Welcome to my second column, in which I’m going to continue exploring the theme of poetry and empathy. What else can I do? Every day in America seems to up the ante. Left and right engage in epic clashes. Like separated parents fighting over custody, proponents on both sides seem to have forgotten the safety and well-being of the child they are caring for – which I would define as our civil rights, our constitution, and our very civility. A mainstream culture has been created that benefits some and leaves out many. We are in a moment of collective reckoning about this, so that we can expand the idea of what being an American is.
In this time of unprecedented polarization, the simple, noble art of storytelling stands as a unique tool, allowing a person’s experience to unfold in their own words and on their own terms. Who, after all, can tell us what we experience? Our narratives unfold in the form of prisms, glass through which is reflected points of view, temperaments, feelings, and opinions – all the varying responses we make to life.
“Glass half full, glass half empty” is one shorthand phrase we use to show how people experience their lives differently. Two people who witnessed the same event may tell radically different stories.
Even though we are encouraged to see life in the “glass half full” mode, the truth is that poets are often people who peer at life in the “glass half empty” side of the issue. We are known for our melancholy, our moping. While this isn’t true of every poet, there is a kernel of truth behind the stereotype. Some of the melancholy is self-involved, no doubt. Yet some poets are gazing at their half-empty glasses and wondering, “Who are the ones who can’t be here?”
Who couldn’t get out of this bed this morning – too ill, drunk, or despondent? Who had their unemployment cut off, and can’t pay their rent? Who isn’t safe at home? And who is a target on the streets? These are the questions some poets (and not only poets) ask. And when they answer, it often takes the form of a song or a story.
“All the lonely people/where do they all come from?/All the lonely people/Where do they all belong?” When I heard these words, from the Beatles song “Eleanor Rigby” – released on their iconic 1966 album, “Revolver,” I immediately felt less alone.
I began listening to “Revolver” in 1969, when I was 10 years old, a maladjusted and, yes, melancholy – pre-teenager; there was immense comfort in knowing that someone cared enough to formulate that question. It gave me hope that some day, sometime, my story would be received by someone, and that I would be able to receive their story in turn. And that this mutual act of listening would transform us both.
Relating to someone’s story is a completely different experience from relating to their ideas. Ideas divide people; they come from analysis. They have their time and their place; used rightly, they are useful tools, like a sharp knife you keep in your toolkit.
Stories, on the other hand, are somatic. They reside in the body, in the place where we are vulnerable. They touch on experiences that are common to all human beings: birth, illness, courtship and marriage, family, work, friendship. Endings and beginnings.
Edgar Lee Masters (1868-1950) wrote a book-length poem, “Spoon River Anthology,” in which voices of deceased members of a small-town community have their say: one poem for each person. Each poem is like a headstone, bearing the deceased’s name. For some, a few lines sums up their life’s yearnings; other stories require more explaining.
In the opening poem, “The Hill,” Masters poses a question which, in a similar manner to songwriters Lennon and McCartney, seems to be asking after a missing piece of himself:
Where are Elmer, Herman, Bert, Tom and Charley,
The weak of will, the strong of arm, the clown, the boozer, the fighter?
All, all, are sleeping on the hill.
One passed in a fever,
One was burned in a mine,
One was killed in a brawl…
All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill.
Where are Ella, Kate, Mag, Lizzie and Edith,
The tender heart, the simple soul, the loud, the proud, the happy one?
All, all, are sleeping on the hill.
One died in shameful child-birth,
One of a thwarted love,
One at the hands of a brute in a brothel…
All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill.
In the above section, and in the 244 poems that follow, Masters illuminates the central concerns, yearnings, frustrations, and triumphs – both public and private – of each individual. Through exploring their uniqueness, something paradoxical happens: the reader starts realizing the wholeness of the community, and how each person inter-relates within it.
This sameness within difference is evident in the lines above, where the almost hypnotic repetition of each person’s common fate – “sleeping, sleeping, sleeping” in their grave – is interspersed with a recounting of his or her individual fate.
I believe that if we told more stories together, honest stories of what we each have undergone, and slung less ideas at each other, we would be better off.
The left and the right are both eager to weaponize raw experience into their theories, which harden their division further and prove what they already know to be true to be truer. These bubbles must and can be burst. Ukiah is as good a place as any in which to do it, and the vessel of storytelling, with its exquisite centuries-old traditions, is available to everybody.
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August 20, 2020 at 12:39AM
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Poetry and empathy: The power of an individual story - Ukiah Daily Journal
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