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I wanted to do something special in honor of my birthday today. I can think of no better gift than to share a poem that is dear to me. Enjoy! I’d love to see your favorite poems, if you’d like to share them in the comments.
As far as I know, Japan is the only country that formally recognizes people as National Treasures. It’s an honor that makes perfect sense to me. We certainly have them here, formal title notwithstanding. The poet Marie Howe is high on my list.
I can divide my life into two halves: the day before I heard her poem, “Annunciation,” and the day after. I can still remember where I was, listening to the CD that came with the book, “Saved By a Poem,” on which writers read their favorite poems aloud. Hearing it moved me to tears.1 It was the perfect mirror of an inexplicable experience I’d had years earlier on a sailboat in a violent storm.
Not long after, Krista Tippett did a marvelous interview with Marie Howe.2 The title of that episode is “The Power of Words to Save Us,” and it’s no exaggeration. Howe reads from her work, including “Annunciation” (chills), and talks about her life, her family and teaching poetry. Her voice matches her work, BTW. (Can you tell I’m a fan?)
In June 2019, I attended the Omega Magazine Environmental Writers workshop at Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York. The gathering brought fifty writers together with eight or so faculty to workshop poetry, narrative non-fiction, and fiction for a week. Every afternoon, the faculty and invited guests read from and discussed their work. One day, I was sitting alone in the second row with about four empty chairs between me and the woman who’d slipped in late from the far lefthand aisle.
At one point, the poet Major Jackson called out a thank-you to his brilliant mentor in the audience and gestured to the woman to my left. I looked over.
There sat Marie Howe.
As soon as the program ended, I stepped down the row to meet her. She was quite tall and elegantly dressed in a long, dark-blue summer dress and flats. I told her that I loved her work and cited “Annunciation” as my favorite. She asked, in a gentle way that made it about me not her, if I could articulate why. Though she had traveled from the city to hang out with her former student and the rest of the faculty, she had all the time in the world for me. Marie Howe the poet was a generous as her poetry.3
Annunciation
Even if I don’t see it again — nor ever feel it
I know it is — and that if once it hailed me
it ever does –
And so it is myself I want to turn in that direction
not as towards a place, but it was a tilting
within myself,
as one turns a mirror to flash the light to where
it isn’t — I was blinded like that — and swam
in what shone at me
only able to endure it by being no one and so
specifically myself I thought I’d die
from being loved like that.
~ From The Kingdom of Ordinary Time
More on that in this essay.
You can find it here, along with text of the poems.
Marie Howe reads her poem aloud here.
Somehow I missed this essay back when you posted it. I’m a huge fan, and will be going to the launch of her new book this week.
Happy Birthday, and that indeed is a beautiful poem.