Tiny Poem Tuesday, Moving On
Let's gather and read tiny poems by Frank Stanford, Fanny Howe, and Franz Wright, and gain insight on how to let go.
Happy Tuesday, dear readers, and I hope you had a restful long weekend (for those of you that had Indigenous Peoples’ Day off). At this time of year, I tend to really come alive. I love autumn. I love the changing of seasons and I love the chill in the air. I love saying goodbye to the suffocating heat of summer and the sweat on my back. I have found a few tiny poems that contend with moving on, with saying farewell and letting go of all that you’ve gathered recently. What are you holding on to? Would you like to let it go?
Goodbyes are difficult, especially when told to someone or said about something you love or enjoy. I am more of an Irish exit person myself. Goodbyes are a ritual—they are a closing of time, interaction, a period, a chapter, a friendship, a love, a meeting, a life. What a privilege to have the words to say farewell.
Frank Stanford defines a farewell in this tiny poem. The title “Farewell” works as the first line of this poem: “Farewell / Is a word.” In a tiny poem likes this, each word carries a lot of weight—the first 3 words account for ⅕ of the poem. Stanford likens the word “farewell” to a sword–a sharp object to be wielded in protection or violence, a symbol of a warrior and of valor. The short phrases make it seem as though the words are difficult to get out, like he can only say a few syllables at a time. The farewell is a sword that has worn out the scabbard, that has gutted that which holds it—has put holes in worn leather or metal. Or perhaps, the sword can never be put down—farewell as a word that must always be wielded.
Fanny Howe gives us a preemptive farewell—a goodbye with the knowledge that nothing leaves the grave. Once we are dust, we cannot talk about ourselves, about our loves and all that makes us feel human. Howe writes a note to an unknown “you,” a list of all of the things they love. Howe begins with food (frequent readers of gathering know I love a list): “oil, vinegar, salt, lettuce, brown bread, butter, / cheese and wine”
Slowly, she moves on from food, a treat she would not be able to enjoy in the grave, and moves on to the fleeting experiences of the living: wind, heat from a fire, the presence of another body, art created by humans, the feeling of someone you love lying next to you. And in the end, separated from the rest of the poem in a solitary line:
“And the short northern nights.”
How quiet and dark, peaceful and introspective. How she will miss being alone in the short night.
“The Poem,” by Franz Wright, is ambitious. He calls it “the” poem. “The” is probably one of the most common words used in the English language, so we have become calloused to it, but there is so much power in that little word. It anchors an object in space. It makes it unique, a specific entity that you are pointing to.
Wright speaks to a specific poem, one that he describes as a “love letter from a tree.” This line addresses the title–which poem? The poem. Then, he moves forward in a different direction: “Eyes closed forever to find you—” Does he wish to dream? To spend his life asleep in search of the poem’s author? The dash suggests and the white space that encapsulates this line suggests that this is an unfinished thought.
In the end, the narrator finds what they want to express, and this last stanza replays in my mind. While life is a winding road of choices and paths that we amble forward in almost randomly, given the option, there is a life the narrator would have chosen from the very beginning if given the opportunity. The narrator comes to this realization as a result of “the poem.” This is a poem about a poem, an expansion of emotion based on a revelation given to the narrator. And in this poem, in the admission of a life that the narrator cannot presumably live, it seems like Wright says farewell, goodbye, the life he would have chosen from the beginning.
I wonder if this poem felt like a sword that has worn out its scabbard.