Monday, May 9, 2016

Simone Weil 15


It is necessary to have had a revelation of reality through joy in order to find reality through suffering. Turn that equation around: because his eyes radiate love, he reads us poems about cruelty, a broomstick up the ass. He reads softly, so only we can hear. I ask a man at the register to tone down. Poetry is a necessary fiction, when it is not fact. Change is in the air, our cousin says. He was a young woman, about to be married, and then he was an older man. He was an abused girl who spoke in tongues whose sentences now rest flat. I don't like flat poetry, a colleague says. Nor do I like sentiment. Yet there's poetry in trauma's rehearsal. Suffering holds us close, but joy gives us leave.

                                                              --for TC Tolbert
                                                                 

3 comments:

Karen said...

I feel like I need to sit with this one for a bit. It's uncomfortable, of course - no way to read the broomstick without discomfort. "Poetry is a necessary fiction" falls flat for me. I'm drawn to "Change is in the air" etc. "Nor do I like sentiment" - who's saying this? What is trauma's rehearsal? Somehow, that line feels like it's commenting on the actions wrongly connected to a traumatizing event. Great last line.

susan said...

The person saying those things is a colleague in a meeting. But lots of people say that. "Trauma's rehearsal" is the saying it again in a poem. It cuts both ways, as it might release the trauma, or it might make it worse.

Janet said...

Turning the initial statement around: it is necessary to feel joy before you can discuss suffering, or ... Wong on this.