Life is a Poem

We went out on the water yesterday, taking the boat out for the first time this season. It was unseasonably warm, in the low 70s; last weekend, it snowed. A lot of people went out in boats yesterday. We stayed in the river; as we neared Erie, we found it to be just too windy. But it was a beautiful day. Just two weeks of school left, and then it is time to devote myself fully to my writing projects.

A former student e-mailed me a few days ago and asked if I would say something about the Virginia Tech shootings. I didn't want to say anything until I knew more. Now that I know more, I feel I still don't know enough, will never know enough, and I seem to know less as the days go on. If I'm ever to write about this, today is the day. If I wait until tomorrow, I never will. So this entry is for you, Megan.

Megan, you were concerned about his writings. My Imaginative Writing students this semester were also concerned about that, and we devoted part of a class period talking about the shootings. The students were mostly concerned that all this would somehow affect how their writings would be viewed by their teachers. Writing involves vulnerability and students need to know they can write about dark things without being labeled "disturbed." I assured them that this incident would in no way affect the way I viewed their work.

I read the two plays that the shooter wrote. Taken alone, the plays would not be evidence of depravity. They were immature and poorly written. But if an author's works are the measure of depravity, all authors are in trouble. Stephen King would be in our deepest, darkest dungeon.

Apparently, the shooter showed many signs of needing help, and it's a shame he didn't get the help he needed. It seems he had been hurting for a long time and that he possibly had a psychotic break. What all the survivors are going through I can't imagine. I think a lot about the shooter's parents and sister in particular, for they are in a most awkward position now--and will be as long as they live. I hope they can soon find some peace.

A few days ago, I ventured to YouTube and saw that parts of the shooter's video had been posted there. I looked at the comments posted for one of the videos. I was disappointed and saddened to see so many crude, cruel, bitter things being said. Once in a while, we bloggers experience this: a person hiding under a mask of anonymity saying terrible, hurtful things. It seems to me that we don't need anymore hatred and bitterness in the world; there's too much already. Public discourse has become crude; people in all walks of life have become mean--they no longer see with the eye of the heart, as Native Americans say.

As ever, I look to literature to steady me, to feed me, and just this morning I found this poem from the collection Teeth. It serves as a reminder that hands don't just destroy, whether with guns or words, and that's what's important for me to remember right now:

Consider the Hands that Write This Letter
by Aracelis Girmay
after Marina Wilson

Consider the hands
that write this letter.
The left palm pressed flat against the paper,
as it has done before, over my heart,
in peace or reverence
to the sea or some beautiful thing
I saw once, felt once: snow falling
like rice flung from the giants' wedding,
or the strangest birds. & consider, then,
the right hand, & how it is a fist,
within which a sharpened utensil,
similar to the way I've held a spade,
match to the wick, the horse's reins,
loping, the very fists
I've seen from the roads to Limay & Estelí.
For years, I have come to sit this way:
one hand open, one hand closed,
like a farmer who puts down seeds & gathers up
the food that comes from that farming.
Or, yes, it is like the way I've danced
with my left hand opened around a shoulder
& my right hand closed inside
of another hand. & how
I pray, I pray for this
to be my way: sweet
work alluded to in the body's position
to its paper:
left hand, right hand
like an open eye, an eye closed:
one hand flat against the trapdoor,
the other hand knocking, knocking.