because i asked, myself
you should too. and always.
you may ask yourself you may ask yourself why this poem needed to come into existence. and that would be the right question to ask. there is nothing of grandeur here, no yearning or lamentation. no joy or sadness at least as far as i can discern in this moment— but maybe in another. i had no clear message to convey or intention for using up some of life’s time in order to stir a longing in others or prompt some unpredictable action. but sometimes the poem still needs to be written. and then it comes. this one came today. i guess you could say this poem exists because i wanted to spend a moment or two with you. you wouldn’t be wrong. not stolen moments, just time, which some say is our most precious currency. i believe they are correct so i’ve chosen to never waste mine and i refuse to steal yours. look, then, at where we are. we’re both here, now, in this space communing over these exact same words— me for my reason, you for yours, even if we both have yet undefined edges. the poem needs no other reason for existence than to unite for a time two souls in search of something. perhaps each other.
Reflection:
I haven’t ever added my own reflections when I’ve posted any of my own poetry, choosing instead to simply let them be by themselves out here in the ether of Substack World. Choosing instead to honor the intelligence of any reader to read into them what they needed to read. (Heck, it was hard enough to share my poetry to begin with—poetry being among the most vulnerable of writing, when done with sincerity.) Ultimately, no matter whatever additional words get added by a poet to “explain away” the words, this is what good poetry does (not that mine is, mind you—“good” in any sense of the word, it’s just mine): the best poetry allows the reader to find themselves, or parts of themselves, hidden within the poem’s depths. Same with great fiction, though I don’t read a lot of fiction.
Lately I’ve been reading some poets here on Substack and they’ve been offering their own thoughts on their poetry—and I’ve found that interesting. Interesting for the opportunity it provides to “look into” the mind of the poet to learn what they were thinking when they wrote the thing (which is sometimes very different from what the words themselves convey); but also interesting when my interpretation of the poem is vastly different from the poet’s. When that has happened, I’ve asked “So who’s right?”
I think a poet worth their salt would answer: “Yes.”
✒️🪶✏️🖋
“you may ask yourself”
In my past, as I became a more adept reader, I had heard from more than a few writers how sometimes they found it hard to describe where words, or poems, come from. Many consistently shared that “I just sat down and the thing wrote itself—all I was doing was trying to stay out of the way.” I didn’t understand how this could happen until it started happening to me. I still don’t understand how it happens, but I don’t question it—because I think I do have an answer for it, and my answer is very personal (though perhaps shared in every poem I’ve written).
“you may ask yourself” was one of those poems for me.
Poetry, for me, is intimate—I think everything depends upon relationship, no matter the thing. But, especially poetry. When I read a poem, it does feel to me that in that moment of approach, of arrival, and of meeting, that it is just the poet and me communing together, spending some brief, shared moments in relationship—I often feel as if the poet wrote the poem just for me, no matter who the poet was: Walt Whitman, Robert Frost, Maya Angelou, Mary Oliver, David Whyte, Emily Dickinson, Wendell Berry, Joy Harjo, Homer, Jane Hirshfield…even Bill Shakespeare himself. Each wrote their poetry just for me—no matter when they wrote it, or where. I think each poet would agree—even when we come at the thing from two different places, and leave the thing still in two different places. “The poem,” I’m sure each would say, “is yours now. Do with it what you will.”
Once the poem is released into the world, it is solely the reader’s prerogative to make sense of it. It no longer matters, really, what the poet thinks about it. What matters is always how the reader relates to the thing—how the words are taken in, consumed, honored, incorporated into the very marrow of the reader’s bones, then lived back out into the world. Any poet would be lucky if that were the case, that others “lived back out into the world” even a single line, let alone an entire poem, of theirs.
I think everyone whose eyes land upon poetry needs to ask themselves “why this poem needed to be written.” Afterall, if you are reading it, it was written for you, for some reason. It’s your prerogative to discover why—and maybe your obligation. The poem, as I’ve found, will always have an answer, but the question has to be asked with sincerity. For me, as a writer of poetry, in that moment of reading, if I am lucky enough to count you as a reader (even briefly, even casually), then I get filled with gratitude knowing our souls have found each other upon the words that arrived through me from some unknown, maybe unknowable, place.
And in that moment, we created relationship. Maybe that truly is the only reason a poem needs for its existence.
But, still, always ask why.
A personal aside—sorta like a pre-postscript:
It took me quite a long time to call myself a poet—thinking how arrogant it is to call myself that amidst all the world’s truly great. But then I realized something—a deeper Truth that was an “ah ha” moment for me, absolving me of any and all anxious guilt and arrogance: we are all poets.
We, each, are poets—it’s just a rare few who take the time to write down the words. Nevertheless, we each, you (even YOU!), inscribe onto the world the poetry you live by simply the living of your life. Walt Whitman would agree and he wrote a poem JUST for you (included below) to convince you of this. Well, ALL his poetry was just for you, to convince you, us, of the same—each of us being fellow leaves of grass amidst the lawn and landscape of our common humanity.
[Now fully convinced of this Truism, I’ve realized some of the most powerful poets in my life have been some of the children I was privileged to call my students, some as young four years old and way before they could even hold a pencil in a dynamic tripod grip. And don’t get me started on the three poets we gave birth to!]
In case you are wondering: yes!, your poetry is magnificent too. As your privileged reader, it’s my prerogative to believe this true—even if we’ve never met. And that will always be my prerogative. You see, we’re right here now, in relationship. Words brought us together; living life has brought us together—same things. (I wonder, now understanding that you are the poet of your own life, if the poem above reads differently for you?)
So please, continue on. The world needs the poetry that flows through you even if you cannot be sure from where it comes, even if you never put a word of it on paper. It will always be the case that the living of it, of your poetry, will be what matters most (please don’t die with your poetry still in you; and never take it for granted). Besides, usually, it comes from a place of somber and poignant beauty.
And the world always needs more beauty.
Always and Ubuntu,
~ k
🙏🏼
As Professor Keating, aka “Oh Captain, My Captain,” would ask at this moment:
“What will YOUR verse be?”
BTW: if you have to ask who Prof. Keating is, I’m sorry. You’re kinda missing out.
There's a Zen saying: Not knowing is most intimate. Thank you for opening up your not knowing to us, Kert. Beautiful.