Talking About Unsaid

This poem by Dana Gioia strikes me as remarkable. I told him that when I saw him at a small reading in 2002. He kindly inscribed my book with "for Neil Fleischmann with best wishes said and unsaid." If you search his name you'll learn that he is a big shot poet, author, politician. But to me he's a very good man who "gets it."

Over Pesach there was a group of interns who were offered room and board, a bit of pay, and some Jewish learning and environmentalism in exchange for some work. I did a session with them on Poetry of the Soul. I hadn't thought of this poem at the time, just rediscovered it "randomly" now. But the power of poetry emerged at that sitting. And this would have fit with the general theme.

One girl started crying because poetry evoked strong memories and feelings for her. It was quite a class. I gave out a booklet. If anyone wants to google some of them, they were: Otherwise, by Kenyon, Rain by Carver, Did I Miss Anything, by Wayman, a poem on poverty by Rabbi Abrasham Ibn Ezra, a poem on faith by Rabbi Samuel Adelman, my poems Natures Call, A Response to Nature's Call, and I Wonder.

The following poem fits with a thought that often fills my head. Some differ, but this much I know is true (that's a quote from somewhere, can't remember where.)

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Unsaid

So much of what we live goes on inside–
The diaries of grief, the tongue-tied aches
Of unacknowledged love are no less real
For having passed unsaid. What we conceal
Is always more than what we dare confide.
Think of the letters that we write our dead.