Y’all it is HOT here. So hot that it’s hard to open the compound gate because the metal is too hot to touch. So hot that the “cold” water tap is running hot water. So hot that if I am walking outside and someone wants me to stop and talk with them, I insist we walk to the nearest shade first so that my skin doesn’t bubble off my bones. That kind of hot.
So, I have been inside much of today, trying to stand or sit as close as possible to the nearest air conditioner, which is usually spitting and sputtering with all its energy trying to keep up with the afternoon’s progression from really, really hot to cannot-even-process-how-hot-this-is hot.
While on my computer below one these air conditioners tonight, I saw in the New York Times that Adrienne Rich died on Tuesday. She lived a good, long life full of beautiful writing and razor sharp insights into her society. She was the first poet I ever truly loved and I still feel my heart quicken and eyes water when I read her words. I would not be exaggerating to say that her book of essays Blood, Bread and Poetry and book of poems Diving into the Wreck changed my life. She had a gift, or two gifts really, one for the rich sound of words and one of impatience for all of us to move on from the systems of oppression that have defined us.
As she said, I “believe that words can help us move or keep us paralyzed, and that our choices of language and verbal tone have something—a great deal—to do with how we live our lives and whom we end up speaking with and hearing; and that we can deflect words, by trivialization, of course, but also by ritualized respect, or we can let them enter our souls and mix with the juices of our minds.”
–Adrienne Rich, Blood, Bread and Poetry
YES. In memory of Adrienne Rich, I offer one of my very favorite poems.
Trying to talk with a man
By Adrienne Rich
Out in this desert we are testing bombs,
that's why we came here.
Sometimes I feel an underground river
forcing its way between deformed cliffs
an acute angle of understanding
moving itself like a locus of the sun
into this condemned scenery.
What we’ve had to give up to get here –
whole LP collections, films we starred in
playing in the neighborhoods, bakery windows
full of dry, chocolate-filled Jewish cookies,
the language of love-letters, of suicide notes,
afternoons on the riverbank
pretending to be children
Coming out to this desert
we meant to change the face of
driving among dull green succulents
walking at noon in the ghost town
surrounded by a silence
that sounds like the silence of the place
except that it came with us
and is familiar
and everything we were saying until now
was an effort to blot it out –
coming out here we are up against it
Out here I feel more helpless
with you than without you
You mention the danger
and list the equipment
we talk of people caring for each other
in emergencies - laceration, thirst -
but you look at me like an emergency
Your dry heat feels like power
your eyes are stars of a different magnitude
they reflect lights that spell out: EXIT
when you get up and pace the floor
talking of the danger
as if it were not ourselves
as if we were testing anything else.
-Stephanie
So, I have been inside much of today, trying to stand or sit as close as possible to the nearest air conditioner, which is usually spitting and sputtering with all its energy trying to keep up with the afternoon’s progression from really, really hot to cannot-even-process-how-hot-this-is hot.
While on my computer below one these air conditioners tonight, I saw in the New York Times that Adrienne Rich died on Tuesday. She lived a good, long life full of beautiful writing and razor sharp insights into her society. She was the first poet I ever truly loved and I still feel my heart quicken and eyes water when I read her words. I would not be exaggerating to say that her book of essays Blood, Bread and Poetry and book of poems Diving into the Wreck changed my life. She had a gift, or two gifts really, one for the rich sound of words and one of impatience for all of us to move on from the systems of oppression that have defined us.
As she said, I “believe that words can help us move or keep us paralyzed, and that our choices of language and verbal tone have something—a great deal—to do with how we live our lives and whom we end up speaking with and hearing; and that we can deflect words, by trivialization, of course, but also by ritualized respect, or we can let them enter our souls and mix with the juices of our minds.”
–Adrienne Rich, Blood, Bread and Poetry
YES. In memory of Adrienne Rich, I offer one of my very favorite poems.
Trying to talk with a man
By Adrienne Rich
Out in this desert we are testing bombs,
that's why we came here.
Sometimes I feel an underground river
forcing its way between deformed cliffs
an acute angle of understanding
moving itself like a locus of the sun
into this condemned scenery.
What we’ve had to give up to get here –
whole LP collections, films we starred in
playing in the neighborhoods, bakery windows
full of dry, chocolate-filled Jewish cookies,
the language of love-letters, of suicide notes,
afternoons on the riverbank
pretending to be children
Coming out to this desert
we meant to change the face of
driving among dull green succulents
walking at noon in the ghost town
surrounded by a silence
that sounds like the silence of the place
except that it came with us
and is familiar
and everything we were saying until now
was an effort to blot it out –
coming out here we are up against it
Out here I feel more helpless
with you than without you
You mention the danger
and list the equipment
we talk of people caring for each other
in emergencies - laceration, thirst -
but you look at me like an emergency
Your dry heat feels like power
your eyes are stars of a different magnitude
they reflect lights that spell out: EXIT
when you get up and pace the floor
talking of the danger
as if it were not ourselves
as if we were testing anything else.
-Stephanie
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