I love the
frame on this poem, the lawn care bracketing all
these bits of her daily world. I like the
juxtapositions--mundane financial matters next to the
reminder about her will. The hint of resurrection
(Easter) after the gesture towards death.
A poem, a catalogue poem, like Whitman or Sandburg,
collected from what we all have around us. Our very
lives can be poetry, I say to students, if we just
pay attention. By my count, my mother may have
written more that 10,000 of these poems.
I should collect them, arrange them (how? chronology?
themes? length?), and show a woman's life for over
half a century. We could go on NPR and discuss these
brilliant found objects (yet not quite found, I'd
point out, because constructed deliberately if
habitually), and tell others how each woman's life,
each man's tasks are poetic.
"I didn't even realize I was writing
poems," my mother would say. The interviewer
would sigh knowingly, and I would keep silent but
recognize, inwardly, how her innocence is a part of
the romance and beauty of her words. I would tell my
students that seeing these arrangements this way, as
beautiful in their mundane dailiness, that this is
recognizing "democratic verse." It would
make me famous. |