unless that suffering can somehow teach you, and by extension, us how to live better lives. We need a cliched 'happy ending' tied up in your tragedy. You, who are dying, what can you tell us about living better since you will not.

Oliver Sacks was a fascinating man. Culturally, he held this space that I would liken to Neil deGrasse Tyson or Bill Nye. He was a pop intelligence. A man who could make big ideas feel close, small, relatable. His post-death collection of essays, Gratitude, was published only months after his death in 2015. This quote sums it and my point up nicely:

“My predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved. I have been given much and I have given something in return. Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure.”

I want to be careful. It is tempting to classify these books as a sort of grief-porn. And they do fall in to that vein. Even the best of this genre of books will play with that emotion. They are, at their base, meant to make us sad. Make us think about death and life and our choices. They are reflective, and thus, they are about feelings.

A feeling we don't talk about much. At least, not in western culture.

Joan Didion has made a strange shift at the end of her career. She is now the oracle of death. And while her writing has always had the air of melancholy and reflection, it has now become full-blown sermonizing on the topic of endings.

Her duo The Year of Magical Thinking and Blue Nights are, if anything, elegies/eulogies. She has somehow survived death, though I would argue that many readers/fans/literati believe these two books to be her final books. There is an air of 'the end' about them.

Even though we all experience death, we somehow need a Joan Didion, a Oliver Sacks, a Paul Kalanithi to explain it to us.

These books become our coping mechanism.

We don't allow death into our lives, so we ask a great penance of those who can access it while still with us.

You, who are dying, tell me how to live.


Sellers is my attempt to examine what books are topping the best-seller list and why. To talk about and understand the trends in popular writing.

Poem-A-Day #35 : Stairwell

Stairwell

Around the corner          the sound of a child          counting the steps

          I turn and the family                magazine perfect

Handsome and new                and counting steps                together

                They smell good                I sort of want this

Even though I don't                that smell                in a bottle on my shelf

          I could open it every morning          find the number of steps

Poem-A-Day #34 : Quilt for April 2 2016

Quilt for April 2 2016

On the last day of March it begins to snow + it continues into April + that line about black boughs + cruelty echoes across the New Mexico landscape like a dirt devil full of tumbleweeds

I ask the woman behind the counter what I want there’s a silence between us that would be hilarious if it wasn’t insane

The pictures of the quilt across the National Mall the largest bed in the universe – rest your head on Lincoln’s lap + stare into the dome of the sky + what sort of dream is there in the circular night sky – is it a mirror of the day that happened or one of the future

Wrap the cloth around you and roll in the grass until everything is covered in green until your skin is stained with life

The week old baby is asleep + I can’t help but wish that the future is better his parents are there and we all kind of nod in agreement – it’s dark + sad + maybe inappropriate but it’s the truest thing that has ever happened

Poem-A-Day #33 : Tattooing a Reservoir on my Chest

Tattooing a Reservoir on my Chest
          - after Emily Kendal Frey

The water levels are the lowest they've ever been

A red kite in the sky signals fire over the horizon

Tons of concrete etches into the landscape

Here is a hanger - your coat - it's all shoulders

I hate tweed why do you own tweed the elbows are just so...

Place these straws in a U around my heart the blood needs to pool

Poem-A-Day #32 : The Sinking of the Titanic

The Sinking of the Titanic

: why so many questions :
          : ice becomes blue after it salts and confronts itself at night :

     : these are just the things
you can carry :                    : here is an X on a map it has no emotions :

                                : underneath the waves :
                      : the sound of one lone viola in the largest theater on earth is the sound a conch hears when it holds a human skull to its ear :