Mother’s Day, A Retrospective

Where can we find the poetry in the news these days?

William Carlos Williams famously wrote, in his poem Asphodel

It is difficult
to get the news from poems
                        yet men die miserably every day
                                                for lack
of what is found there.

 

Yet a poetry of purely personal experience neglects one of the obligations of the writer, which is to be a witness in the world in which we move and live and make choices every day.

This truth came home to me after I posted my “Mother’s Day Card” (https://kathleenhirsch.com/a-mothers-day-card-for-you/).

I was sitting with the newspaper catching up on local and world events, forcibly reminded as I am nearly every day that motherhood for so many involves heroic risk and unthinkable suffering.

I have often taught my students a valuable poetic form that lends itself beautifully to the difficult terrain of today’s news.  This is the cut-up poem.  Invented by the Surrealists in the 1920s, a cut-up poem is composed of lines literally cut from news stories and reassembled, collage-style, into poetry.  Cut-ups can be constructed from other poetry, phone books, random printed materials. Known as Cento, these poems are one way to cross the bridge from personal reflection to public witness.

The cut-up is a very accessible form for anyone trying out poetry for the first time.  It is an excellent practice in mindfulness as well, requiring a much closer reading of the news than we ordinary do, scanning for vital, energetic phrases, vivid images, and memorable spoken language.  If this is all you get from your efforts, it will be worth it.  But by making trial arrangements of text, you are able to go so much more deeply into the events in the story at hand that the effect can be transformative — a more pointed insight into, and empathy towards, those with whom we share our time on earth.

I offer this Mother’s Day, A Retrospective as a companion to my earlier post, for all the mothers whose keenest memories do not include the same cupboard of images as my own.

Mother’s Day, A Retrospective

The City on the Hill.

The crowd gathers,

families waving and watching

                                    *

Banners, photos,

verses

carried in Black hands.

                                    *

It can be challenging

                                    *

donating a son’s heart,

…run over in 2023

…shot in 2022

…killed three decades ago

                                   *

funeral costs,

relocation costs —

“This is who we are as women.”

                                   *

At the microphone, a woman is proclaiming,

“Peace and healing and family and joy…!!”

“Healed people heal people….!!”

                                  *                                                                                  *

Mayor, city councilors,

legislators.

It can be challenging.

                                    *

Every year, the crowd swells,

every year,

eyes fill with tears.

                                   *

carried in Black hands,

It can be challenging

                                    *

“This is who we are as women”

to keep track of grief.

 

(based on a Boston Globe article, May 12, 2024, by Daniel Kool, “A community on Mother’s Day for parents whose children have been killed.”)