Hawaiian breakfast buddies

I miss sharing fresh pineapple on the lanai every morning.

Poiema

I have been thinking about this idea of poíēma (ποίηµα) for a few years. It’s one of my favorite Koine Greek words, meaning a work, something that has been made, crafted, fashioned. It appears in the New Testament twice, first referring to all of creation: “God’s eternal power and divine nature have been clearly observed in what God has made;” and also referring to humankind: “We are God’s masterpiece.” If you hadn’t guessed already, it’s the word from which we get our word poem.

My husband got me this Etsy bracelet, and if I ever get a tattoo, this is what I want stamped on my skin forever, as a reminder to myself about myself, other people, and everything around me: ποίηµα.

“So every day

I was surrounded by the beautiful crying forth 
of the ideas of God,

one of which was you.” 
― Mary Oliver

Yesterday I followed my nephew, with his wife and five-month-old daughter watching, as he ran the Boston Marathon. I tracked his bib number online, and I watched the livefeed of the elite runners, those men and women who ran 26.2 miles in just over two hours. Nate finished in 2:47:51, which amazes me. I'm so proud. poíēma

My heart was in Boston already, for many reasons.

Others have written beautiful words, like here and here, about yesterday’s marathon, about Boston, about the explosions and the human spirit. The glimpses of poíēma in spite of awful circumstances.

I think of Anne Lamott’s three prayers: Help, Thanks, Wow. I’d tuned in at 3:00 to find out about the Pulitzer Prize announcements but instead I saw the first few tweets about the explosions in Boston. Minutes passed and more tweets picked up the news, links posted, pictures, stories. I tried to get in touch with Nate’s wife. More minutes passed; friends who’d read my posts about him running checked in with me: “Have you heard from him yet?” HELP

My brother talked to Nate’s wife, they were fine. THANKS

And yet, HELP.

And yet, WOW. There were helpers, there was mercy. There is still help needed, still mercy needed.

ποίηµα poíēma

It is a constant struggle to keep my heart open. Some days easier than others. Yesterday, I wanted to be angry, yes, at the person who set explosives at the finish line. But even more at people who would conjecture, who would joke, who would cast blame, who would from their own pain and fear lash out unjustly.

Yesterday felt personal. Even if I hadn’t had a family member in the race. I’m a runner. I’ve been in a marathon and I know what the finish line is supposed to feel like. A celebration of life, of commitment, of family and community. For someone to intentionally ruin that… I have no words.

Yesterday felt personal. I’ve spent lots of time in Boston, most recently at a big writing conference (AWP). From the convention center one month ago, I watched people throng a snowy and beautiful Boylston Street, and I myself trudged across Boylston to a restaurant. Before that, I attended five 10-day residencies in Cambridge and fell in love with the neighborhoods of Boston. Watching the marathon made me feel nostalgic for one of my favorite cities. To have that city and that street that holds recent memories marred makes me sorrowful.

It makes me wonder whether the person or persons who inflicted this pain are actually poíēma. How could they possibly? Why would someone? Why? It is ugly and hateful and evil. Not poíēma, not ποίηµα.

Nine months ago, my husband’s cousin was killed defending his girlfriend in the Aurora theater shootings. For that tragedy we have a face, a guilty party, to throw our grief and anger upon. But somehow back then, I forced myself to see his hurt, to imagine what went wrong, went wrong, in his life to glaze him over. He is a marred poem; someone or something evil redacted what was supposed to be, creating evil instead of poíēma.

When the pain gets personal, it turns my thoughts and prayers to the people around the world who face the possibility of violence like this every day. It shouldn’t be like this. Yesterday shocks us because we aren’t inured to the danger and the risk of violence. Some are. It shouldn’t be.

HELP.

I want to close my heart off sometimes, to rail in anger against the people who offend me and the ones I love. Against people whose words are small and beliefs tear apart rather than heal. Against those who hurt through ignorance and pride. Against those who would set out with intent to kill.

It is a bitter fight not to be marred or to mar.

To remain a poíēma. To see the poíēma in everyone. To grieve lost poíēma. To keep my heart open and my mouth quiet. To keep looking. 

Keep looking.

skyline

purview of the Boston AWP conference 

I love Boston. I love it even better in the snow. Socked in, hushed, humbled, warmer inside than out. Filled with 12,000 writers from all over the world. We took over the city, or at least our corner of it, leaking out of the convention center and dashing into restaurants and bars. Talking shop. Talking life. Talking horizons.

on words

Truth is elusive.

Truth avoids institutional control.

Truth tugs at conventional syntax.

Truth hovers at the edge of the visual field.

Truth is relational.

Truth lives in the library and on the subway.

Truth is not two-sided; it's many-sided.

Truth burrows in the body.

Truth flickers.

Truth comes on little cat's feet, and down back alleys.

Truth doesn't always test well.

Truth invites you back for another look.

From the Hebrew proverbs: "A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in settings of silver." 

In the book Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies, which I found at my sister-in-law's house and also contains the above list describing truth, Marilyn Chandler McEntyre says

A felicitous word choice is one that so precisely names an idea or experience that it produces for the reader or hearer a shock of recognition, a surprised "Yes! That's it!" and a gratifying sense of having put two interlocking pieces of a puzzling world perfectly in place.

My father-in-law loves to do jigsaw puzzles, it's his way to unwind. And when all of the siblings go back for a visit, he loves when we join him around the card table, the pieces splayed across a felt mat. One time he packed a puzzle in his suitcase when he visited our house, and we spent our spare time over the four days of his visit assembling a picture of Mickey Mouse, a mosaic of screen shots from Disney movies.

There's a rush of satisfaction almost like adrenaline when out of thousands of pieces I find the one that perfectly fits the shape and picture. It's the same with words. My friend, who just read Nabokov for the first time -- Lolita -- described one of the reasons she loved the book: the author's turns of phrase were both surprising and perfectly apt.

A word fitly spoken is truth.

I don't always do this well, and I know in these blog entries I rarely do it well. This kind of fitness takes time. Lots of time. Fit words are a gift whenever and wherever they occur, a gift to both the one who hears or reads them and to the one through whom they pass. But they won't be found if we won't listen for them. They're just off to the side, near our blind spot. They're deft paws on dry asphalt.

There's a lot of noise today, a lot of words flying around our atmosphere, and most of them are cheap, unfit, flabby words. They're 25-piece children's puzzles. They're quick and easy. Easy to make, easy to digest. That's why good words require us to do the work, the work of taking time to listen.

I hope that today we all get a chance to hear and perhaps give a word fitly spoken, a true treasure.

Review of The Rules of Inheritance, by Claire Bidwell Smith

The Rules of Inheritance: A Memoir by Claire Bidwell Smith
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I think this will be a book I'll come back to again and again. I feel solidarity with Claire--I was born to older parents, with much older siblings, and raised as if an only child. Both parents have gone through serious health scares but have come through, though I know I'll be touched by loss sooner or later, in one way or another. We all are. The portrait of Claire's journey is moving, and I admire her honesty and her big heart. She's turned the blackness of her grief to gold, through writing this book and through her work as a grief counselor, to help others move through grief as gracefully, messily, honestly, as possible. There's a lot to learn here. Whether it's our own loss or a loss someone close to us experiences, I love what she says: "When I talk to grieving people, it's like looking at a negative image--the deeper the grief, the more evidence of love I see."

View all my reviews