![\"15221101821_df7492d443_z\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/162\/2016\/07\/15221101821_df7492d443_z-300x199.jpg\")
\u201cWriting poems is a duel \/ that no one wins\u2026\u201d As I\u2019m reading the poem that opens with these words, I think: this could be describing my life.<\/p>\n\u201cWriting poems is a duel \/ that no one wins\u2026\u201d As I\u2019m reading the poem that opens with these words, I think: this could be describing my life.<\/p>\n
The poem is called \u201cWriting Poems.\u201d It\u2019s by the superb contemporary Polish poet Adam Zagajewski, in his new collection, Unseen Hand<\/em>. And in fact, nearly all the poems in this collection could be describing my life\u2014because the \u201cduel\u201d that Zagajewski refers to is between opposites that battle each other, or sometimes balance each other, or sometimes swing back and forth between each other.<\/p>\n This is Zagajewski\u2019s vision not only of writing poems but of living life. And it\u2019s my own experience of living.<\/p>\n My husband has ongoing and seemingly interminable heart disease dis-ease, yet he delights in a phone call from our son and laughs heartily (hmmm, interesting pun) during a friend\u2019s visit. His days are like Zagajewski\u2019s poem-writing:<\/p>\n Writing poems is a duel That shadow so huge that it\u2019s a butterfly\u2019s view of a mountain range: this is my life when I\u2019m overwhelmed by my own chronic illnesses and my husband\u2019s. We flutter weakly inside the shadow\u2019s gloom. Then suddenly a match is lit: our distress recedes\u2014even if only for the time it takes for a match to burn out.<\/p>\n Zagajewski\u2019s poem continues with a litany of details of this duel, this \u201ctrench warfare,\u201d as the poem also calls it:<\/p>\n calm contemplation of a brutal world, Zagajewski is a master of the tentative, the transient. These lines make me smile, so perfectly do they delineate my experience of the texture of living.<\/p>\n From ecstatic<\/em> to unsatisfied<\/em> in the space of a comma; from \u201ceverything passes\u201d to \u201cnothing is lost\u201d via an unexpected solitary \u201chope.\u201d And then that brilliant image of \u201cconversation without a final word\u201d: what image could better evoke our sense (my sense, at least) of an unfulfilled longing for completion?<\/p>\n For me, it\u2019s the day-to-day unknowingness that\u2019s so unnerving: not knowing how each of us will feel physically, not knowing how much longer we have together, not knowing when that inevitable final illness will strike. So I can be in \u201ccalm contemplation\u201d one moment, then uneasily \u201cunsatisfied\u201d the next.<\/p>\n When I experience a \u201cmomentary truce,\u201d as Zagajewski goes on to call the lulls in the \u201cduel\u201d that is his controlling metaphor, I celebrate it as a blessing.<\/p>\n Actually, my husband and I try to celebrate the entire duel as a blessing. With Psalm 16 we say (and pray to believe), \u201cThe lot marked out for me is my delight.\u201d But the unknowingness still weighs on us. That\u2019s why so many of Zagajewski\u2019s poems in this collection resonate with me: the many poems whose theme is life\u2019s uncertainty.<\/p>\n In \u201cSwifts Storming St. Catherine\u2019s Church,\u201d he muses on<\/p>\n my life unfinished, uncertain \u201cVita Contemplativa\u201d ends:<\/p>\n So this is it. What we do not know. This is Zagajewski\u2019s core vision: simultaneously we live within opposites, or are hurled back and forth between them. Dark water, brightness. Joy and fear.<\/p>\n My husband has a day when he\u2019s feeling pretty well, then suddenly chest pain and extreme fatigue grip him. Or, instead, suddenly he feels better\u2014enough to do something that he loves, like gardening.<\/p>\n His experience is like that of passersby in Zagajewski\u2019s \u201cJoseph Street in Winter,\u201d who seem aimless, then stop short\u2014<\/p>\n like the gardener, who leans Unexpectedly either of the opposites can manifest itself: the outbreak of war, the blossoming of hydrangea. (And the wild disproportion of these opposites! Can a hydrangea\u2019s blossoming really balance the eruption of war? Zagajewski always makes us ponder what really matters.)<\/p>\n Though in my daily prayers, I pray to take whatever comes that day with equanimity, I can\u2019t help but experience life as the mixture of bitterness and pleasure that Zagajewski evokes in these poems.<\/p>\n One particular poem with this vision stands out because this unsettling mixture is thrust on him by the world itself. The poem, \u201cJanuary 27,\u201d reflects on the coincidences of this date:<\/p>\n On this Friday we didn\u2019t know Yet somehow, because he has a fundamentally optimistic spirit, Zagajewski can muddle through life\u2019s perplexing opposites and come out at a poem\u2019s close with an image of hope.<\/p>\n That\u2019s why I cling to his vision at the end of \u201cSelf-Portrait in Airplane.\u201d He\u2019s so exhausted on the plane that he appears to be dead, holding his head in his hands,<\/p>\n but inside it a poem is being born.<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Peggy Rosenthal<\/a>\u00a0is director of\u00a0Poetry Retreats<\/a>\u00a0and writes widely on poetry as a spiritual resource. Her books include\u00a0Praying through Poetry: Hope for Violent Times <\/em>(Franciscan Media), and\u00a0The Poets\u2019 Jesus\u00a0<\/em>(Oxford). See Amazon<\/a>\u00a0for a full list. She also teaches an online\u00a0course, \u201cPoetry as a Spiritual Practice,\u201d<\/a> through\u00a0Image<\/em>\u2019s Glen Online program<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n Image above by Mark Collins, used under a Creative Commons license.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cWriting poems is a duel \/ that no one wins\u2026\u201d As I\u2019m reading the poem that opens with these words, I think: this could be describing my life. The poem is called \u201cWriting Poems.\u201d It\u2019s by the superb contemporary Polish poet Adam Zagajewski, in his new collection, Unseen Hand. And in fact, nearly all the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1050,"featured_media":10133,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,1457],"tags":[3766,3764,341,415,3742,981,3765,3572,122,525],"class_list":["post-10111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-peggy-rosenthal","category-personal-reflection","tag-adam-zagajewski","tag-contrast","tag-fear","tag-hope","tag-joy","tag-mystery","tag-opposites","tag-peggy-rosenthal","tag-poetry","tag-uncertainty"],"yoast_head":"\n
\nthat no one wins\u2014on one side
\na shadow rises, massive as a mountain range
\nviewed by a butterfly, on the other,
\nonly brief glimpses of brightness,
\nimages and thoughts like a match flame
\non the night when winter is born in pain<\/em>.<\/p>\n
\nexplosive joy, ecstatic, unsatisfied,
\nregret, everything passes, hope, nothing is lost,
\na conversation without a final word\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n
\n<\/em><\/p>\n
\nmade of joy and fear\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n
\nWe live in the abyss. In dark water. In brightness.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n
\nagainst his shovel handle, dreaming,
\nand doesn\u2019t see that war
\nhas unexpectedly erupted
\nor that the hydrangea has bloomed.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nwhat to celebrate and what to mourn\u2014
\nit was Holocaust Memorial Day
\nand Mozart\u2019s birthday.
\nOur memory was perplexed.
\nOur imagination lost its way.<\/em><\/p>\n![\"GL](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/162\/2015\/09\/GL-banner-1024x279.jpg\")
<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n