The Art of Subtraction

Jan Schmuckal

The Art of Subtraction

In the afternoon, in summer,
sitting by the pond, I did the math.
Subtraction was
the next best thing to insight I could manage.
Take away the house, the tree, the bird. Get rid of walls, real or imagined.
Look for less in everything around you.
I became a snail with nothing but my shell
to carry forward. It was not
as bad as maybe you might think.
I pared the dictionary down as well,
saved only nouns like stones along a path,
saved verbs that moved in one direction.
Ancillary parts of speech
seemed pointless and could go to hell.
I'm back this afternoon, in autumn,
sitting where I used to,
trying, once again, to clear my head,
subtract the last things I don't need,
get down to only
what cannot be shaken loose or said.

Jay Parini


"The next best thing to insight." Subtraction as a way to clarify. This is such a paradox, I love it. Sometime in my early twenties I realized that I had been told a lot of lies. For instance: that I could be anything I wanted in life if I put my mind to it and worked hard, that I could “have it all”, that I was full of potential.  All these sounded good, but in truth were ridiculous and unhelpful. For one thing, no, I could not be anything I wanted to be. I couldn’t be a professional basketball player, I didn’t have the skills or ability, and even if I practiced my butt off, it was not going to happen. Some things, no matter how much I wished them or worked for them, were not going to happen. I’m sure there are people who will disagree with me, but the fact is, we cannot be anything we want to be. We are ourselves, we are limited creatures, and to talk as if we’re not is an insult to intelligence. Nor can I have it all. That’s such a vague phrase anyway, it begs for clarification. In my world it is used primarily for women – can they have a career and raise a family – well, many women have and do, but that doesn’t add up to them “having it all” anymore than having a car and a bicycle does. Nobody, woman or man, can have it all. “All” isn’t to be had in that sense. As for the “full of potential” appellation, ha! Potential for what? It means nothing.

Now if someone I knew well and respected had come up to me and said, “Listen, with your personality, skills and resources, you are not going to be able to do such and such, but here’s what’s left on the table, what are you going to make of it?” It would have saved me a lot of time and confusion. If I could have gone down to the pond and sat beside Jay and done my own subtracting earlier on, my way would have been much clearer. It’s the power of negative thinking (like Sandburg wrote about in "Losers"). Take away the illusions, the impossibilities, the things that don’t matter (how much matters? I came up hard against that question several years ago, and let me tell you, it’s a short list.), and what is left?

What “cannot be shaken loose or said”? In the strangest way, our limitations are our very best guides. And having great limitations can be the most profound charge of all, the deepest calling. I don’t say that lightly. It’s not that I need to limit myself; it’s that I am limited. What’s left? And that’s where I begin. Again. Like Jay, I return pondside at different seasons, and subtractsubtractsubtractsubtract, and find that the math broadens and lengthens and multipies within me. How beautiful! Maybe Less is what leads to Only, and then to Yes, and even to All. 
 

Maybe!

Worlds

Unknown

Worlds

Through the pale green forest of tall bracken-stalks,

Whose interwoven fronds, a jade-green sky,

Above me glimmer, infinitely high,

Towards my giant hand a beetle walks

In glistening emerald mail; and as I lie

Watching his progress through huge grassy blades

And over pebble boulders, my own world fades

And shrinks to the vision of a beetle's eye.

Within that forest world of twilight green

Ambushed with unknown perils, one endless day

I travel down the beetle-trail between

Huge glossy boles through green infinity . . .

Till flashes a glimpse of blue sea through the bracken asway,

And my world is again a tumult of windy sea.

Wilfrid Gibson

"Within that forest world of twilight green..."  This is where I say to myself - poems are spells. I could be sitting on a city bus, surrounded by traffic and noise, and all I would have to do is close my eyes and say these words - "Above the pale green forest of tall bracken-stalks..." and there I am. I've conjured a world; I’ve stepped into a separate dimension. I can do this anytime, anywhere. You can't tell me that’s not magic.

 

Yes

Susan Ashworth.

Yes

It could happen any time, tornado,
earthquake, Armageddon. It could happen.
Or sunshine, love, salvation.

It could you know. That's why we wake
and look out – no guarantees
in this life.

But some bonuses, like morning,
like right now, like noon,
like evening.

– William Stafford

The third poem with “yes”. Like the “let” poems, I thought I'd put together a few different sides. “Let” was a fascinating word to see in poetry, so loaded with meaning. “Yes” is too. As a way of approaching the world, in welcome, openness, receptivity, in anticipation of possibilities. Also, the idea of life itself being affirmative, having a positive conclusion, of there being a sense of sustained order underlying everything. William Stafford’s poem feels similar to Jane Kenyon’s "Otherwise" in its awareness of change, that circumstances could be quite different tomorrow, or in a minute, and that this should be an incentive for us to pay attention to what is good, to what is going well, to the "little" things like the beauty of the time of day, the way the light falls, the sounds of people and the hum of activity around us, the whole scope of the earth in it's movement. I like how "yes" is used only once, in the title. It feels like a breath of thanks, as if the speaker took a break from his work, sat down with a cuppa, looked out the window and thought "This is a good moment. Yes. It could have been different."