Poetry Will Save Your Life

by Jill Bialosky

  Years later, when my son is small and he and I build his first snowman together, I think of all those snow-filled winters with my sisters, when we stayed outside for hours, licking the rusty taste of snow from our mittens, and of course, of this poem. The poem unites us. We are all essentially alone, and yet also part of a larger humanity. An idea no better stated then in those last paradoxical and haunting lines:

  For the listener, who listens in the snow,

  And, nothing himself, beholds

  Nothing that that is not there and the nothing that is.

  DEATH

  STOPPING BY WOODS ON A SNOWY EVENING

  Robert Frost

  As a young child I fail to make the connection that individuals composed nursery rhymes, songs, poems, and stories, some of which I knew by heart. In my own fantasy, I imagine that poems, songs, and stories came out of the mouth of God. When I discover that an actual person took pen to paper, and through invention and imagination created a work of art, I wonder: Could I do that too? In sixth grade, writing in those blue books our teachers give us to take our written exams, I attempt my first novel, a story about a girl running away from home. It is here I learn a lesson of a lifetime. Stories are born from desires we are too afraid to act out in real life.

  In my fourth grade classroom, along with memorizing “The Road Not Taken,” we study other poems by Robert Frost: “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” “Birches,” and “After Apple Picking.” Through Frost’s poetry, I am privy to the tough pulse of another being’s consciousness. I enjoy how each poem tells a micro-story. In “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” I relate to the eerie quiet of a winter night as the narrator stops his sleigh to watch the snow falling in the woods. In “Birches,” my spirit rises to the tops of those trees. I am at one with the splendor of the boy “whose only play was what he found himself,” bending the birch’s limbs.

  I’m enchanted by trees and their humanlike qualities and am seduced by the meditative mood of the poem and its plaintive storytelling. Miss Hudson tells us about Robert Frost’s life and that he had read a poem for President John F. Kennedy’s inauguration in 1961. I love listening to his impassioned speeches on our black-and-white television set with its rabbit-ear antenna. After Kennedy was shot and killed, I, a girl of six, sat in our den with my mother and sisters, watching his funeral procession, my mother in tears. It was the first time I witnessed a funeral procession and I forever associated it with my own father’s early death. Throughout the day, the pierce of our private and communal loss resided in the dark and drafty den of our house. Sid Davis of Westinghouse Broadcasting reported the arrival of President John F. Kennedy’s casket to the White House on the morning of November 23, 1963. Robert Frost was one of the president’s favorite poets, and Davis ended his report of the presidential funeral with a fitting passage from “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” as the poem suggests the tragic premature end to a great man who certainly had “miles to go” before the eternal sleep of death.

  STOPPING BY WOODS ON A SNOWY EVENING

  Robert Frost (1874–1963)

  Whose woods these are I think I know.

  His house is in the village though;

  He will not see me stopping here

  To watch his woods fill up with snow.

  My little horse must think it queer

  To stop without a farmhouse near

  Between the woods and frozen lake

  The darkest evening of the year.

  He gives his harness bells a shake

  To ask if there is some mistake.

  The only other sound’s the sweep

  Of easy wind and downy flake.

  The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

  But I have promises to keep,

  And miles to go before I sleep,

  And miles to go before I sleep.

  * * *

  “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” was the first poem my son memorized when he was a young boy. We read it together before bedtime from a beautifully illustrated children’s book. He wrote a poem of his own mimicking its rhythms he called “The Children of Riverside.” Frost believed a poet didn’t have to suffer while writing a poem. He enjoyed its theatrical nature. “So many talk, I wonder how falsely, about what it costs them, what agony it is to write. I’ve often been quoted: ‘No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader.’ But another distinction I made is: however sad, no grievance, grief without grievance. How could I, how could anyone have a good time with what cost me too much agony, how could they? What do I want to communicate but what a hell of a good time I had writing it? The whole thing is performance and prowess and feats of association.”

  The easy cadences in the poem are reminiscent of nursery rhymes, and its end rhymes give the poem its musical quality. Each stanza is made up of four lines, each line iambic (a poetic term that describes the particular rhythm that the words establish in that line), with four stressed syllables. Within each stanza, the first, second, and fourth lines rhyme. The third line does not rhyme, but the end word sets up the rhyme for the following stanza. The rhymes make the poem easy to memorize. On the surface, the poem is seductively simple. The speaker stops by the woods on a snowy evening. He is taken in by the scenery, wants to stay, but other obligations force him to move on as he also becomes aware of how many more miles he must travel before reaching his destination. “The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,” tells us that there is more going on in the poem than a man traveling from one destination to another. The poem invites us to ponder death and to think of how much time we have left and how we might experience that time. We can experience the poem on its surface, charms alone, or travel deeper as if through layers of snow, and find other meanings in it, including some uniquely our own. Robert Frost wrote, “Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.”

  POETRY

  ARS POETICA?

  Czesław Miłosz

  I try to be a good child. I do my homework. I struggle not to fight with my sisters. I help my mother. On her birthday, I enlist my sisters’ assistance and together we take out the mop and vacuum cleaner, scrub the kitchen counters, fluff the pillows on the sofa, and clean the entire house until the floors and countertops sparkle. And when my mother comes down the stairs, Queen of the Night, she gasps in delight and surprise. When I am fourteen, I babysit for pocket money. I babysit for the little deaf girl who lives down our block, for the twin boys two blocks over, for the baby next door. After I read my charges their stories, give them their cookies and milk, and tuck them into bed, I turn on the TV or talk to one of my girlfriends on the phone. Sometimes the night seems to go on forever. Restless, I raid the fridge and roam the house. I run my fingers along spines of books on the shelves in the library. Flip through magazines. Open closets just to peek, wander into master bedrooms. One night I find myself in the en suite bathroom—the size of my bedroom at home—belonging to one of the more glamorous mothers in the neighborhood. On top of the vanity sits a tray filled with her powders, lotions, lipstick tubes, and perfumes. I look at my unpleasant face in the mirror, and on a lark, try on a pink lipstick. I hear the car pull up the driveway and quickly slip the tube into my jean’s pocket, wipe my lips with a Kleenex, and fly down the stairs before the front-door lock turns. After I am paid and sent on my way, I feel the stolen lipstick tube practically burning a hole in my jeans’ pocket. For nights I stay up, unable to sleep. Who am I? I feel so ashamed. It’s as if I am two people, and more than I know of myself. When I am called back to babysit the following Saturday—my heart beating—I bring the lipstick with me and return it to the tray on the vanity where I found it, but still I am haunted by the way in which my desires fly out without my will to control them. This poem, about the nature of poetry and more, recalls that time, and that contract I broke with myself that filled me with shame.

  ARS POETICA?

  Czesław Miłosz (1911–2004)

  Translated by
Czesław Miłosz and Lillian Vallee

  I have always aspired to a more spacious form

  that would be free from the claims of poetry or prose

  and would let us understand each other without exposing

  the author or reader to sublime agonies.

  In the very essence of poetry there is something indecent:

  a thing is brought forth which we didn’t know we had in us,

  so we blink our eyes, as if a tiger had sprung out

  and stood in the light, lashing his tail.

  That’s why poetry is rightly said to be dictated by a daimonion,

  though it’s an exaggeration to maintain that he must be an angel.

  It’s hard to guess where that pride of poets comes from,

  when so often they’re put to shame by the disclosure of their frailty.

  What reasonable man would like to be a city of demons,

  who behave as if they were at home, speak in many tongues,

  and who, not satisfied with stealing his lips or hand,

  work at changing his destiny for their convenience?

  It’s true that what is morbid is highly valued today,

  and so you may think that I am only joking

  or that I’ve devised just one more means

  of praising Art with the help of irony.

  There was a time when only wise books were read,

  helping us to bear our pain and misery.

  This, after all, is not quite the same

  as leafing through a thousand works fresh from psychiatric clinics.

  And yet the world is different from what it seems to be

  and we are other than how we see ourselves in our ravings.

  People therefore preserve silent integrity,

  thus earning the respect of their relatives and neighbors.

  The purpose of poetry is to remind us

  how difficult it is to remain just one person,

  for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors,

  and invisible guests come in and out at will.

  What I’m saying here is not, I agree, poetry,

  as poems should be written rarely and reluctantly,

  under unbearable duress and only with the hope

  that good spirits, not evil ones, choose us for their instrument.

  * * *

  “Ars Poetica,” a term that means the art of poetry or on the art of poetry, is derived from Horace’s “Ars Poetica,” one of the first known treatises on poetry, written between 20 and 13 B.C.E. Horace’s poem sketches what he understood as the principles of poetry, which include art, decorum, sincerity, and purpose. In Miłosz’s “Ars Poetica?”—a title ending with a question mark—he calls into question the original principles of an “Ars Poetica” by establishing that it should push past the boundaries between prose and poetry. He advocates for a poetry that sets out to discover what is indecent in us. Through exposing indecency—the unsayable—a transaction is offered to the reader. We only know it when, like “a tiger sprung out,” it lashes its tail and frightens us to attention. The first time I read “Ars Poetica?” I am reminded of the shameful incident in which my own sense of morality was tested. Essential poems expose what we are afraid of most, even what we find indecent in ourselves. And when we read such a poem, we are reminded of our own indecency.

  When Czesław Miłosz was asked what kind of philosophy he finds appropriate for his poetry, he replied: “There are some kinds of philosophy that remind me of the circumstance of driving at night and having a hare jump in front of the lights. The hare doesn’t know how to get out of the beam of light, he runs straight ahead. I am interested in the kind of philosophy that would be useful to the hare in that instance.” In other words, he strove philosophically to write poems immediate and potent enough to save the hare.

  Emily Dickinson famously said in regard to her own definition of poetry: “If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?”

  FAMILY

  JANUARY 1, 1965

  Joseph Brodsky

  CHILDHOOD

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Old-world traits such as modesty, fear of standing out, insecurity, and distrust are part of my inheritance from my mother’s ancestors, who grew up in Eastern Europe and immigrated to America. After World War I and the mass exodus of emigration, the children of immigrants in Cleveland, like in other cities in America, eventually moved up into the middle class, creating new institutions—synagogue centers, progressive Hebrew schools, Jewish community centers—attempting to assimilate and Americanize while at home there still lingered a feeling of difference. My great aunts and grandparents referred to anyone who wasn’t Jewish as a Gentile. You were one or the other. There was a hierarchy among Jewish immigrant families. Men worked in the garment districts, or as tailors or peddlers; my paternal grandfather opened a pawn shop, my mother’s father worked as a bank teller; women prepared the meals and took care of the children; and children were coddled. Fear lurked over our shoulders. Fear that history would repeat itself and all our ancestors had built, if they were not cautious, would be taken away.

  I too am raised in this atmosphere of stuffy seclusion and distrust. All the rooms in my grandfather’s house, where we go every Friday night for Shabbat, seem too small. There are doilies on the cherry wood tables that slip off if I lean on them. Prayer books, antique clocks, and tchotchkes from the old country don the shelves, mantles, and walls. I’m afraid I’ll break something if I’m not careful. Sometimes around my relatives I can’t breathe. My maternal great aunts are protective of us. They worry in the winter when we come to see them that we are not dressed warmly enough. They worry about the crosswalk across the street from our school and whether we’ll get run down if we don’t carefully look both ways. They think we are too thin or too plump. Protectiveness breeds fear and distrust. Being raised without a father perpetuates this fear. There is always the sense that instability and ruin are right around the corner. I am aware that being Jewish makes me different and am grateful that my face is not marked by typical Jewish features: big nose and kinky hair.

  Once on Passover, I notice an extra place set at the table and a goblet of wine later poured, though no one drank it. At first I think that it is for a guest who has not arrived and then I think to myself maybe my father hasn’t died at all, maybe it has all been a terrible lie or a trick and this cup of wine is for him and soon he will be home. My imagination runs wild. Later, in Hebrew school, I learn that the common tradition at a Seder is to have an empty cup for the prophet Elijah, which, at the end of the Seder, is filled with wine. During the Passover Seder we recount in the Haggadah the redemption of the Jews from Egypt and also express our hope for future redemption with the coming of the Messiah. The tradition is that Elijah the prophet, in his eventual coming, will be the one to announce the coming of the Messiah. No matter. In my mind, my father has become my own Jewish prophet. One day he will come. I am sure of it.

  At the table we listen to the grown-ups talk while feeling squirrely in our creaky, wooden fold-up chairs, overheated from the cooking of brisket and potatoes that hangs heavy in the air. One uncle talks about a friend who was overlooked for a promotion because he was Jewish. My aunt won’t serve the challah because my grandfather bought it at the grocery store instead of the Jewish bakery. “Is he Jewish?” another aunt prods my mother when she speaks about someone new she is dating. For my thirteenth birthday, I am given a gold Jewish star necklace as a present but I’m afraid to wear it outside my shirt. I don’t quite understand the obsession with being Jewish. It seems to be a blessing and a curse.

  At school, I don’t like being the object of other people’s attention. I don’t know how to talk to adults. I bury my head in my books and rarely raise my hand or speak unless I am called on. In this way, I learn h
ow easy and more comfortable it is to slip below the radar of authority. I don’t trust teachers or adults in general. If a teacher speaks to me or gives me attention, no matter how kind, I read pity in her eyes. Pity to have lost a father, pity to have to write a card to her grandfather instead of her father for Father’s Day. Pity morphs into a lack of trust. If a teacher praises an essay or paper I write, I can’t take in the praise, and instead tell myself he or she just feels sorry for me. It’s not a great way of being, but I don’t know how to be anyone else. Why am I this way? Why this fear of stepping out? Of being known? This fear of happiness? Like many girls my age, I eventually read The Diary of Anne Frank and her story makes my blood run cold. I think how lucky she is to have been in seclusion, not just with her family but with Peter’s family, and I am eager to skip to the parts in the diary where I anticipate Anne and Peter will have their first kiss. But, mostly, each page I turn leaves me with a pit in my stomach. Will this legacy of fear and hiding repeat itself?

  JANUARY 1, 1965

  Joseph Brodsky (1940–1996)

  The kings will lose your old address.

  No star will flare up to impress.

  The ear may yield, under duress,

  to blizzards’ nagging roar.

  The shadows falling off your back,

  you’d snuff the candle, hit the sack,

  for calendars more nights can pack

  than there are candles for.

  What is this? Sadness? Yes, perhaps.

  A little tune that never stops.

  One knows by heart its downs and ups.

  May it be played on par

  with things to come, with one’s eclipse,

  as gratefulness of eyes and lips