Poetic Discourse

Years ago, when we were in college, Ellen told me about her afternoon working in the daycare center for faculty children. She leaned over to open a kid’s size container of milk and a child, looking up at her jangly Indian earrings exclaimed suddenly and with something akin to awe, “Your earring! It’s like a whole little world in there!”

I’ve carried that anecdote around in my head for over thirty years – not only because it speaks to the particular enthusiasm and insight of children, but because it so aptly describes one of my very favorite forms of writing: poetry. A poem is a world unto itself and, while it certainly draws from life experiences - that did or do or could happen – it unfolds entirely within the confines of the first and last words, shifting and evolving within line breaks and stanzas. The entire universe can reveal itself within a poem – some of its miracles, many of its horrors, and all of its potential.  I can’t think of a quicker way to get to the essence of a thing than through a poem; nor can I conjure a better medium to get lost in, meandering though memories made and imagined, until your life expands through experiences that feel entirely your own. Harold Goddard once wrote that “A poem about fire ought to burn. A poem about a brook ought to flow. A poem about childhood ought not just to tell about children but ought to be like a child itself.” A poem – a good one -  is life itself, compressed, distilled, and immediate in every moment of its reading.

A far cry from a store full of woolen blankets and wooden bowls and embroidered animals, right?

Maybe not.

It is true that most of the things in our store are new, save for a spattering of vintage drawings and paperweights. But the things that fill our homes are not lifeless. Once they become fixtures, they gain sentimentality and, eventually, nostalgia. This is the focus of Jill Pearlman’s Diaspora of Things, a slim book of poetry written in the wake of her mother’s death. It’s no surprise that wading through the physical contents of your life would end up in poetic form – a realm that incorporates past, present, and future in one swift blink. As Jill recounts, “In this wealth and profusion/ we use not a whistling teakettle,/ not an electric kettle,/ but that salvaged, six-inch,/ green stamps pot with Teflon/ on the bottom, a burn mark/ from a red-hot electric stove coil.” All of our years are remembered by the ordinary objects that become more than they initially were and which, in reflection, define the passing of time and the dynamics between people that remain unchanged in that passing. And it reminds us that there is, perhaps, no higher calling than to immortalize the ties that bind us to each other. 

Jill will be at Stewart House on Wednesday, December 3rd at 5:30pm for a reading of her work and we invite you to gather with us as we wander through poetry, through our shared experiences, and through community. We hope, as always, to come out with a broader perspective, an appreciation for the inanimate objects that flood us with life, and a deeper understanding of how special our local and far-reaching neighborhood is.