Tiny Poem Tuesday, Grief
Let us gather around tiny poems about grief by Rabia al-Adiwiyya, Emily Dickinson, and Raymond Carver
Hello my lovely readers and thank you for gathering as we fall into the beginning of November. The festivities of the spooky Halloween season have calmed down, the sky is getting grayer, and the leaves are in descent until all of the trees are bare.
I’ve been reading a lot of poems about grief recently, trying to understand what happens in the body when we grieve. I’ve never been good with grief; it tends to burst out of me, not in waves but in torrents. It’s like I consume sadness and my body doesn’t know how to break it down and metabolize it into something useful.
At this time of year, I begin to feel grief over the year I just lived. I look back on the year and wonder where it all went. But these poems have given me solace, wrapped me in protection and taught me how to feel. So, today, as we leap into the end of the year, I share with you some tiny poems consumed in grief.
A poem by Rabi’a al-Adiwiyya
Where are you from? There. Where are you headed? There. What are you doing here? Grieving.
Rabi’a al-Adiwiyya, or Rabia of Basra, was a prominent Arab Muslim saint and Sufi mystic in the 8th century. This poem has no title; instead, the lack of title makes this feel more like a true conversation, small whispers, a heart’s secrets told in the corner of a room. We don’t know who is speaking, but we know the first speaker asks a question: “Where are you from?” The following line is indented inwards; to me, it looks like the second speaker is crouching and hugging their knees in grief under the awning of the question. The second speaker answers: “There.” The second stanza is a logical follow-up to the first question: “Where are you going?” Once again: “There.”
Perhaps these are strangers, perhaps friends, or maybe this is a devotee and their god. This conversation is so intimate and raw. In reading the last stanza, I can feel my heart soften. We learn that the sad speaker is here, not there. So why have they come all this way? How did they find themselves so far away from home? The second speaker answers directly, succinctly, and devastatingly: “Grieving.” I love how, in such a short poem, al-Adiwiyya can show grief, can show the wandering, lost self you become when you grieve. She uses only 16 words to contain an entire world of loss.
The Bustle in the House (1108)
by Emily Dickinson
The Bustle in a House The Morning after Death Is solemnest of industries Enacted opon Earth – The Sweeping up the Heart And putting Love away We shall not want to use again Until Eternity
Where al-Adiwiyya told her story of grief in three parts, Emily Dickinson wrote hers in two. In the first stanza, we see the “business” of a mourning family. Everyone is running around, making arrangements, talking to mourners, burying the dead, packing away their belongings, crying in a corner, staring numbly. It is a Bustle; it is a solemn industry. The stanza breaks off with an em dash. This is a very Dickinsonian move, to end a phrase with a dash, to suddenly stop a thought and move on to the next. I imagine this happens a lot when dealing with grief—you are walking through your house and see an object that evokes a memory, and the task you were in the middle of is left behind.
In the second stanza, Dickinson moves inwards. She suggests that when a person grieves, they sweep up their heart and put their love away—there is no more room for all of this pain. There is no more capacity to love and feel. And in a final moment of everlasting grief, Dickinson remarks that you may never want to bring your heart to feel until you hit the end of eternity, a closure that will never arrive.
Grief
by Raymond Carver
Woke up early this morning and from my bed looked far across the Strait to see a small boat moving through the choppy water, a single running light on. Remembered my friend who used to shout his dead wife’s name from hilltops around Perugia. Who set a plate for her at his simple table long after she was gone. And opened the windows so she could have fresh air. Such display I found embarrassing. So did his other friends. I couldn’t see it. Not until this morning.
Our final poem is “Grief” by Raymond Carver. In this poem, us readers see a new perspective of grief: someone right on the precipice of loss. The narrator of this poem woke up on a normal day and remembers his friend who grieved by shouting from the mountains. He remembers how his friend’s grief was so strong that he set a place setting for his dead wife. A small boat is skimming across the water, there’s a light reflecting on the choppy waves. It’s early, it’s dark, and this is the first thought the narrator has in the morning. Notice that the first two sentences of this poem begin with action: “woke” and “remembered.” The narrator doesn’t insert themself in the poem in the beginning.
Towards the end, the narrator admits that he thought these displays of grief were embarrassing. He cannot understand the state of mind that drives someone to scream, to set a place setting for a dead person, opening a window so their spirit gets fresh air. Like all of us not in the middle of experiencing grief, the narrator cannot understand this grief–until the end. He couldn’t understand, his friends couldn’t understand, no one understands this grief “until this morning.” The narrator begins his journey with grief in the end. We are left to assume that the narrator lost a loved one. It is only in the throes of grief that we understand how shattered a heart can be.
I hope that these poems show you grief and its journey. I hope that they also provide solace that everyone experiences grief in universal and personal ways. We are all grieving something. Let yourself shout. Set a place setting. Lock your heart away. Start walking there. Just know the grieving will get easier.
If you enjoyed these poems… read more from these poets here: Rabia al-Adiwiyya, Emily Dickinson, and Raymond Carver.
If you are looking for a non-fiction book recommendation… I just finished How Far the Light Reaches: a Life in Ten Sea Creatures by Sabrina Imbler. A combination of personal essays and scientific writing on deep sea creatures, this book explores identity, likening the ever mysterious humans to the creatures we discover in the deep.
If you want to try writing a poem… write about a sad moment in your life. Focus on the space you were in and how it felt. Use all of your senses to describe it.