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Many people I meet say they don’t know what to do with poetry. They don’t really know how to read it and they don’t know exactly what to think about it. Whether a person prefers fiction or non-fiction, whether he reads exclusively horror books or books about old boats, the prose is different from the verse. It doesn’t fit into either category and exists as a “yes, and,” and it’s okay to find what seems like improvisation less than enchanting.
In Little Alleluias, from a Mary Oliver collection released six years after her death, she offers another explanation for the difference and why poetry is attractive. “The prose horse is harnessed, a good, sturdy, comfortable harness, while the horse of poetry has wings. And I would rather fly than plow.”
Here’s the catch, though: every poet’s work is not about a preference, but about the knowledge that they must do both. The glory of flight and all its benefits, combined with the force of gravity – the weight – of each day’s steps pulling us down as a matter of the laws of nature, is what puts words on the page. It is not an escape, but a negotiation.
In the latest collection by Gabrielle Calvocoressi, The new economythey end with a series of six poems entitled ‘Every day but Sunday’. Sometimes poets do this, and while it is a trick that can confuse readers, it also brings joy. It’s a practical strategy to show how the same thought can emerge in different contexts and mean different things, but all fit under the same umbrella. The series begins with pain, physical and buzzing, with questions about how far exhaustion can go. There’s no baseball, not yet. It is sacred time. It is this time of year, at this moment, Lent on the Catholic calendar, a time inherently linked to the anticipation of new uprisings.
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