Review by: Bridget Seley Galway
Father and son team Anthony and Ben Holder, working alongside
Amnesty International, not more than a year ago, edited their first anthology, Poems That Make Grown Men Cry. Following its success they decided to ask the
same question of 100 remarkable award- winning women writer/poets, actors,
musicians, public figures, academics, and activists.
Such noted women as, Judy Dench, Joan Biaz, Nikki Giovanni,
Joyce Carol Oats, Kate Allen, Lydia Davis, to name a few—were included.. The introductions
to each poem chosen by these 100 women are poignant, and often profoundly
personal.
Every form of loss experienced within our human condition
has been defined by the 100 poems which bless the pages of this anthology; loss
of life, dignity, love, home, country, and self.
It has been difficult to leave myself as much as possible out
of the composition of this review. I can only say that I have experienced some
of the losses defined through many of these brilliant and beautiful poems. They
have thrown me back into the moments of those experiences that gripped my heart
and brought tears to my eyes.
At the same time, I was moved forward with extreme empathy
into the immense grief and sadness of experiences beyond my own. Although those
experiences can be inexplicable, the chosen words of the poems in which they
are described, form a tangible island of poetic power, they pulled me into
those foreign lands, and I now hold indelible in my heart.
There are many poems that I would like to highlight within
this review, because their meaning has haunted my being in silent memorial.
I will begin with a stanza from a poem chosen by women
activist Helen Pankhurst, from John Clare’s “I Am”- “Despite the undertones of
madness, it is one of the most lucid poems about sadness and loneliness I have
ever come across.”
“I long for scenes
where men have never trod
A place where women never smiled or
shed a tear
There to
abide with my creator, God,
And sleep
as I in childhood sweetly slept,
Untroubling,
untroubled where I lie
The grass
below-above the vaulted sky.”
John Clare wrote this poem while in the Northampton Asylum.
“I Am” continues to be my favorite poem which defines the loss and want of
self. His words are both a constant harsh effusion of emotion, and as tender as
a silent tear.
Although I believe in God as energy, and not God as an
entity, it is of no consequence, as this poem defines my yearning when I have
felt the loss of self.
Taiye Selasi, writer, filmmaker, activist, chose Warsan
Shire’s poem, “for women who are hard to love”- “I’d been trying to make a home out of a human
being for my heart too wild, too fragile, too trustful, too untrustful, to be housed.
Then I read these lines by Shire, I knew that my longest search was utterly,
utterly doomed.”
“and if he wants to
leave
let him leave
you are terrifying
strange and beautiful
something not
everyone
knows how to love”
Taiye Selasi has described with perfection how this poem
touched me.
Anne Enright, author of “The Gathering as well as five other
novels, and won the Man Booker Prize in 2007, chose Mark Doty’s poem “Michaels Dream
(from Atlantis)” -“ The loss is always
there, ready to ambush and undo, and Doty’s work is always there too, when I
need the courage I saw in those terrible days, and how we rose to meet our
sorrow.”
“in this raddled and
unraveling ‘here’.
What is the body?
Rain on a window,
a
clear movement over whose gaze?
Husk, leaf, little boat of paper
and wood to mark the
speed of the stream?”
Mark Doty’s poetry documents the devastation of AIDS. I lost
so many dear friends to AIDS during my young adulthood, a
time when we were celebrating our individuality. In memorial to the ones I lost,
as I know they would have all wanted, I acknowledge one thing of beauty daily.
Scottish novelist, Jackie Kay, chose Anne Sexton’s “ Unknown
Girl in the Maternity Ward” - “I am still undone by “Unknown Girl”, heartbroken
for the mother, for her tender love for her baby, her “funny kin”, all mothers
in whatever circumstance, who lose their babies
“I touch your cheeks like flowers. You bruise
against
me. We unlearn. I am a shore
rocking you off. You break from me. I choose
your
only way, my small inheritor
and hand you off, trembling selves we lose.
Go child, who is my only sin, and
nothing more.
This poem defines the extreme depth of a mother’s
unconditional love, and the strength of what a woman can bear.
I chose to sum up this review with actor of stage and screen
Claire Bloom’s choice, Elizabeth Bishop’s, “One Art”. -“ The ironic tone of
this poem hides a deep and enduring sorrow, only hinted at in the last
devastating line.”
One Art
The art of losing
isn’t hard to master;
so many things filled with intent
to be
lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you
meant
to travel, None of these will bring disaster.
I
lost my mother’s watch. And look! My last, or
next-to-last,
of three houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some
realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I
miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.
-Even losing you (the joking voice, a
gesture
I
love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
I decided to end with this poem in its entirety, because it enshrines
the sense of all loss.
Whichever of these 100 poems bring tears to your eyes; they
will remain within the rhythm of your heart.
