It was not very long into our writerly friendship when I was handed a book of his to borrow.
Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry by American poet Jane Hirshfield. A paperback book, timeworn ever before it made its way to my holding, the book felt too beloved for me to accept the responsibility of it while in my care.
I have a generally sloppy way about me. I can be organized it's just that I have a lot of creative thoughts on the go at any given time and probably that fact is reflected in my home environment. Certainly it is.
My bedside table is stacked high to tipping with piles of books, old journals still on the go, an odd magazine or two, my lamp. Where would this book fit in? How would I keep it safe?
I recall at the time it seemed to me like I was being handed someone else's heart while it was still beating and I without a steady anything to hold it with. I didn't ask for this kindness...his kindness.
But ahhh, his kindness plus Jane Hirshfield's brilliance made it all ok. And definitely any fears or problems relating to enjoying borrowing the book were all just unhelpful constructs in my own mind.
Funny things eh-- those unhelpful mental constructs. Funny indeed.
In honour of her place among modern poets and to recognize her sharing her voice with others on Sat for a huge virtual poetry event in New York, I welcome you to a poem by Jane Hirshfield.
In the end,
I was like others.
A person.
Sometimes embarrassed,
sometimes afraid.
When "Fire" was shouted,
some ran toward it,
some away--
I neck- deep among them.
Jane Hirshfield 2017
https://poets.org/poem/others-0
This poem makes me cry for the ten thousand ways I feel not human; so very unlike others.
All the deep feeling and not fitting in socially, cut deep and ancient ruts in important places in me. Reading this I remember that it's ok to be how I am. It is the only way I can be and really, I'm not so different after all. Neither then, are you.
And from AIO 2015 Creativity Project notes, this Jane Hirshfield quote from Nine Gates:
"Primordial experience is nameless and without form; still we find our way into the life of expressive language by means of an inner attention tuned to the outer world's voice. Images, metaphors, similes, and stories are sliding doors, places of opening through which subjective and objective may penetrate and become each other."
Jane Hirshfield
Be well all,
Jill
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