"Poetry (here I hear myself loudest)"
'are we not of interest to each other?'
Gwendolyn Knight, “New Orleans,” Silkscreen on Paper, 2002, from The Johnson Collection,
Ars Poetica #100: I Believe
by Elizabeth Alexander
Poetry, I tell my students,
is idiosyncratic. Poetry
is where we are ourselves
(though Sterling Brown said
“Every ‘I’ is a dramatic ‘I’”),
digging in the clam flats
for the shell that snaps,
emptying the proverbial pocketbook.
Poetry is what you find
in the dirt in the corner,
overhear on the bus, God
in the details, the only way
to get from here to there.
Poetry (and now my voice is rising)
is not all love, love, love,
and I’m sorry the dog died.
Poetry (here I hear myself loudest)
is the human voice,
and are we not of interest to each other?
“Ars Poetica #100: I Believe” from American Sublime. Copyright © 2005 by Elizabeth Alexander. Graywolf Press, 2005
Creative Invitation
Consider the form of making that you love the best. What does poetry, pottery, literature, visual art, dance, music, offer you? What does it free in you? Turn over inside you? Put in your hands or on your plate?
Address this artform, and tell it what you need or want from it. Address it as a lover, friend, Rabbi, or maybe even a reflection of the world in a window—however you imagine it personified. Write to the art form with an open and expectant heart. Allow it to yield something new for you.