day 12: I Still Have Everything You Gave Me, by Naomi Shihab Nye

This poem by Naomi Shihab Nye is from an Anthology called The Extraordinary Tide: New Poetry by American Women.

I actually gave this anthology away when I graduated from EMU, but I decided I would read this poem instead of one from a book of poems by Chris Martin that I bought at Gift & Thrift, because his poems don't really work at all for being read aloud. They are like the extreme version of what Stanley Kunitz was saying about poets writing for the page and not the ear. 

"I Still Have Everything You Gave Me" is pretty much the anthem for all unrequited loves. I remember reading it with friends at EMU and at various points we would all just sort of groan dramatically. 

"I do not ache," the poet says. "I would not trade."

"Yeah right," we all responded, flopping our angst-ridden bodies over our beds, or couches, or whatever horizontal surface was available at the time.

**

In other news, I had a dear friend visit me today from Lancaster. We met at Camp Hebron, although we weren't super close during the two summers we worked together. We laugh sometimes about how we didn't realize we were kindred spirits until after we had moved out of geographical proximity to each other; it's okay, though, we've conversed quite well via letter.

I made cinnamon rolls this morning. (The Housemate would be so impressed with me if she were here). I didn't have powdered sugar to make a glaze, so I just made a clear glaze with granulated sugar & water, which worked okay although it was less pretty than a white glaze would have been.

Then we traveled downtown to see the cherry blossoms. So beautiful. Also, so crowded. :)

My letter-writing kindred spirit & I have many things in common - for example, a love of poetry & beauty, an ability to enter conversations on Christian spirituality through these loves, and a recent and profound fascination with the poet Christian Wiman.

I'd like to note here that I was totally vindicated on my labeling of Charles Bukowski as The Hipster Poet. She mentioned Bukowski today and sort of nonchalantly said something about how she wanted to read him more, but he was the current hipster poet on Tumblr so she was putting it off for a while. "What?" I said, disbelieving my ears (she told me earlier that she hadn't read my blog all last week because of all the craziness that comes with end-of-semester happenings in your last semester of college). "You said that without reading what I wrote, right?"

"Yeah," she said, looking at me quizzically.

I laughed, and held out a hand for a high-five.

We had so many interesting conversations during the day, often circling around how we are currently interacting with Jesus and writing and life, and touching at some point this evening on the poet Osip Mandelstam, whose work Wiman has translated from Russian. This Mandelstam poem seems appropriate to share on this day of cherry blossoms:

 And I was alive in the blizzard of the blossoming pear,

    Myself I stood in the storm of the bird-cherry tree.

    It was all leaflife and starshower, unerring, self-shattering power,

    And it was all aimed at me.

    What is this dire delight flowering fleeing always earth?

    What is being? What is truth?

    Blossoms rupture and rapture the air,

    All hover and hammer,

    Time intensified and time intolerable, sweetness raveling rot.

    It is now. It is not.  

We also visited the Smithsonian Museum of African Art. I was enthralled with this little carved crucifix.

All in all, a pretty lovely Saturday.