Amy Wilentz wrote a wonderful essay on how to make people come alive for your readers. She begins:
When you write nonfiction characters, you have to be vigilant and observant (this leads to good fiction writing, as well). People consist, for other people, of four things: what they look like, where they are, what they say, and what they do. Ask any actor. It’s all about: costume; setting; dialogue, and movement or action.
Here's the rest: here. I particularly enjoyed her observations on how you have to love your character, at least a little bit.
I'm writing down the mysteries of my class
All that I do, and why and how and when
The intricacies of a bathroom pass
Which students you can trust (but even then
You must be on your guard, and watch your back),
And here is the procedure for the roll
And don't let those kids get you off the track,
Make sure you let them think you're in control.
Sub, I've tried to give you foolproof lessons,
Easy instructions, here's how to be me,
And yet I'm (this is such a lame confession)
Not thrilled by interchangeability.
I wish my absence filled the world with sorrow
But failing that, please teach my class tomorrow.
Ruth, from thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com
When my middle school students write love poems, they very
rarely tell the truth of their lives, the awkward crushes they have on
the goofy kid in the next seat, the way they are starting to feel drawn
to other people and how lovely and painful and sweet and terrible it
is. Instead, they write about Love with a capital L, informed by movies
and imagination and the music they listen to (just as they write about
Life with a capital L in all their wisdom gained in thirteen years on
this planet). I often ask them, what makes this person special?
Craig Arnold said of this poem, "With 'Bird-Understander' I wanted to say not, as an Elizabethan courtly sonneteer might have said, 'Look, I made your words into poetry, aren’t I fabulous?' but rather 'Listen, what you said to me, it’s already poetry, better than anything I could write, and it would make me happy simply to have you see that.'"
A love poem should be specific, not a generic verse suitable for a
greeting card. The beloved is not interchangeable with others, and
poetry about the beloved shouldn't be, either. By that standard, this
love poem succeeds brilliantly. When we read it, as people who don't
know the woman being addressed, we see a beautiful quality in her, and
we see why he loves her. We know what makes her special.
Bird-Understander
Craig Arnold
Of many reasons I love you here is one
the way you write me from the gate at the airport
so I can tell you everything will be alright
so you can tell me there is a bird
trapped in the terminal all the people
ignoring it because they do not know
what do with it except to leave it alone
until it scares itself to death
it makes you terribly terribly sad
You wish you could take the bird outside
and set it free or (failing that)
call a bird-understander
to come help the bird
All you can do is notice the bird
and feel for the bird and write
to tell me how language feels
impossibly useless
but you are wrong
You are a bird-understander
better than I could ever be
who make so many noises
and call them song
These are your own words
your way of noticing
and saying plainly
of not turning away
from hurt
you have offered them
to me I am only
giving them back
if only I could show you
how very useless
they are not
This year has started off well in the reading department, as I've found some interesting and thought-provoking books.
Book #1 of 2013 was a novel, which I read most of in the waiting room at the US Embassy during a passport-renewal visit. It was Sirena, by Donna Jo Napoli. Sirena is a mermaid, and her story is a retelling of one of the tales from the Trojan War myth (I won't tell you which one, as it's not instantly obvious). She's also one of the Sirens described in the Odyssey. While this was absorbing and fit the waiting-room bill, it was also a bit forgettable.
Book #2 was a lot more serious. I downloaded it for free onto my Kindle in a special offer, and I was glad that I had. The book was Letters from a Skeptic: A Son Wrestles with his Father's Questions about Christianity. As the title suggests, this is a series of letters between Greg Boyd and his father in which many questions about the plausibility of Christianity and the Bible are asked and answered. Boyd has a very simple, readable style, with an underpinning of complex philosophy and theology. I thoroughly enjoyed this and would recommend it to anyone who is interested in Christianity, either for someone examining it from outside or for a Christian looking for clearer understanding of its issues.
Book #3 was Elizabeth and her German Garden, by Elizabeth von Arnim. I was interested in this book because of reading this article, part of a series on NPR where people tell about their favorite book. Originally published in 1898, the book is a bit hard to categorize. Elizabeth rhapsodizes about her garden and her introverted pleasure in hanging out there with a book, tells cute stories about her children, complains about having guests, and pokes fun at her husband, whom she calls "The Man of Wrath." I couldn't always tell when she was being satirical and when she was serious, but I did find her story interesting and entertaining.
Book #4 was a Ken Follett novel, Lie Down with Lions, part of a pile of books passed on by someone who was leaving the country. The story, which is about Afghanistan, kept my attention, and I enjoyed reading about childbirth as Jane delivered her baby with an Afghan midwife and then breastfeeding as she rushed about the country with the baby nursing the whole way. I always enjoy books where breastfeeding is portrayed naturally, but I did get a little impatient with Follett's male fantasies about it. And I feel I have to warn my readers about a way too long, way too detailed sex scene midway through the book. TMI, Mr. Follett!
Book #5 was Kent Annan's book about the Haitian earthquake, After Shock: Searching for Honest Faith When Your World is Shaken. Although I bought a couple of copies of this book in 2011, one for my husband and one for a friend, it was only now that I felt ready to read it, and I'm very glad I did. Many books are coming out now about the earthquake, after three years of reflection, but this one was written in the heat of the moment, and it has a raw, honest quality that spoke to me deeply. There were plenty of passages that I felt I myself could have written. I related so much to Annan's struggles to understand what happened on January 12th 2010 and in the aftermath, and I appreciated his refusal to tie it all up in a neat little package. He writes about the way crisis does kill our faith, and then a new version is resurrected, informed and refined by what we have experienced, and full of a new awareness of God's love. I have written here before about listening to Kent Annan on the radio when I was in the United States after the earthquake (here and here). I so much appreciated the way he spoke about Haitians then, not as helpless victims, but as courageous people who stepped in and helped one another. His observations then resonated with my own experiences with Haitians; he was saying things I wasn't hearing from others at that time. I will be looking for more of his books.
Book #6 is one that many of my blog friends have been reading. The book is Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking, by Susan Cain. Bridget read it and Janet read it, and then I bought it for my daughter and read it myself. I just finished it yesterday and am still thinking through the implications, but this was an important book for me, and helped me understand my own temperament and the way I function in the world. I liked Cain's focus on how people of different personality types can work together and complement one another, and also the way she discussed how knowing yourself can help you to design your life in a way that helps you be most productive and happy. I liked this book much more than I expected to, and found it full of rich ideas.
I read Garrison Keillor's 77 Love Sonnets last summer, and enjoyed the book immensely. Garrison Keillor does so much through his Writer's Almanac to disseminate great poetry, new and old, and I've enjoyed his anthologies, also. It was fun to read his own poetry. Here's a favorite, dealing with Ulysses and Penelope, whose story I love.
Ulysses
Here by the enormous swimming pool at the Biltmore
Twenty-six young dark-skinned women lie
In tiny bikinis like mermaids on the shore,
And I, bound for Ithaca, just sail on by,
Heading for you, Penelope, to tell the tale,
How that whole Trojan War gave me the willies,
The pointlessness of it, and I set sail,
Having paid off Homer and left Achilles
In his tent, and was lucky to get a favorable wind
And stopped here at the Biltmore to recompute
My course, and found twenty-six dark-skinned
Women, their breasts displayed like fresh fruit.
Thanks but no thanks. They only want a tan.
You, dear, love a good story. I'm your man.
I didn't do a Poetry Friday post yesterday - the first time for that in a long while. Teaching, and life, have been taking my energies more than usually, but if anyone's looking for a poetry post, I apologize and direct you here, to yesterday's roundup. I hope to be back next week, and maybe even with a post in between Fridays!
I imagine I'll be one of many posting this poem today for Poetry Friday. I love it that President Obama chose, for the second time, to include a poem in his inaugural ceremonies. I posted four years ago about Elizabeth Alexander's poem, and in the intervening years I have read and enjoyed more ofher work. And this time, I enjoyed Richard Blanco's poem.
It's a challenge to write a poem to read on television, before millions of people, most of whom never read poetry and have little desire to. The piece has to be clear, concrete, accessible, but also "poetic," however people see that. I thought Blanco handled it well. I played the video for my middle schoolers, and both seventh and eighth graders picked up on the reference to Newtown, the fact that Blanco saluted both his parents, and his tribute to the variety of lives Americans live. The only complaints I heard were that the poem was too long, and one of the kids objected to the use of the word "crescendoing," because he didn't know what it meant.
Here is the full text of the poem:
"One Today"
One sun rose on us today, kindled over our shores,
peeking over the Smokies, greeting the faces
of the Great Lakes, spreading a simple truth
across the Great Plains, then charging across the Rockies.
One light, waking up rooftops, under each one, a story
told by our silent gestures moving behind windows.
My face, your face, millions of faces in morning’s mirrors,
each one yawning to life, crescendoing into our day:
pencil-yellow school buses, the rhythm of traffic lights,
fruit stands: apples, limes, and oranges arrayed like rainbows
begging our praise. Silver trucks heavy with oil or paper -- bricks or milk, teeming over highways alongside us,
on our way to clean tables, read ledgers, or save lives -- to teach geometry, or ring up groceries as my mother did
for twenty years, so I could write this poem.
All of us as vital as the one light we move through,
the same light on blackboards with lessons for the day:
equations to solve, history to question, or atoms imagined,
the “I have a dream” we keep dreaming,
or the impossible vocabulary of sorrow that won’t explain
the empty desks of twenty children marked absent
today, and forever. Many prayers, but one light
breathing color into stained glass windows,
life into the faces of bronze statues, warmth
onto the steps of our museums and park benches
as mothers watch children slide into the day.
One ground. Our ground, rooting us to every stalk
of corn, every head of wheat sown by sweat
and hands, hands gleaning coal or planting windmills
in deserts and hilltops that keep us warm, hands
digging trenches, routing pipes and cables, hands
as worn as my father’s cutting sugarcane
so my brother and I could have books and shoes.
The dust of farms and deserts, cities and plains
mingled by one wind -- our breath. Breathe. Hear it
through the day’s gorgeous din of honking cabs,
buses launching down avenues, the symphony
of footsteps, guitars, and screeching subways,
the unexpected song bird on your clothes line.
Hear: squeaky playground swings, trains whistling,
or whispers across cafe tables, Hear: the doors we open
for each other all day, saying: hello, shalom,
buon giorno, howdy, namaste, or buenos días
in the language my mother taught me -- in every language
spoken into one wind carrying our lives
without prejudice, as these words break from my lips.
One sky: since the Appalachians and Sierras claimed
their majesty, and the Mississippi and Colorado worked
their way to the sea. Thank the work of our hands:
weaving steel into bridges, finishing one more report
for the boss on time, stitching another wound
or uniform, the first brush stroke on a portrait,
or the last floor on the Freedom Tower
jutting into a sky that yields to our resilience.
One sky, toward which we sometimes lift our eyes
tired from work: some days guessing at the weather
of our lives, some days giving thanks for a love
that loves you back, sometimes praising a mother
who knew how to give, or forgiving a father
who couldn’t give what you wanted.
We head home: through the gloss of rain or weight
of snow, or the plum blush of dusk, but always -- home,
always under one sky, our sky. And always one moon
like a silent drum tapping on every rooftop
and every window, of one country -- all of us --
facing the stars
hope -- a new constellation
waiting for us to map it,
waiting for us to name it -- together
If poetry is dead, you couldn't tell it on Fridays. Today's Poetry Friday roundup is hosted by Tabatha Yeatts at The Opposite of Indifference. Poetry looks alive and well to me. What do you think?
A Facebook friend posted the following two articles and asked his friends to read both; both reflect the truth of what Haiti is like today. Yes, there is progress and hope. And yes, there's still a lot to be done.
It's a Paul Simon kind of day. Here's one of my favorites from "So Beautiful or So What."
A pilgrim on a pilgrimage
Walked across the Brooklyn Bridge
His sneakers torn
In the hour when the homeless move their cardboard blankets
And the new day is born
Folded in his backpack pocket
The questions that he copied from his heart
Who am I in this lonely world?
And where will I make my bed tonight?
When twilight turns to dark
Questions for the angels
Who believes in angels?
Fools do
Fools and pilgrims all over the world
If you shop for love in a bargain store
And you don't get what you bargained for
Can you get your money back?
If an empty train in a railroad station
Calls you to it's destination
Can you choose another track?
Will I wake up from these violent dreams
With my hair as white as the morning moon?
Questions for the angels
Who believes in angels?
I do
Fools and pilgrims all over the world
Downtown Brooklyn
The pilgrim is passing a billboard
That catches his eye
It's Jay-Z
He's got a kid on each knee
He's wearing clothes that he wants us to try
If every human on the planet and all the buildings on it
Should disappear
Would a zebra grazing in the African Savannah
Care enough to she'd one zebra tear?
Questions for the angels
I wrote more about this song and angel poems in general here.
The very talented Violet Nesdoly has the Poetry Friday roundup today here.
Today is the third anniversary of the earthquake that shook Haiti, killed who knows how many people, and changed the lives of everyone who survived.
Yesterday we had protests in our neighborhood. While I've witnessed many protests in our time in Haiti, this was the nearest they have ever come to my own home. I took this picture after the protesters had left:
The cream color to the left of the photo is our gate; I was standing right in front of our house. So you can see that this protest was very close to us, and yes, that thick black smoke got all over everything inside. Everything smells like burning rubber. There's a film of grey (probably carcinogenic) dust everywhere.
The protesters were angry because the road was supposed to be fixed and it hasn't been. A Dominican firm, they said, had been paid, but yo manje kob la, they ate the money. Corruption and frustration and life as usual, and no alternative but to go out in the streets and set fire to things. When it was gently suggested to them that they might want to be careful about burning up the electrical wires, they said that we don't get that much electricity anyway.
This morning, as I made tea and scrambled eggs, I smelled that smell and wiped that grime off of various objects, and thought, again and again, "I am alive," so that today and that day three years ago coexisted in my mind. I felt thankful to be in my home, which stood and did not fall, and thankful to cook food, as I remembered how we calculated how much we had left in those days after the quake and wondered when we'd be able to resupply. I sat in our courtyard and remembered sitting there after the earthquake because I didn't want to be inside, in case an aftershock sent the concrete roof down on my head. And I asked my daughter to pass the jam.
It's like that with any grief, isn't it? You mourn and you feel sad about the past, and yet the present goes inexorably on, and there are new things to mourn and even new things to be happy about. But it's all mixed up together, the remembering and the going on, the grief and the joy.
Here's what the street looks like today:
There's a particular pattern to the leftovers of burnt tires, one I've seen many times on Haitian streets but never on my own street:
There's plenty of evidence of the earthquake left, too. Three hundred and sixty thousand people, more or less, continue to live in tents. While the tents are not everywhere as they were, there are still large tent cities, and those who have been resettled are not necessarily in good conditions. The Miami Herald published a photo essay about one family whose excitement about moving on from a tent city has given way to disappointment and deeper poverty than they were in before the quake; you can look at that here.
It's as though we're all covered with a film of black smoke, still wiping off the remains of the earthquake, off of Haiti, and off of our lives and our souls.
This morning the roadworking equipment is out there, in response to the protesters. (Oh, look! They got what they wanted! How about that? It works to go out in the street and burn things!) I can feel the house shaking as they roll the road. I don't like feeling the house shaking. In fact, it makes me feel slightly sick. But I don't run outside; I stay here and keep typing away.
As I type I'm listening to an album that I listened to many times after the earthquake, Steven Curtis Chapman's "Beauty Will Rise."
Beauty has already risen, and it will continue to, I know, even as new ashes continue to accumulate. I read my blog posts from those first days, from the 14th when I got back online for the first time and reported that we were alive, from the days after when I agonized over my guilt for leaving the country, being evacuated with my children while others stayed behind and did something about the situation. And yet I see, too, the way God took care of us, provided everything we needed, including wonderful people who may never understand how much their help and support meant to us. Beauty, in the middle of the worst time of my life.
But we're still rising from those ashes, too, the ones from three years ago, as we wipe up yesterday's ashes.
Of course today I am remembering the details of that day, and if you want to read our story, you can go back and read my posts from January of 2010. Today, I am thinking of that moment, 4:53 PM. I am thinking of friends who died, and of other friends who were injured. I am thinking of how everyone's lives changed. I am wiping ashes off of my soul. I am waiting for beauty.
I wrote this poem in 2011. Back then, everything I wrote turned out to be about the earthquake, whether I intended it or not. This poem is no exception. I chose it for today because during this weekend's three year anniversary of the earthquake, I want to focus on how the love and support and comfort of friends and family got me through those horrible days.
This Quilt
Ladies in southern Indiana made this quilt.
It's not the fancy kind you'd buy in a store.
It's the kind made from real scraps,
Somebody's apron and somebody's shirt and somebody's pants
All stitched together on Thursday nights at the Sewing Circle
To send to the missionaries.
This quilt sat in the provision closet in the mission headquarters
Until a mother chose it to keep her tow-headed children warm
On winter nights in Tokyo
And when I married one of her boys, this quilt became mine.
This quilt warmed me as I slept.
Stretched out on the floor
It gave my babies a soft place to play.
A fat, healthy Haitian baby played on it too
And this quilt hung many times on my Caribbean clothesline
And faded lazily in the sun.
Somebody's Sunday dress from Indiana
Chopped up into squares
Shook gently over sleeping children in Japanese earthquakes,
So commonplace that no one even woke.
Somebody's child's school skirt
Cushioned sleepers in my courtyard
After a Haitian earthquake chased everyone out from under a concrete roof.
Ladies in southern Indiana never knew
As their conversation meandered
Over the colorful fabric in their laps
Where this quilt would go
And what wordless comfort it would bring
In places they would never see.
Ruth, from thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com
I went looking for poems about peace and found this article; from the poems suggested I chose this one, by Wisława Szymborska, because it illustrates so clearly that true peace is much more than the absence of fighting. It also reminds me of rebuilding after an earthquake; a week from tomorrow we will commemorate three years since our earthquake on January 12th, 2010.
The End and the Beginning
By Wisława Szymborska
Translated By Joanna Trzeciak
After every war
someone has to clean up.
Things won’t
straighten themselves up, after all.
Someone has to push the rubble
to the side of the road,
so the corpse-filled wagons
can pass.
Someone has to get mired
in scum and ashes,
sofa springs,
splintered glass,
and bloody rags.
Someone has to drag in a girder
to prop up a wall.
Someone has to glaze a window,
rehang a door.
Photogenic it’s not,
and takes years.
All the cameras have left
for another war.
We’ll need the bridges back,
and new railway stations.
Sleeves will go ragged
from rolling them up.
Someone, broom in hand,
still recalls the way it was.
Someone else listens
and nods with unsevered head.
But already there are those nearby
starting to mill about
who will find it dull.
From out of the bushes
sometimes someone still unearths
rusted-out arguments
and carries them to the garbage pile.
Those who knew
what was going on here
must make way for
those who know little.
And less than little.
And finally as little as nothing.
In the grass that has overgrown
causes and effects,
someone must be stretched out
blade of grass in his mouth
gazing at the clouds.
You can find more information about this poet here.
And here's 2013's first Poetry Friday roundup!
I have been thinking a lot about my One Little Word for this new year. Last year my word was HEAL. (At that link you can see my words for each year since I started doing this in 2009.) As I thought about what I wanted to focus on in 2013, I noticed that I have been drawn lately to thoughts about peace. I posted two songs in December about peace (here and here). In our secondary chapels at school, we've been discussing the fruit of the spirit, and recently our friend Robbie shared a version of this meditation on peace, what it is and isn't.
As I thought about it, though, I wasn't sure I wanted to choose the word peace. When I looked it up in the thesaurus, I found words like privacy, solitude, ease. I have nothing against those concepts; in fact, they are probably way too important to me. They point to a conception of peace that is largely me-focused. I need some of that kind of peace in my life, but more than that, I need the peace Robbie referred to, the shalom that can be defined as completeness, wholeness. Cornelius Plantinga defines it this way (I found this quotation at the Wikipedia article linked above):
"The webbing together of God, humans, and all creation in justice, fulfillment, and delight is what the Hebrew prophets call shalom. We call it peace but it means far more than mere peace of mind or a cease-fire between enemies. In the Bible, shalom means universal flourishing, wholeness and delight – a rich state of affairs in which natural needs are satisfied and natural gifts fruitfully employed, a state of affairs that inspires joyful wonder as its Creator and Savior opens doors and welcomes the creatures in whom he delights. Shalom, in other words, is the way things ought to be."
So I decided that instead of peace, my OLW this year would be SHALOM. I could spend a lifetime, or at least a year, unpacking all the meanings of this word, and the rightness, the way things ought to be inherent in it. SHALOM isn't an absence of conflict, a walking-on-eggshells "keeping the peace," but an active promoting of restoration and wholeness.
This year, I want to think more about what this SHALOM means on a personal level, in my little world, and in the larger world around me.
We just got back from a relaxing few days at the beach with our Christmas guests. Here's the last reading update of the year. My goal was 52 books.
Book #44 was Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor. This was for my class, and I really enjoyed it, so much that I ordered the sequel when it came out. So while I didn't really read this next, let's count Days of Blood and Starlight as book #45 of the year.
Book #46 was The New Kids, by Brooke Hauser. This is a journalistic book about a high school for immigrants in New York City, and it was fascinating reading. Highly recommended.
Book #47 was The Language of Flowers, by Vanessa Diffenbaugh. This was another book that I liked a lot. It was the story of a foster child whose most enduring placement was with a foster mother who knew all about flowers and what they meant in Victorian times. The book has a beautiful website complete with a flower dictionary in case you want to try some of the language of flowers.
Book #50 was a reread, Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen, always one of my favorites.
Book #51 was the one I read at the beach, To Say Nothing of the Dog, by Connie Willis. This was a time travel story recommended by my daughter, and it was thoroughly entertaining. The title refers to the Victorian book Three Men in a Boat, To Say Nothing of the Dog, by Jerome K. Jerome. I hadn't read it since high school, but this was a fun reminder.
You can see that I didn't quite meet my goal, but I was pretty close. My reading wasn't terribly cerebral this year but it was enjoyable. I hope my readers will forgive my cursory reviews in my haste to finish up the year's listings.
I went out at night alone;
The young blood flowing beyond the sea
Seemed to have drenched my spirit’s wings—
I bore my sorrow heavily.
But when I lifted up my head
From shadows shaken on the snow,
I saw Orion in the east
Burn steadily as long ago.
From windows in my father’s house,
Dreaming my dreams on winter nights,
I watched Orion as a girl
Above another city’s lights.
Years go, dreams go, and youth goes too,
The world’s heart breaks beneath its wars,
All things are changed, save in the east
The faithful beauty of the stars.
This song is actually the one I was looking for yesterday, and I couldn't find any renditions on YouTube that I liked. Apparently my friends the Livesays were thinking about the same song, though, and last night they posted this video of their daughter singing it.
Peace Peace
By Sara Groves, Ben Gowell and Aaron Fabbrini
Peace Peace it's hard to find
trouble comes like a wrecking ball
to your peace of mind
and all that worry you can't leave behind you
all your hopes and fears
all your hopes and fears
all your hopes and fears
are met in Him tonight
peace peace
it's hard to find
doubt comes like a tiny voice
that's
so unkind
and all your fears they conspire
to unwind you
all your hopes and fears
all your hopes and fears
all your hopes and fears
are met in Him
And in your dark street shines
an everlasting light
and all your hopes and fears
are met in Him tonight
all your hopes and fears
all your hopes and fears
all your hopes and fears
are met in Him tonight
So many words to say, but I'm opting for silence
So many days to live
I thinking I'm sitting this one out
Cause something I've been chasing
finally stop to let me catch it
Something I've been longing for and
dreaming about
It's a whisper in my ear
It's a shiver up my spine
It's the gratitude I feel for all that's right
It's a mystery appeal
that's been granted me tonight
This peace
It's something so
elusive
Something close but far away
It's the home that I can't live
in yet somewhere in outer space
And sometimes I barely miss it when I
walk into the room
The curtains are still swaying and I feel the air
move
And it whispers in my ear and it shivers up my spine
It's the
gratitude I feel for all that's right
It's a mystery appeal that's
been granted me tonight
This peace
No time to grab a camera
No
time to write it down
Just time enough to breathe it in
And linger
It's a whisper in my ear
It's a shiver up my spine
It's the
gratitude I feel for all that's right
It's a mystery appeal that's
been granted me tonight
This peace
This peace
Sara Groves
I had this YouTube page open on my laptop, ready to
post it the first chance I got in my hectic day. Then the news came
through about Connecticut and it seemed even more appropriate. There's
so much that is not right in this world, so much suffering and horror.
In this holiday season, and end of school season, when we're all busy
and the news is screaming at us about tragedies we can hardly bear to
imagine, I wish you a little peace today, a little gratitude for all
that's right in your life.
This past week, a study came out listing the best and worst cities in the world to live in. I never expect Port-au-Prince to make the "best" list, but I was surprised by just how low our city scored on this index. Out of 221 cities studied, Port-au-Prince placed 219th. A new tourist slogan could be: "We're better than Bangui and Baghdad!"
There's worse news, too. The same study examined the infrastructure in these cities, and on that list, Port-au-Prince came in 221st. Yes, dead last.
It's true that in Port-au-Prince, you have to spend a lot more energy on acquiring basic utilities than in most urban settings in this world. I've whined about that many times on this blog. And that's for people living in homes. A statistic I read this week said that 360,000 people continue to live
in tents following the earthquake. We will soon mark the three year
anniversary of the earthquake. Imagine living in a tent for three
years, a tent that has by now been disintegrating in the tropical sun
and rain for a very long time. There is deep, intractable poverty here. The inequalities are severe. Yes, there is still much that is beautiful (and frankly I'd much rather focus on that), but I can't deny that the quality of life for many people in this city is far from adequate.
Kelley Nikondeha, who lives in Burundi, put it this way, speaking not specifically of Port-au-Prince but of the world in general, the suffering she sees everywhere:
More than anything I feel weighted by unsatisfied longings. Ambushed by word of disrupted adoptions and the demolished marriage of friends, angst replaces the more traditional anticipation. News out of places like Goma and Gaza remind me people live under daily threat, some days cowering in their homes. Slums in Kampala and townships outside Cape Town refuse to be quieted, they scream of layers upon layers, years and years of injustice. These people, these places press all the levity out of me.
Read the rest of her post about her Advent ache here.
As we celebrate Advent once more, I have to believe that Emmanuel, God with us, is here in this city, that He has not forsaken this city or this world. He came as a baby, as vulnerable as it is possible to be, to a family who had nowhere to stay the night of His birth and who became refugees soon afterward.
Last night we listened to a concert of the Messiah. Before the concert, my husband and I got to hold the twin babies of a school employee, as their father beamed and snapped pictures with his phone. Later, as we sat waiting for the music to start, I noticed a row of drool marks on my husband's shoulder from the tiny boy he had snuggled against him. Instantly my mind went to the description of the Messiah that we would soon hear sung: "the government shall be upon His shoulder." He who shoulders the burdens of the world became small enough to be held against the shoulder of fallible human parents. He entered into the mess of the world, the low quality of life, the lack of infrastructure, and He is still here, bringing life in mysterious and incomprehensible ways.
But we wait, we long, we work, for things to be better. Because one way God is in this city is in His people. Even though we don't know what to do, and we don't know how to help, and we get it wrong so often.
This week I got an email from the Academy of American Poets giving the results of the voting on the best poems of the year. I've mentioned before that I get a daily email from the AAP (not the American Academy of Pediatrics), whose site is Poets.org. I didn't vote in these elections, but when I looked at the choices, I was surprised and interested to see that of the ten chosen, five were ones I had particularly liked myself. ( I always save the ones I like best and delete the others from my email.) Considering that voters had about 350 poems to choose from, this seemed a high level of agreement.
You can look at the list here of which poems were chosen. There are links to all of them.
I had some trouble deciding which one of them to share with you here, but finally decided on this Rafael Campo poem, entitled "Love Song for Love Songs," for a couple of reasons. First, I've been reading a lot of love poetry this week, drafts from my seventh and eighth graders. I'm touched and amused in about equal measure by their take on romantic love, the pain and embarrassment and ecstasy and misery. At this age, at least in our school, they are mostly talking about crushes and adoration from afar, which is no doubt just as it should be. Still, these emotions are real to them, and I'm glad they can write about them. And secondly, isn't all poetry love poetry in its broadest sense? Poets write about our love for people and places and times and living, and even when they are writing of suffering or of topics that seem to have nothing to do with love, they still remind us of our rootedness in this earth, and of the joy and sorrow of being human. This poem is light and funny (and I enjoyed searching out more of Rafael Campo's poems, and his ironic touch), but it also makes me think of the job of poets, to make the oldest ideas and experiences in the world fresh and new. Sometimes they succeed and sometimes not, but I am so thankful that they (and I, in my own way) keep trying.
Love Song for Love Songs
Rafael Campo
A golden age of love songs and we still
can't get it right. Does your kiss really taste
like butter cream? To me, the moon's bright face
was neither like a pizza pie nor full;
the Beguine began, but my eyelid twitched.
"No more I love you's," someone else assured
us, pouring out her heart, in love (of course)—
what bothers me the most is that high-pitched,
undone whine of "Why am I so alone?"
I've been privileged to live in three of the world's great cities (Nairobi, Port-au-Prince and Asunción, Paraguay) as well as spending time in many others (including nine weeks in Paris as a college student). I just moved to a new city: Kampala, Uganda. I've also lived in smaller towns in three countries. In all of those places there have been difficult days, but I've never found a city or town yet where God is not, and I don't anticipate finding one in the future, either. The name of my blog comes from the song "Love is Always There," by Carolyn Arends.
