The Heart Convulsive Learns

There's a Put A Poem In Your Pocket Day Movement. And there's a book by that name too (that link will lead you to the book at BetterWorldBooks.com). I can imagine librarians arguing about whether or not to stock this book. When you open the cover you find a pad filled with 200 poems meant to be peeled out of the book. I almost bought the book last night but then decided to carry it home in my head and heart instead of in my shopping bag.

The part I enjoyed reading the most in the bookstore was the introduction by Poet Laureate Kay Ryan. She writes how we walk around carrying money. And we know that a certain amount of money can get us a certain amount of stuff. We buy things to fill up holes inside ourselves, but soon after we buy a material thing we feel an emptiness that tells us to try buying another item. She goes on to say, “A poem in your pocket is different. The whole way it works is different. In a way, you can’t spend a poem even if you want to. As opposed to money–which seems intent upon getting out of your pocket as though it were a feral animal – a poem settles in. When I say ‘pocket’ here, I mean ‘mind.’ A poem settles into your mind…You don’t ever have to spend your poem to get the good from it – and by ’spend’ I mean ’share’ it. And actually, I recommend hoarding it, at least for some time, perhaps forever.

She then addresses the idea that poems connect us to others which she sees as an over-simplification. She speaks about how poems help us with our eternal sense (at least that's what I took from her words). She concedes that "on some level poems can, of course, do good works and bind us together.” There's something paradoxical, almost magical about poetry, because poems "leave you in the fullest possible possession of your self while simultaneously providing the intimate escape from self."

One of the poems that stayed with me is this one by Emily Dickinson which was not familiar to me and reminds me of the T.S. Elliot line that poems are felt before they are understood.

The Heart has narrow Banks

It measures like the Sea

In mighty - unremitting Bass

And Blue Monotony

u

Till Hurricane bisect

And as itself discerns

Its insufficient Area

The Heart convulsive learns

y

That Calm is but a Wall

Of unattempted Gauze

An instant's Push demolishes

A Questioning - dissolves.