Test 4 – Message in a bottle

L.L. here, with Random Acts of Poetry. Standing on a proverbial seashore, prying open a mysterious bottle.

This is the metaphor Edward Hirsch uses to describe the experience of reading poetry (okay, he’s using an image from Celan, but let’s not get too complicated). Says Hirsch in How to Read a Poem: And Fall in Love with Poetry…

“Imagine you have gone down to the shore and there, amidst the other debris—the seaweed and rotten wood, the crushed cans and dead fish—you find an unlikely looking bottle from the past. You bring it home and discover a message inside. This letter, so strange and disturbing, seems to have been making its way toward someone for a long time, and now that someone turns out to be you.”

Have you ever felt this way, upon reading something, poem or otherwise?

Hirsch wraps up his thoughts, saying, “Thus it is for all of us who read poems, who become the secret addressees of literary texts. I am at home in the middle of the night and suddenly hear myself being called, as if by name. I go over and take down the book—the message in the bottle—because tonight I am its recipient, its posterity, its heartland.”

These days, I rarely finish a book if I do not seem to be its recipient. And I don’t return to a poem if I have not become its heartland.

So, Erin, know that in your poem I found a call to something. Some pressing onward, some hope, some longing… an invitation to begin, though I’m not entirely sure what (maybe that art pilgrimage I’ve been toying with?) In any case, it was a pleasure to find your message in a bottle…

Stir Constantly Until Well-Blended

Sometimes you sit at the dining room table amidst the crumbs
And crack open the stack of cookbooks
You flip through the pages containing hearty fixin’s, low-cal dinners,
all-around crowd pleasers
One dish casseroles.

You scan photos for teasers of yummy things to come
Glossy 5X7s of the holiday roast in all its glory, the batch of cookies
ready to surprise your neighbor with grace
Hand-drawn illustrations to lead you through the process
Just so.

You dream and conjure, read and imagine, visualize your shopping
list
While you sip your coffee- Elbows pressing table top crumbs
Scratching down ideas
Boning up on your kitchen smarts

Sometimes you sit at the dining room table amidst an open stack of
cookbooks
But sometime you have to walk into the kitchen
And cook.

And, Jim, your poem also found a place in my heart, as it called me into remembrance of my grandmother, who gradually lost consciousness even though she was technically conscious. How well you describe the past and the future…

I’m really glad my mom
Can’t see her kitchen
I know, it sounds cruel,
Like I’m happy she’s going blind
But, I ache watching her
Arch her neck, tilting her head
Toward nothing…
continue reading

The most powerful writing often has a reader in mind, even if that reader is a figment of our imaginations. So, as we write our poems and pop them into little bottles, blue or green, clear or cloudy, let’s think about who might someday find them… take them to heart, take them home.

Next week’s prompt: let’s continue tracing our homes in poetry. This time we’ll land in the living room. Please post by Thursday, August 6 and leave your link in my comment box.

ALL RAP PARTICIPANTS
Erin’s Stir Constantly Until Well Blended
A Simple Country Girl’s Gather Round and Kitchen
Deb’s Tables are for Eating Too
Prairie Chick’s Kitchen Window
Cindy’s Favorites
ELK’s seven thirty
Suzy’s Infused Memory
Jim’s I’m Really Glad
nAncY’s The Counter
Mom2Six’s Heritage and Riding
Claire’s Souls Reflection
Sara and Sonia’s Going for Ice Cream
Monica’s Missing
Liz’s Home’s Heart
Laura’s Kitchen Prayer Alter
LL’s What the Blue Couch Meant
Joelle’s God on Vacation

Claire Burge. Used with permission. Post written by L.L. Barkat.