‘Think it possible that you may be mistaken’. This is the final sentence of number 17 of the Quaker Advices and queries (a key text in Quakerism). Is there anyone, anywhere, any time (pass the Martini!) who couldn’t benefit from sitting with that idea for a while?
Here I was, arriving from Oxford at Didcot Parkway on the way to a Quaker Enquirers’ course at the splendidly-named Charney Manor. I was emotionally exhausted after the morning’s encounter with lost youth, and physically exhausted after having a run (flatter than Kendal, but muddier also), wandering round town for miles, and lugging a large backpack whose hipbelt, I discovered too late, was no longer operational. And friends, there’s a lot of train stuff at Didcot Parkway. I mean, a LOT. What with that, and (more…)
‘The brief sum of life forbids us the hope of enduring long’ or ‘the shortness of life forbids us long hopes’ —Horace
They are not long, the weeping and the laughter,
Love and desire and hate:
I think they have no portion in us after
We pass the gate.
They are not long, the days of wine and roses:
Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for a while, then closes
Within a dream.
Although this poem is about a great deal more than lost youth, still, the opening of stanza two is what was running round and round in my head while I was in Oxford, and when I contemplated my time there afterwards. For me, the lines chimed with a melancholy note; but I can equally see that there can be some comfort—if perhaps a coolish comfort!—in its reminder that everything passes. I love how that “everything” is so economically and powerfully evoked in the poem’s images: ‘the weeping and the laughter/ Love and desire and hate’, ‘the days of wine and roses’. However this poem hits you—and I think that can vary from moment to moment as well as from person to person—there is a plangent beauty in this brief, apparently-simple poem which makes it one to return to, whatever your current mood.
The Kendal What are Words Worth? group is currently suspended. I’ll keep the page updated as to when we are able to meet again and in the meantime, if you want to be notified when that is, just drop me a note with your contact details.
What Are Words Worth? is a monthly group I facilitate on behalf of the Wordsworth Trust. We’ve been meeting for over three years now and though we know each other well by now, we’re also delighted that new people are still coming along. It’s a big table: there’s plenty of room!
It’s a shared reading group, which takes place on the first Wednesday or first Thursday of the month, alternately. We meet in a cafe and enjoy poetry together. Each month we have a topic, and we bring whatever comes to mind in relation to that topic. We’re a various, warm and friendly bunch who enjoy sharing our love of poetry, our memories, feelings, musings and life-experiences. There’s no pressure to read, to talk, or do anything but be there. But you’ll probably find yourself drawn in…
Among other things so far we’ve looked at colours, weather, beginnings, creatures, mountains, nature, conflict, pictures and images, death, the elements, local poetry, water… We choose the topics together, and there’s never quite enough time to share all the treasures we find.
We meet upstairs at Finkle’s Cafe on Finkle Street in Kendal, from 11-12.30. The dates in our diary for the rest of this year are Wednesday 6th November, Thursday 5th December, Wednesday 8th January, Thursday 6th February ad Wednesday 4th March. If you’d like to ask about it, feel free to email me. Or just turn up. You’ll be very welcome.
You can read a brief excerpt from this poem here; and if you scroll down that page you can find a link to A***** (the badplace™) where you can read the whole thing by clicking on the “look inside” thing about the book (itself called I Praise My Destroyer). It’s on pp. 4-6 of the book.
This poem is such a rich feast of images that I’m not going to attempt any kind of sustained, line-by-line comment; besides, you can see for yourself how it celebrates life in its dazzling variousness and glory. But I do want to say how much I love the way Ackerman treats the bewilderment we can feel, the puzzled, incredulous incapacity we experience, when we try to imagine our own non-existence. I mean, we know it in theory; but actually to realise it, to try to feel it…? Larkin tells us how ‘the mind blanks at the glare’;* here, Ackerman dramatises it, with the repetitions of ‘How can it all end’. And at the same time, the variety of her imagery suggests the wonder of the world, and her profound gratitude for the gift of being alive on ‘the startling Earth/for what seemed]/an endless resurrection of days’
‘Seemed’. That’s the crucial word there. This is a poem written by someone who’s looking mortality in the face and who, despite her struggles to realise it, finds herself more inspired than paralysed (unlike poor Phil…). On the contrary: Ackerman is determined to spend ‘all the coins of sense’. Further: she is ready to praise all of ‘our real estate—a shadow and a grave’. That is to say, she celebrates the life’s opposite, death: how it is a foil to life; how it allows life to shine so brightly in contrast with the impending darkness.
This poems stills and also inspires me. It refuses to let sorrow over the human predicament (the awareness of our own mortality) curdle into bitterness or fear. It’s not a lament but a hymn of praise. By looking death in the face Ackerman only deepens her love of life; and this determination to be as alive as possible, while it’s possible, is what I want to take from contemplating my mortality. Not in a panicked, ticking-things-off-a-bucket-list kind of a way, but in a revelling in the moment—any moment—sort of a way. For, as I read it, anyway, when Ackerman chooses to ‘praise [her] destroyer’, she’s not only praising death for sharpening and giving value and meaning to being alive. She’s also praising life itself, because life is what kills us. We can only die because we have been alive. That’s the deal.
So. ‘Come let us sport us while we may’…
*See ‘Aubade‘.
You can read this poem here.
Last year, while doing the prep. for a session I was running, I had most of the books off the poetry shelves, looking for texts about friendship that weren’t of the saccharine, emetic, vacuous or Inspirational Verse breeds. I wanted a poem that said something about what friendship is about, how it “works”, rather than merely saying what a Good Thing it is. The celebration of friendship in verse seems to be far rarer, though, than the celebration of romantic love. But I did eventually find a few poems I really liked, which I added to this quiet treasure by Jennings. It was a thought-provoking exercise to go through.
Friendship is, most of the time, both undramatic and glorious. It’s essential without (very often!) causing the pulse to race. I think this poem has the same quality of quiet wondrousness which it celebrates in its subject. It’s written in simple rhyming couplets which are neat without being clangingly predictable. Its rhythm is measured and regular without being stodgy, and is lifted by its judicious use of enjambement. Its vocabulary is unfussy but careful, naming clearly the simple but precious qualities it celebrates—’gentleness… understanding… trust… respect… awe’.
I find the use of the word ‘awe’ really interesting. It makes me think of how friendship—like any of the loves—can remind us, every so often, of the utter other-ness of the other party. This is a real person, distinct from us and with their own set of likes and dislikes, habits and experiences and quirks… and yet they choose to share time with us, to give us the precious gift of themselves. That is indeed awesome—in the Bill-and-Ted sense of great, but also in the proper sense of amazing, wonderful, breathtaking.