Halflife: Poems

When I read Susan Minot's "Poems 4 Am" I thought, in my almost freshman idealism, heading off to Indiana, that she was the way that I wanted to write. I still read that book, often and more often still that I understand what it means to leave and be left. I still hold "Did you always think we'd go/roaming wild over unlit roads?" as one of my favorite quotations that anyone has ever written.

But, I have read a book that takes Minot's quiet sensualism, her understated sexuality and overblown lack of intimacy and does not ask questions. Megan O'Rourke's book of poems, Halflife, is the first book since Minot that I wish I would have written. Many times it was enforced to me that I should not write with the "I" until I understood what possibly the I could mean. I believed this, hook line and sinker and so wrote poems about Vietnam, about homelessness and about a million other things I didn't know. I think, however, it took me writing a lot of poems about things I didn't know for me to reach the conclusion that there are things and selves that I do, infact, know. So, I am learning to use the I. To not vary my speech pattern in a poem and still capture the reader. I am learning that the tricks [ask a question here, or maybe put some quotations in...] are for beginners.

Reading O'Rourke's book made me think I might be ready, or that I am indeed writing, intermediate poems. There were poems in there begging to be read aloud, and others that I had to close the book and walk away for a moment because everything in the world seemed to be resting on my interaction with those pages. Those are the kinds of poems I want to write. Initially, I loved Minot for her understanding of the self, to embrace her longing, her loneliness and her desire. She knew the self. But O'Rourke knows the self in relation to the world; she too is poignantly aware of what she is missing as a self, but knows that this, in relation to the world is important too.

She only asks one question in the entire 100 pages of poems. "Do ghosts have neuroses?" It is moments like that that make me wish I could get a job simply writing poems. It makes me hate 5th graders and grading tests and having to show up to work every morning. It makes me want to quit my job, go to Spain with CA and write like I did when I was in Argentina. It makes me want to do irrational, terrible things. Or wonderful ones too. This, in and of itself, is the point of poems. If only I could get someone else to long in that same way.