First Writing Since.

My favorite poem of all time is Suheir Hammad’s “First Writing Since.” Pause now and watch her performance of it on Def Poetry Jam. It is unparalleled. Beyond its brilliant imagery, this poem has been so meaningful to me as more than a poem, as a genre. I’ve listened to it so many times that I have taken it in on a cellular level. I find myself rewriting stanzas of it into my own experience. First writing since my husband left… First writing since he called me a bad mother… First writing since the news…

It surprises me when this poem crops up, sometimes in the midst of the most mundane experiences. First writing since my son stopped wearing diapers. First writing since I cleaned out the closet. First writing since I stopped hoping.

“Please God, let it be a nightmare, wake me now…

David Whyte, in what I think is the greatest recorded conversation of all time, says:

“I began to realize that the only places where things were actually real was at this frontier between what you think is you and what you think is not you, that whatever you desire of the world will not come to pass exactly as you will like it. But the other mercy is that whatever the world desires of you will also not come to pass, and what actually occurs is this meeting, this frontier. But it’s astonishing how much time human beings spend away from that frontier, abstracting themselves out of their bodies, out of their direct experience, and out of a deeper, broader, and wider possible future that’s waiting for them if they hold the conversation at that frontier level. Half of what’s about to occur is unknown both inside you and outside you. John O’Donohue, a mutual friend of both of us, used to say that one of the necessary tasks is this radical letting alone of yourself in the world, letting the world speak in its own voice and letting this deeper sense of yourself speak out.”

Suheir Hammad’s poem, reminds us that regardless of what she has experienced, she has returned to the pen. It shows us one way in which we can live at this frontier: by documenting our experiences in poetry or prose.

It is one way in which I live at this frontier.