good morning Hank it's Tuesday so
there's this Marianne Moore poem called
poetry which begins I too dislike it
there are things that are important
beyond all this fiddle which is more or
less how I felt about poetry for much of
my life partly because it seemed a
little dead in the sense that like all
the poet's I could name were in fact
dead so there didn't seem to be like a
present tense to poetry but also I never
felt smart enough to get poetry like I
thought to read a poem well you had to
be able to know that the wolf howling in
the distance represented the poet's dead
father or whatever and that if you could
figure that out you were good at reading
poems and if you couldn't you were bad
at reading them in which case I was bad
so I mostly quit reading poems and tried
instead to focus on the things that were
important beyond all that fiddle but it
turns out I love poetry as Marianne
Moore puts it later in that poem one
discovers in it after all a place for
the genuine and I am desperate to
discover places for the genuine and I'm
also desperate for language that will
help me understand the weird and
overwhelming worlds I encounter within
and without and that's what poetry does
for me so much of my experience in the
world is just like resistant to language
which makes it hard for me to understand
like I find it very difficult to
describe my anxiety until I read a page
Lewis poem in which they write I feel as
if I'm on the moon listening to the air
hiss out of my spacesuit and I can't
find the RIP I'm the vice president of
panic and the president is missing and I
find it hard to understand and describe
how in a bout with depression it feels
like reality is falling out from beneath
me until I read Emily Dickinson right
and then a plank in reason broke and I
dropped down and down and hit a world at
every plunge and I also need poetry
because it helps me imagine other people
and their experiences more complexly so
working with the affer mentioned Paige
Lewis we've started a new YouTube
channel in collaboration with the Poetry
Foundation called ours Poetica it
features a poem read to you every Monday
Wednesday and Friday the readers might
be poets like Paige Lewis or non poets
like shailene woodley I think there are
a lot of people out there who love
poetry but just don't yet know that they
love poetry and this channel is for you
like you might think you don't like
poetry but listen to
this poem by who Leon Randall from
yesterday's episode my name is Leon
Randall and I'll be reading my poem on
the night I consider coming out to my
parents which I wrote in the aftermath
of the pulse shooting on the night I
consider coming out to my parents I am
afraid of something I am but have never
named my tongue is a refuge for secrets
how does one still fear banishment if
they were born in exile there's blood on
the ground no time remains so I'll lay
it flat I am black and Dominican and
bisexual there if I die now you'll have
a hint for which God to petition
sometimes I look at a man and my hands
are already digging into the small
country of his back in this way the body
is a distraction from what can make the
body just a memory my lips could bring a
man's blood to the surface my mother
raised a curse and gave it her face I am
afraid to belong to another thing to
become still more no man's land I am a
trench nobody comes to clear the dead
somewhere my mother is gripping a rosary
to pray for men who look like me
somewhere my mother is praying for me I
do not want to give her something else
to worry about I am quiet I bury no one
blood is drying beneath my nails I do
not know which me it belongs to I just
love that poem thank you - who Leon and
everyone who has participated in ARS
Poetica
I hope you'll check it out at the link
in the dooblydoo below and subscribe and
that you will find in it as I have a
place for the genuine Hank I'll see you
on Friday