Poem of the Week, by Louis Simpson
There was a time in my life when, if I saw a dark bird on my lawn staring at me, I worried that someone I loved was about to be hurt. Certain people around me believed in signs and superstitions and I, with porous borders, took on their fears. Living like that is exhausting, and one day, I decided to pay attention to my own radar instead.
But if you’ve gone a long time under the influence of others, it’s hard to reclaim faith in yourself. You have to relearn how to distinguish between false danger and real danger, which is sometimes invisible, like the time in my life when a place I lived in became filled with a menacing energy – I could feel it.
The choices were either move out or fight back. So I hauled the furniture outside and washed it with soap and water. Dragged the rugs out and beat them on the grass. Opened all the windows. Ran around from room to room and outside, waving my arms and yelling at the dark birds to get the hell out of there. It took an afternoon, but by sunset, the place was mine again. You have to fight the forces that want you crushed. When I read this poem below, I got goosebumps.
The Hour of Feeling, by Louis Simpson
Love, now a universal birth,
From heart to heart is stealing.
From earth to man, from man to earth:
—lt is the hour of feeling.
Wordsworth
A woman speaks:
“I hear you were in San Francisco.
What did they tell you about me?”
She begins to tremble. I can hear the sound
her elbow made, rapping on wood.
It was something to see and to hear—
not like the words that pass for life,
things you read about in the papers.
People who read a deeper significance
into everything, every whisper…
who believe that a knife crossed with a fork
are a signal…by the sheer intensity
of their feeling leave an impression.
And with her, tangled in her hair,
came the atmosphere, four walls,
the avenues of the city
at twilight, the lights going on.
When I left I started to walk.
Once I stopped to look at a window
displaying ice skates and skis.
At another with Florsheim shoes…
Thanks to the emotion with which she spoke
I can see half of Manhattan,
the canyons and the avenues.
There are signs high in the air
above Times Square and the vicinity:
a sign for Schenley’s Whiskey,
for Admiral Television,
and a sign saying Milltag, whatever that means.
I can see over to Brooklyn and Jersey,
and beyond there are meadows,
and mountains and plains.
For more information on Louis Simpson, please click here.
My daughter and I were in Istanbul for a week, our first time in a country where the call to prayer sounded five times a day. I remember sitting by the window at sunset as the song of the muezzins rose in the air. It was beautiful and unearthly and I wanted to hold onto it so it would never end. It’s an almost panicky feeling, that wanting to hold on. Long ago, as a means of coping with it, I began to tell myself that You can always come back, Alison. 
The suicide of Alan Krueger last week, a man I didn’t know but whose work I admire, a man clearly beloved by so many, hit me hard. It brought me back to my early twenties, when the suicide of someone I loved both ended his life and permanently altered mine. Crying comes hard to me and does not bring relief, but it came anyway this week. At one point I found myself alone, apologizing out loud for things I wish I’d done differently. 
One of the top-rated MFA programs in the country once recruited me to fly out and interview for a fiction position. A day into the interview, deep in discussion of teaching technique with the faculty and students, I subtly began to portray myself as less interested in criticism and more interested in nurturing a creative spark. This wasn’t what they wanted in a teacher and I knew it. I was in effect throwing the interview, but I wasn’t sure why. 
A few days ago at sunset the sky was unearthly. The Painter came home, grabbed his camera and tripod and headed to the beach to take a bunch of photos. My internal, unspoken take on this, having never seen him take a sunset photo before: You had a frustrating day in the studio. Nothing was working with your paintings. You feel blocked, so you’re trying something new, to change up the energy and get things moving again. 
We were classmates. He was a country kid, like me, and like me, he was condemned to ride the bus for miles and miles. I dreaded that bus every day of my life –it was a place of fear and intimidation and endless cruelty. 
My daughter at eight: What would happen if you die? I tell her she would be very sad but everyone would take such good care of her, and she says No, they wouldn’t. Because I would be dead too, of sadness. My son at four shuffles out of the bedroom in his first pair of flip-flops, having put them on himself with the strap between his second and third toes. It’s fine, mama, don’t worry, they don’t hurt, I can walk. My grandmother, flustered and red-faced in the small kitchen where she’s trying to make dinner for me: Oh Alison, I’m just no use at all anymore. Me outwardly protesting but inwardly stricken by the knowledge that in that single instant, everything is now changed. 
My five year old nephew is currently huddled behind closed doors inside his family’s new freestanding pantry, where he fits neatly into the bottom cupboard. I know this because my brother texts me ongoing updates as to this fixation with the pantry, along with the fact that my nephew just declared he’s no longer a ninja genius but a secret agent. (Didn’t surprise me at all. I never bought the ninja genius line.) My nephew cracks me up and breaks my heart the way all little kids, over and over, break my heart. 
In the lobby of the Minnesota Public Radio headquarters are three white egg-shaped chairs. Whenever I’m there I crawl into one of them, sit cross-legged, and close my eyes. Sitting in one is like wearing a warm sweatshirt with the hood pulled entirely over your head. My love for those chairs is inordinate. When I picture a safe place to comfort myself when sad or troubled, those egg-shaped chairs come to mind. 
Alison McGhee 