I’m Megan J. Robinson, and welcome to Creative\\Proofing, a space for hopeful, creative people learning to live wisely by asking questions about the good life: what it is, how to design our own, and how to live it well.
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Too many recent global and personal events in succession have left me with few mental and emotional reserves the last few days. But rather than pass in silence, I want to pick up an invitation lately posed by writer Alan Jacobs, in which he reflects that his own place, his own lane, is:
to focus my attention on praising the praiseworthy and celebrating the good, the true, and the beautiful, because that’s my calling [...].
It is, rather, to invite my readers to join with me in a quest to repair the world — from the inside of us out, as it were. To change hearts; to heal and strengthen the seat of our affections.
This invitation feels like a worthy one to answer. And sometimes, the way I find myself in healing and strengthening my affections is to read some poetry, to attend to what is startling, beautiful, and true. For all that I love poetry, I’m not easily seduced by it, nor do I love many poets. But when I’m caught by a poem or poet, I am caught.
Years ago, I made one of my weekly pilgrimages to Border’s Books (a moment of silence for a late, lamented friend). I remember browsing the shelves of poetry, checking out different collections, meandering the stacks. Then I picked up this slim, pale blue hardcover, intrigued by the Celtic knot-work tracing the jacket. I opened it to the first page, read the poem, closed the book, and went up to the register to purchase as fast as I could swipe my card. I’m lucky that I loved the rest of the poems in the collection, but it honestly wouldn’t have mattered. That single poem was worth it.
I had a similar reaction to another poem more recently, encountering it in a retrospective essay of the poet’s work. The essay itself opened up the depth behind the spare, hard words of the poet and his poems, and made me curious to read more. I bought a collection of the first fifty years of his work. I’m still working my way through that one.
I love how both poems capture the sense of the human mind as a bird — untamed, untethered, instinctively collecting and alighting in ways that make sense only to itself. Both poets — O’Donohue and Thomas — also served in Irish and Welsh priestly vocations, attending to the transcendent within the immediate, and to the immediate needs that call for something deeper to hold them with meaning.
May these poems be an invitation to the oblique patience, attentiveness, and wildness of your own life.
Off course from the frail music sought by the words And the path that always claims the journey, In the pursuit of a more oblique rhythm, Creating mostly its own geography, The mind is an old crow Who knows only to gather dead twigs, Then take them back to the vacancy Between the branches of the parent tree And entwine them around the emptiness With silence and unfailing patience Until what was fallen, withered and lost Is now set to the fill with dreams as a nest.
John O’Donohue, “Thought-Work” from Conamara Blues
My garden is the wild Sea of the grass. Her garden Shelters between walls. The tide could break in; I should be sorry for this. There is peace there of a kind, Though not the deep peace Of wild places. Her care For green life has enabled The weak things to grow. Despite my first love, I take sometimes her hand, Following straight paths Between flowers, the nostril Clogged with their thick scent. The old softness of lawns Persuading the slow foot Leads to defection; the silence Holds with its gloved hand The wild hawk of the mind. But not for long, windows, Opening in the trees Call the mind back To its true eyrie; I stoop Here only in play.
Let’s be hopeful, creative, and wise — together.
Shalom,
Megan.
