When is poetry not just poetry?

Living what you write

I’m the organist for First Christian Church of Decatur, and as a practicing Jew, this means I get to enjoy services that I wouldn’t ordinarily seek out were it not my job to be present for them. The services at First Christian are great: incisive sermons, inspiring testimonies and…uh…the music’s pretty good too! And sometimes I get a message that really hits home for me.

That was the case last Sunday when the opening inspirational reading was a poem by Anna K. Blaedel called “our yet again yes.”

when light disperses, whiteness shatters

and a kaleidoscope of color spills out.

some shatterings are necessary

and some we only, barely, maybe, survive

and some we can't, or don't, or won't

but stars, too, are born from shattering

they offer their sonorous invocation:

shine forth you busted open burned out

spilling over holy messy broken beauty!

this blessing is for when even the most determined

individual efforts, my love, can carry you no further

nor get you any freer, nor any more alive.

surrender, my love. only lifeforce required.

shed what no longer serves you, or never did.

hold close only the tender courage

of your yet again Yes.

I’m currently reconciling my lack of financial success with my nearly constant efforts to promote my writing and my music. The poem reinforced the idea I’ve been coming to, that despite what internet gurus want you to believe (and pay them to help you find), success, especially in the arts, is not guaranteed through hard work alone. You really have to write to the market.

On the other hand, if you are inclined, like I am, to create out of an inner need, and then try find an audience for it, you are starting the race about two laps behind. Not only is it hard, it’s discouraging. And the question many of us have after decades of putting our work into the world is “Should I continue?”

I liked the poem because it seemed to say, “Yes.” It spoke directly to me and my experience. I was able to fully own its message: Let it go, do your thing, say yes again.

When I’m struck by a great poem I like to seek out the author, maybe even make contact. So I looked Anna Blaedel up on the internet. She was harder to locate than I thought she’d be, and when I found her, I discovered why she’d written the poem.

Blaedel was an Iowa City pastor who’d pushed back on the United Methodist Church's restrictions on gay clergy and same-sex marriage. After being accused of violating church doctrine by being “a self-avowed, practicing homosexual,” she took an indefinite leave of absence after a three-year battle. https://www.thegazette.com/news/iowa-city-pastor-anna-blaedel-takes-indefinite-leave-of-absence-for-being-gay/

My essay is not about whether or not Blaedel should have faced the charges. You can hold whatever opinion you want about that and keep reading. This article is about poetry.

Because whatever your feelings about Blaedel’s stance, everyone can agree that the ordeal took an immense toll on her. In this interview by Little Village, Blaedel describes her process:

“Thus began over three years of a wild and intense chapter of life, as a very private, introverted person under very public charge. Tyler Schwaller, the other out, queer clergyperson ordained through the Iowa Conference, would formally become my clergy support person, and eventually my clergy legal counsel. I gave interviews, and accepted invitations to teach, preach and speak in public forums, pulpits and classrooms across the country. I preached at the National Cathedral. I wore my clergy collar while serving as the grand marshal of the local Pride parade.

“Within an hour, three clergy colleagues, all cis-het white men, none of whom I was in direct relationship with, had filed a formal complaint. They misspelled my name. A week or so later, on my way out of town to attend a writing residency in the hope of finally turning focused attention to this dissertation, I received formal notice of the complaint by the presiding bishop.

“As the years under complaint accumulated, broader solidarities bloomed, faded and shapeshifted. The movement for queer and trans liberation within the UMC fractured into efforts toward institutional assimilation, acceptability and individual gain. I became too alone, isolated in the onslaught. It took a toll on my health. It was traumatic, and I don’t use that term lightly.”

Again, whether you think Blaedel deserved her consequences or not, the fact is that she stood up for what she believed, and she paid for it. She hung in there until she couldn’t anymore.

And that means that her poem isn’t just a poem.

That means she lived it.

What she’s describing isn’t just some feel-good mantra. She’s not speaking to “all of us,” telling us to just hold on. She’s speaking to herself as a person who has been ripped to shreds and has decided to take the only step left to her…forward.

That made the poem painful for me in a way. I was almost ashamed, like a voyeur.

I wondered if I’d ever written anything that personal, that genuine, if my writing to the “universal audience” wasn’t somewhat ridiculous, and if the “truths” I purported to tell were actually earned.

It’s a good question.

I’d like to share one more thing with you. For many years I’ve had a love affair with this work, also found in the transom, grabbed, and preserved for my own sanity. “What He Thought,” by Heather McHugh is probably my favorite poem. I found the story in it upended me, got under my skin and tore a hole on its way out.

But I never understood why until I read Blaedel’s poem.

Here’s McHugh:

What He Thought

for Fabbio Doplicher

We were supposed to do a job in Italy
and, full of our feeling for
ourselves (our sense of being
Poets from America) we went
from Rome to Fano, met
the Mayor, mulled
a couple matters over (what's
"cheap date" they asked us;what's
"flat drink?")Among Italian literati

we could recognize our counterparts:
the academic, the apologist,
the arrogant, the amorous,
the brazen and the glib--and there was one

administrator (the conservative), in suit
of regulation gray, who like a good tour guide
with measured pace and uninflected tone narrated
sights and histories the hired van hauled us past.
Of all, he was most politic--and least poetic,
so it seemed. Our last few days in Rome
(when all but three of the New World Bards had flown)
I found a book of poems this
unprepossessing one had written: it was there
in the pensione room (a room he'd recommended)
where it must have been abandoned by
the German visitor (was there a bus of them?)
to whom he had inscribed and dated it a month before.
I couldn't read Italian either, so I put the book
back in the wardrobe's dark. We last Americans
were due to leave tomorrow. For our parting evening then
our host chose something in a family restaurant,and there
we sat and chatted, sat and chewed,
till, sensible it was our last
big chance to be poetic, make
our mark, one of us asked

"What's poetry?
Is it the fruits and vegetables and
marketplace of Campo dei Fiori, or
the statue there?" Because I was

the glib one, I identified the answer
instantly, I didn't have to think-- "The truth
is both, it's both" I blurted out. But that
was easy. That was easiest to say. What followed
taught me something about difficulty,
for our underestimated host spoke out,

all of a sudden, with a rising passion, and he said:

The statue represents Giordano Bruno,
brought to be burned in the public square
because of his offense against
authority, which is to say
the Church. His crime was his belief
the universe does not revolve around
the human being: God is no
fixed point or central government,but rather is
poured in waves through all things. All things
move. "If God is not the soul itself, He is
the soul of the soul of the world." Such was
his heresy. The day they brought him
forth to die they feared he might
incite the crowd (the man was famous
for his eloquence). And so his captors
placed upon his face
an iron mask, in which
he could not speak. That's
how they burned him. That is how
he died: without a word, in front
of everyone.

And poetry--

(we'd all
put down our forks by now, to listen to
the man in gray; he went on
softly)--

poetry

is what
he thought, but did not say.

I’m brought to tears each time. There’s something painful about the written-down-truth that only exists in lived experience. Hence, the idea of a man who is unable to speak his beliefs, composing a poem in his head, gives one pause about carelessly spreading thoughts around in verse. It makes one feel like there really is a Santa Claus, and you’d better watch out.

There are so many poems in the world, and I’d offer that 98% of them are just words that sound nice together (or don’t). One-and-eight-tenths percent are high-quality, crafted art. And two-tenths of a percent, if that many, including the canon of poets we consider seminal and masterful, are the real deal.

Works to keep, that meant something to them and can still mean something to us.

You can bet that they paid for the right to write it.