Transcript

I’m Major Jackson, and this is The Slowdown.

When teaching, somedays I find myself talking “textual practices” when really, what I want to discuss is the great difficulty of emoting, which is why we have poetry. Your local bookstore’s poetry section is full of field guides to feeling.

Some cultural heritages forbid tears. Some prefer to “keep calm and carry on.” Some people mirror the modes they were raised in, others turn 180 degrees. In my household passions ran high; I’m talking full throttle, and so, I subscribe to the School of Restraint. Learning to emote might be more difficult than learning to walk. At one point, we were all apprentices at that, too, but then learned to run. If only we had stood out of our crawl and learned to express ourselves with as much assurance and clarity.

Not everyone gets close to their feelings through reading. Some shirk at turning to poetry for lessons on how, say, to grieve a friend’s death. But reading poems or stories is like a map to a refined emotional landscape. Reading is like wandering through our dreams where the details blur once we awaken yet we are still changed throughout our day. Sometimes, we want to be lost, but what is to be gained when we find where we’re going? When we see what our subconsciouses are processing?

Today’s poem suggests the benefit and challenge of consuming literature is that we thaw into our nourished lives, where existence is sometimes hazy.

Theories of Influence
by Anselm Berrigan

I do not know how I got through the first
day after the storm but recall that during

the night, doubting what I had seen
with my own eyes I walked once more

through the park. Where and in what
time I truly was that day in Orfordness

I cannot say even now as I type these
words. I cannot say how long I stood

by one of the three windows, engrossed
in that view. Whenever I rested on that bed

over the next few days, my consciousness
began to dissolve at the edges, so that at

times I could hardly have said how I
had got there or indeed where I was.

I have only an indistinct notion of how
beautiful it all was, said Anne, nor can I

properly describe now the feeling of being
driven in that limousine that appeared

to have no one at the wheel. I cannot
remember whether it was she who

turned the conversation to the fact
that nobody wears mourning any more

not even a black band on the sleeve
or a black stud in the lapel. But why

it was that on my first visit to Michael’s
house I instantly felt as if I lived or had

once lived there, in every respect precisely
as he does, I cannot say. Instead I left

the building with a sick feeling in the pit
of my stomach & walked & walked without

being able to grasp even the simplest thought
well past the Westkreuz or the Hallesches

Tor or the Tiergarten; I can no longer say
where. I cannot say how long I walked about

in that state of mind or how I found a way
out. I no longer remember if it was the Lord

Asquith the Aristo or the Fabiola. To this day
I do not know what to make of such stories.

                                                                                      after W. G. Sebald

“Theories of Influence” by Anselm Berrigan from DON’T FORGET TO LOVE ME © 2024 Anselm Berrigan. Used by permission of the poet and Wave Books.