Tender and furious

A friend sends me haiku most days, under the rule that I don’t comment on them because I do that for a living and it can wear me out–it’s a pleasure to just watch them float by. One of the latest was addressed to a black widow living near his bed, informing it that he wouldn’t yet oust the spider into single-degree temperatures. I did comment on that one, remarking that I would not be so compassionate, and then we had a brief conversation about feeling tender-hearted lately. It’s the cruelty of the world, we agreed.

The term is in full swing–W&L starts early so I’ve been teaching for more than two weeks now–and I feel the same way about the students in my introductory poetry workshop, whose first poem drafts I’m writing responses to today. Gentle, Lesley. People are fragile.

I feel some kindness beaming back at me, too, from other people. A former student is teaching Poetry’s Possible Worlds at a military academy (!) and just sent me the loveliest response paper his own student had written about it, commenting that I made myself vulnerable in the book and it touched her, made her feel connected. And then there’s kindness from the universe: a new poem came to me, which hasn’t happened much lately. A good EMDR session made my tense muscles feel softer, as if I am beginning to release that braced feeling I’ve experienced for as long as I can remember.

I mean, I’ve also been mildly sick, slogging through email, working on curricular proposals, going to meetings, writing endless grant applications, feeling trapped indoors by the cold, doomscrolling, etc. etc. It’s not all loveliness; the other stuff is just hard to be vulnerable about, sometimes. I’m as tired of social media chipperness as I’m sure you are, but I’m basically too lucky to complain much, and expressing outrage for others can feel ickily like virtue-signaling. (Although Meta blocking posts by abortion providers and saying oops, didn’t mean to? The baby-obsessed right wing trying to destroy birthright citizenship, meaning that Medicaid won’t pay for babies’ care, meaning they won’t get decent medical care? I am VIRTUOUSLY FURIOUS. As I link to this post on Meta’s social media, thus providing them free content for advertisers.)

Since I’ve already pivoted from tender-hearted professor to mean old poet-critic, I close with a reading quiz whose questions reveal more about me than the answers do about your academic skills (isn’t that always the way?).

1. In the picture above in which Vincent is playing with a catnip toy, is Poe a) outraged that he doesn’t have one or b) dumbfounded at how easily Vincent is amused by a bit of feathery stupidity when the world is on fire?
2. Go to the Tupelo site for Mycocosmic; scroll down to the “Course Adoption” tab; peruse my Reader’s Companion to the book; then tell me what a treasure I am to humanity in exactly three words.
3. My students think many of Robert Frost’s poems are anthropocentric, prioritizing what humans see in and get out of the more-than-human world. For example see “The Gift Outright,” the first poem a poet ever recited at a US presidential inauguration, which only Democrats ever invite poets to do. (Report the poets to your superiors or you will face adverse consequences.) As a possible counterexample, read “Dust of Snow,” or rather reread it because I’m sure you did your homework conscientiously last night. Is the crow a) a beneficent creature God places in hemlocks to cheer grumpy poets; b) taking vengeance on Frost for winning FOUR Pulitzers; c) actually a sclerotic squirrel, but that would mess up the meter; or d) an inkblot through which your mood reveals itself? Your answer must rhyme with the question; good luck rhyming “Pulitzers,” or getting one, since Frost took them all.