6 March 2021
Victoria, BC
Dear Poemgranates,
The day before Valentine’s, or the day before that, when it snowed and time got lost in the snow, I happened upon a poem by Mahmoud Darwish that I hadn’t read before. Fady Joudah’s translation of “In Her Absence, I Created Her Image” encourages faltering February hope, the soft recklessness of a planet revolving around an unreal but burning thing: “[A]s if I were a ghost sneaking in from Yabous, telling myself: / Let’s go to the seven hills. Then I placed / my mask on a stone, and walked as the sleepless / walk, led by my dream.” These are the kind of lines you read, weep, and go buy yourself some Heart-Shaped Victoria Cream Chocolates from Rogers’.
At what point do poems gather an occasion for themselves? At what refrain does Valzhyna Mort’s “An Attempt At Genealogy” gather the missing and the dates of gaps into a monumental event of longing? One of the reviews printed on the back of Music For The Dead And Resurrected says “Her memory is incurable.” But after listening to Valzhyna Mort speak at the Poetry Society lecture, I think it is not so much a case of incurable memory. It is her poetic attention to the gap-ridden time that transforms all that never was into an occasion that lasts.
I have become familiar with gap-ridden time. But I am yet to learn how to make monuments for it. In conversation with The Yale Review, Jericho Brown spoke about questions and poems. Asking questions of your drafts or your drafts asking questions of you. And the question of occasion. What is the occasion of this poem? I think of Lucille Clifton’s “Study the Masters” and how it locates poetic occasion. After the reading, I asked Jericho Brown how to address gaps in a poetic lineage.
Perhaps my question was hiding more questions. How to build monuments for these gaps? How do I recognize a poet I descended from? How, without that poet, will I understand my poetic occasion? But he must have understood the anxiety behind what I gathered into a coherent sentence at the Q&A because he emphasised the gravity of community. He said, go to where the poets are.
So here I am. Speaking of poetry before you. With a shovel to shovel snow into my little corner to build my little snow-fort in the fleeting and evasive snow of Victoria. Write to me and keep me warm.
Ever yours,
ALHS
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