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As some of you saw and remarked on, I responded to the vicissitudes of recent times by impulsively adopting a Persona.
This is a simple ramekin of pudding: three poems I’ve turned to during A Week. Of, among other things, watching terror unfurl in Lebanon, feeling deep dread over likely geopolitical escalations over the next few week, reading about the ultraright movement to settle Southern Lebanon, worrying about the current coin-flip US election while experiencing ongoing blackpilling about the state of US politics.
Each poem took me out of myself a little, allowed me to feel and see something with greater precision. Maybe you’ll like them too.
When Evil-Doing Comes Like Falling Rain by Bertholt Brecht (1935)
XXXIX from The Arab Apocalypse by Etel Adnan (1989)
The Undertaking by Louise Glück (1971)
The Glück, more than many poems, is one I’ve turned to in the last five or so years, intoning, in moments on the subway or walking in the city or biking at night: The darkness lifts, imagine, in your lifetime.
Its beauty and briefness, its richness and simplicity make me treasure The Undertaking. Its opacity does, too. I find it all the more interesting because Glück is so often and elsewhere a somewhat merciless poet, a dealer in intense and cold beauty. The warmth of this poem, every time, startles me. And now / all fear gives way: the light / Looks after you, you feel the waves’ goodwill
An undertaking: a task before us, a commitment, a project. A formal promise or pledge. The undertaking presented to us in the poem might be, in one view, getting through a time of deep trial, or alternately, moving through life itself. Life itself as undertaking, wide as the Nile.
The river films with lilies…god damn.
Okay bas. Come see me talk to Dionne Brand this Monday1 and read with Ruth Madievsky, Simon Wu, and Erin Somers this Friday.
xoxo,
Eric Adams
P.S. Happy birthday, ALF! We love you.
If you want to come but can’t spare the $10, email and let me know, I have two comps.
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letters and essays about fiction, power, beauty and how we live and think, from a novelist, nice things enjoyer, sometimes-organizer. "This newsletter feels like the best of the old internet." - Lit Hub
omg thank you for the bday shoutout i love you <3
I've turned to the same Brecht poem too but a different Glück one: The Night Migrations and Afterword!