The Work of the Poet

Donald Maier, "Study in White Enamel"

The Work of the Poet

The work of the poet

is to name what is holy:

the spring snow

that hides unevenness

but also records

a dog walked at lunchtime,

the hieroglyphs of birds,

pawprints of a life

tiny but resolute;

how, like Russian dolls,

we nest in previous selves;

the lustrous itch

that compels an oyster

to forge a pearl,

or a poet a verse;

the drawing on of evening

belted at the waist;

snowfields of diamond dust;

the cozy monotony

of our days, in which

love appears with a holler;

the way a man's body

has its own geography -

cliffs, aqueducts, pumice fields,

but a woman's is the jungle,

hot, steamy, full of song;

the brain's curiosity shop

filled with quaint mementos 

and shadow antiques

hidden away in drawers;

the plain geometry

of you, me, and art -

our angles at rest

among shifting forms.

The work of the poet

is to name what is holy,

and not to mind so much

the pinch of words

to cope with memories

weak as falling buildings, 

or render loss, love,

and the penitentiary

of worry where we live.

The work of the poet

is to name what is holy,

a task fit for eternity,

or the small Eden of this hour.

Diane Ackerman 

Another poem about poetry (like Pablo Neruda's "Poetry"of January 3). Neruda says Poetry summoned him and he had to figure out how to say what wanted to be said. Ackerman here explains what the work is about. She sums it up flatly at first, as if she were filling out a government form, but then can't help herself, and makes a list of examples, throws in a whole lot of metaphors and adjectives with a nice little universal and finishes up with a reference to Eden. I sure hope she put that on her tax form.  "To name what is holy". Of course that means everything. And it's not that naming it makes it holy, it was always so. The holiness of everyday things. (Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote, "Earth's crammed with heaven/And every common bush afire with God/But only he who sees takes off his shoes"... Remember Neruda "deciphering that fire"? There's a theme here.) Maybe that's another way to describe a poet - one who sees. If that's true, on some level we are all poets. If we look around and inside ourselves, we have to acknowledge that we are more than the sum of our parts, that there is an underlying truth that ties all things and times and places together, that there are patterns embedded and encrusted and emblazoned within all things. That phrase “deep calls to deep” comes to mind – it’s hard to explain, but what I think Ackerman on some level is saying is that there are depths beyond the surface, and these speak, and call to each other of beauty and love and fullness. To me, that’s God. And, yes, Eden. The place where we were not divided from each other. The time before we got lost ("Lost", David Wagoner, my last post).