Please forgive me while I clear my throat…
petulant petals pity party
Are we in purgatory?
I met with my besties on Zoom yesterday. Friends of many years, some living at significant distances. They’re listless, unfocused, cranky. Our world has shrunk again. O M I C R O N. It sounds like the plague.
Did we make time to look back at 2021, forgive ourselves, let it go? This is how the social media gurus are talking. Instead of adding new goals or wants to the new year, they’re telling us to cut back, make space for what nurtures you. Start with small things. Flirt with a stranger. Make a new friend. We are, after all, in year 3 of the pandemic.
I did allow myself a pat on the back for things I did in 2021 that I’m happy about. My blog posts are on that short list—the ones I labored to get just right. And now I’m totally flummoxed.
This morning I stayed in bed for a while glued to Sarah Ruhl’s book Smile: The Story of a Face.
Sarah Ruhl buoys me up with hope. She is a poet and a playwright of many successes. And it’s her mind and sensibility and courage and view of the world that thrill me. I was introduced to her when I noticed the book 100 Essays I don’t have time to write – on Umbrellas and Sword Fights, Parades and Dogs, Fire Alarms, Children, and Theater. Then I read her Letters from Max, with Max Ritvo that she wrote with one of her theatre students at Yale when he was dying of a pediatric cancer, and her book of poems, 44 Poems For You, and now this, a memoir about living with chaos and love. It’s who she is that inspires me and how deeply and broadly she ruminates on life and is engaged with life.
Back to me and my current sweet, quiet life.
by MM Baraf
I’ve been chipping away at poetry, all of last year, and the year before, trying to gain some understanding. I’ve developed enough familiarity to understand the conversation. Maybe 4 or 5 poems this year that I was proud of and lots of experiments. Here’s a little fun from me to you.
I’m nervous again about going for a haircut, but I must. Do you remember my shapely poem The Salon on Pondfield? I’ll go armed again with my pencil and maybe I will write an omicron variant poem.
I’ve been thinking about shape. How couples and families have a kind of shape. Our sons and friends trying to cope with life issues, peers and work, children and boundaries, illness and love. The struggles give families a touchable form.. For me and D in our long good life and suddenly quiet days, we have lost some of the sharp angles. Is this a worry or a blessing?
A resolution (uh oh) for this year for me may be to slip on new sturdy boots. To extend myself beyond myself. To engage with strangers in some public way. Sweat a little, girl.
People who are different and complicated intrigue me, like my French friend’s violinist daughter who lives and plays the fiddle in the Hungarian countryside. While visiting in California I listened to the Korean half of a long married couple who met when neither spoke each other’s language. Soon I’ll let you in on the inside of this true-love story. We are all hybrids, especially in this American land of immigrants. My neighbors across the fence, by the way. He is Armenian and makes delicious baklava. She is Irish and has that wonderful wry humor that my Irish friend Jacqueline also has who is married to a Jewish man from the Bronx.
I will continue to amplify the voices of Latinas and Latinos in Soy/Somos conversations. I am currently seeking artists and poets.
Four books authored by Sarah Ruhl.
Does simple joy make a poem? Yes, it can.
I chose a poem to leave you with. The sun changed colors. Three short lines, written by Marjorie Agosín a Chilean American poet. I have also loved her unclassifiable book, Cartographies: Meditations on Travel.
And today, to honor Dr. King, here’s “I, too” by Langston Hughes, published in 1945.
The most beautiful collection of poems I read this year is Loving A Woman in Two Worlds by the American Poet, Robert Bly, who died last year. I’d never read his poems and will not stop at these. They feel like mystery and dreams but rely on concrete things to bring us in, as most poetry does.
May the New Year bring you joy, wisdom and courage. May 2022 be a better year in the world.
Let me know you are here. What are you planning—or hoping for—in 2022?
If you want to look back at what we were thinking as 2021 opened, see Where do We Go from Here and our mood on the day of Biden’s swearing in when we seemed to return to a kind of normalcy. Where are we now?