{"id":10956,"date":"2025-04-21T15:55:19","date_gmt":"2025-04-21T15:55:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/?p=10956"},"modified":"2025-09-23T19:15:53","modified_gmt":"2025-09-23T19:15:53","slug":"prodigal-poems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/21\/prodigal-poems\/","title":{"rendered":"Prodigal Poems"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Prodigal Poems, Or Unexpected Gifts and Earnest Shipwrecks<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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In the face of uncertainty, poetry freely offered brought gifts far beyond professional recognition, and united loved ones and strangers across insurmountable distance.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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By Ralph James Savarese<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Imagine writing poetry to get something: a job, tenure, renown. You tell yourself that the writing is pure even if the effects of its dissemination are not. What the poem does for you materially matters not a whit to the call of truth and beauty. You can be on the make, you insist, and make at the same time. After all, your CV is a kind of second soul.<\/p>

When the pandemic hit and people started dying in my mother\u2019s assisted living facility\u2014first one, then five, then ten, then twenty\u2014I started posting poems on my Facebook page. Poems that I\u2019d just drafted: unrevised, unpublished in any professional sense, yet completely urgent. Quite literally of the moment<\/em>, like this one called \u201cSlow Break\u201d:<\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The hardwoods
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 of the nursing home
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 softly suggest
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 basketball
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 (their yellowish shine
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 like the undertaker\u2019s
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 polyurethane).
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cAssisted Living,” we say,
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 as if the workers
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 were point guards
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 selflessly passing,
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 and the residents, scorers.
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 My mother, on her walker,
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 goes in for a layup.
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 No granny shots for her,
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 no air balls.<\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But the game\u2019s turned
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 darker now: it\u2019s half-
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 time in Aleppo.
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The referee wears
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 a hazmat suit\u2014
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 he can\u2019t keep up
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 with the players.
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 One runs screaming
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 from the court;
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 another mumbles
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 to the dead
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 who are much more
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 obedient, arranging
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 themselves like firewood,
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 like ready-meals
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 in the freezer.<\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 220 miles
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 above the earth,
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 an astronaut clings
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 to a robotic arm,
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 collecting space trash,
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 delivering pills
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 to the stars.
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 When I dial,
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 an orbiting spider
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 sends out cellular
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 filaments, a sonic
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 thread connecting us.
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019m coming to get
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 you,\u201d I say.
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The referee calls
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 traveling.<\/p>

Every morning, overcome with worry, I would scribble a poem, send it like a SpaceX rocket up into the heavens, and watch it land, a few minutes later, through my friends\u2019 comments on Facebook. This expedited message-in-a-bottle allowed me to feel as if I were doing something for my mother: honoring her terror and loneliness. Sixteen hundred miles away from her in Iowa, I was keeping vigil, along with hundreds of people she had never met, at her digital bedside. At times, she was so scared\u2014her facility had set up a morgue in the parking lot; it looked like a wedding tent\u2014that she asked to listen in on the classes I was teaching by Zoom. The students would smile when my lectures put her to sleep and she began to snore. And they would grimace when they heard sirens or the wailing of a resident on her hall.<\/p>

I didn\u2019t care about the quality of the poems I was posting\u2014I really didn\u2019t. The circumstances called for something other than expert judgment and ruthless self-consciousness. That kind of art is terribly belated, not only after the fact but also after the faith. I needed to be like a bird who was unaware of its own flapping, aloft on a current it couldn\u2019t see, at every moment about to fall, barely composing. Said another way, I wanted to be in <\/em>the fact of my mother\u2019s ongoing peril, for she could be taken from me any day. Aesthetics weren\u2019t beside the point\u2014I have been writing for forty years and have absorbed many things that I no longer have to think about\u2014but I wouldn\u2019t allow them to slow down the process of a daily response. Who cares if what I posted didn\u2019t impress. Who cares if what I posted was, at times, mediocre? My friend, the writer Stephen Kuusisto, likes to quote his former teacher Marvin Bell on the matter of questionable poetry: \u201cNo one is hurt by a bad poem.\u201d And no one is hurt by a bad or fumbling prayer. It\u2019s the practice that counts, the continuous posture.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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The platform couldn\u2019t be crasser, and there was, of course, no peer review. Yet what did I care?<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Annie Dillard, who was my first creative writing teacher, says in The Writing Life, <\/em>\u201cSpend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. \u2026 Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.\u201d You open your safe and find your mother, her memory.<\/p>

I had grown tired of the relentless professionalization of art-making and was moved by the number of people who now responded to my poems for her in a heartfelt way. So many more than had read my books or work in journals. As superficial as it sounds, \u201clikes\u201d and \u201cloves\u201d drove me forward. I posted poems like a man on fire with creativity. I was the very definition of “prodigal\u201d: “wastefully extravagant,” “spending my own resources freely and recklessly.” Of course, they weren’t my own resources; they were the Holy Spirit\u2019s or whatever you prefer to call that genesis fountain. But I get ahead of myself.<\/p>

Would Annie approve of Facebook? Would my colleagues? Would my dean? The platform couldn\u2019t be crasser, and there was, of course, no peer review. Yet what did I care? A full professor, I had run the promotional gauntlet. My next rank? Emeritus, which is to say forgotten. And after that? Deceased.<\/em> Please don\u2019t tell me that death, through Jesus Christ, is a sort of endowed professorship. I want to be an amateur again, my pride sucked out of me like water out of a flooded basement.<\/p>

A number of Facebook friends who are poets sent me private messages claiming that it was tacky to be posting unpublished poems, that I was too good to be doing this, that journal publication authenticated the excellence of a work. \u201cYou\u2019re embarrassing yourself,\u201d a guy in his fifties said\u2014I hardly knew him. \u201cUse Facebook to brag, not to publish.\u201d (He had just won a Guggenheim.) Who was more desperate\u2014these unasked-for counselors or me? If I kept posting poems about my mother\u2019s predicament, then the virus, I believed, wouldn\u2019t get her. Magical thinking, yes, but no more magical than writing a poem every day.<\/p>

God, I will state unequivocally, doesn\u2019t care about tacky. Even the parts of creation that seem furthest from him do not lack his imprint.<\/em> \u2026 The grace that\u2019s run\u2026 from its maker <\/em>circles back, infuses everything. Did my mother get COVID? Yes. Did it kill her? No. She contracted it at the very end of the pandemic while in hospice dying of something else. Her decline was precipitous\u2014so precipitous that I couldn\u2019t get to Boston in time to be with her. As the nurse in her facility held the phone close to her face and I told her again and again how much I loved her, she opened her eyes, swam up from the bottom of her morphine sea, and whispered, \u201cLove you, too.\u201d She was dead a few hours later. Much as it pained me to witness the conclusion of her life at such a distance, it seemed appropriate for how our relationship had been conducted in its final stages: far away and yet strangely up close. <\/em>Which is how I think of the paradox of God, that ultimate Zoom technology.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Love, I shouldn\u2019t have to explain, is prodigal, and God might very well be autistic.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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My mother had given me one last gift: a new way to think about my writing. Write to write, pray to pray. Ask for nothing but the doing. The rest is vanity. Two years after my mother died, a stranger taught me this lesson again. This time the vehicle was a digital publication on a website called Poem-A-Day <\/em>run by the Academy of American Poets. The deafblind poet John Lee Clark, who was in charge of the month of July in 2023, had solicited a poem from me, and I had sent him one about my adopted son, DJ, who is autistic\u2014it, too, had been written in a flash:<\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The Bearing Edge<\/strong><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong>For DJ<\/em><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 My son starts every conversation \u00a0
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 with the statement \u201cI love you, Dad.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cI love you, Dad. What\u2019s for dinner tonight?\u201d \u00a0
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cI love you, Dad. Is it supposed to rain?\u201d \u00a0<\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cI love you, Dad. Can we go for a walk?\u201d \u00a0
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cI love you, Dad, but you really have to chill.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 He\u2019s like the guy who wears a bow tie \u00a0
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 to the bar\u00a0and\u00a0<\/em>to the beach. \u00a0<\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 He\u2019s a dandy of affection, at once \u00a0
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 rolling up his pennies and spending them \u00a0<\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 on ice cream. He\u2019ll wear this phrase \u00a0
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 to heaven (he\u2019s already been to hell\u2014 \u00a0<\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 what he calls fostercareless). If \u00a0
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Orpheus had a lyre, then he has a bearing \u00a0<\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 edge. He will not drum without it: \u00a0
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cI love you, Dad.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 He moves forward by glancing back,\u00a0
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 and no one is ever lost.\u00a0<\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The sky sells cotton candy; \u00a0
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 the trees, shade.\u00a0<\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Love\u2014it\u2019s a kind of leash, invisible, \u00a0
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 expanding, and I\u2019m his big, happy dog.<\/p>

My wife and I adopted DJ in 1998 when he was six. He had been horrifically abused\u2014first, by his birth mother, and then, by a much older foster brother. The former had tried to drown him in the bath; the latter had physically and sexually assaulted him. Doctors said he was \u201cprofoundly retarded\u201d\u2014one used the term \u201cunreachable\u201d\u2014but in my time volunteering as his \u201cbig brother\u201d we had grown very close. Although he couldn\u2019t speak and although he was formidably skittish, he had reached out to me in all sorts of ways. I had taught him his first linguistic act: the American Sign Language sign for \u201cmore,\u201d which he thought meant \u201ctickle.\u201d \u201cMore, more, more, more!\u201d he had signed, giggling\u2014to the extent that I had come to think of his adorable face as an injunction of sorts: he wanted\u2014no, he needed\u2014more of everything.<\/p>

Not two months after he came to live with us, we included DJ in a regular school. We taught him how to read and to use a text-to-voice synthesizer. I\u2019ve told this story in a memoir called Reasonable People, <\/em>which ends with a chapter by DJ titled \u201cIt\u2019s My Story.\u201d Promoting the book, we appeared together on Anderson Cooper 360<\/em>, where DJ, in response to a question by the neurologist Sanjay Gupta, \u201cShould autism be treated?,\u201d typed, \u201cYes, treated with respect.\u201d That little quip from early 2008 went around the world, giving voice to the burgeoning neurodiversity movement. DJ would go on to star in, write, and coproduce the Peabody Award winning documentary Deej, <\/em>which follows his inclusion journey to Oberlin College. He was the first nonspeaking autistic student in the U.S. to be accepted by a \u201chighly selective\u201d institution, and he graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a double major in 2017.<\/p>

\u201cThe Bearing Edge\u201d looks back on our miraculous journey as a family. Can hope be pulled alive from an icy river? Can a coroner coronate? You bet she can, though it requires a force very much like an electrical current. Every wire knows when the power is on. As in the story of the Apostle Thomas, eyes should be superfluous and light, a magnificent afterthought. Again and again, my son said\u2014he still says\u2014\u201cI love you, Dad.\u201d Intent on pathologizing autism, psychologists speak pejoratively of \u201cperseveration\u201d\u2014as if one could persevere too long in something. Leave it to the experts to make of ritual a problem. Love, I shouldn\u2019t have to explain, is prodigal, and God might very well be autistic. \u201cI love you, Ralph. I love you, DJ. I love you, Emily\u201d ad infinitum.<\/p>

In the section \u201cAbout this Poem\u201d that accompanies every work on the Poem-A-Day<\/em> site, I wrote,<\/p>

Adoption is often presented as the last resort of a desperate couple. No one would choose to adopt if they could have their own children, and certainly no one would choose a so-called \u2018damaged\u2019 child. I wanted to unseat this logic, and I found in my son\u2019s refrain a kind of glorious drumbeat where the horror of the past gives way to the promise of the future. When I remembered the term for the rim of a drum\u2019s shell, \u2018the bearing edge,\u2019 I knew that I had a pun I could work with.<\/h2>

Let the beat of love, in this all too fallen world, be our bearing edge. Can you hear the many drummers drumming?<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Is there any suffering that can’t be redeemed?<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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As soon as the poem was posted, I began to receive messages from people around the globe. One touching message after another. As with the response to the Facebook poems I had posted for my mother, I was floored. Could a poet really be like Whitman\u2019s \u201cnoiseless, patient spider,\u201d \u201claunch[ing] forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself \/ \u2026 Till the bridge [it] will need be \u2018form\u2019d, till the ductile anchor hold, \/ \u00a0Till the gossamer thread [it] fling[s] catch somewhere\u201d? Once again, it seemed he could. And then, fourteen months later, after the euphoria of connection had subsided and I had received some very grim medical news, I found in my mailbox at the college where I teach a package whose return address read \u201cLisbon.\u201d \u201cWhom do I know in Lisbon?\u201d I asked aloud. \u201cNo one,\u201d I answered.<\/p>

When I opened the package, I saw a work of art on tissue paper: layer upon layer of beautiful calligraphy. It looked like an archeological dig: instead of fossilized bones, fossilized language. If you\u2019ll allow me this flourish, the words seemed with their many hoops and spirals to be dancing. I had no idea what this was or why it had been sent to me. I couldn\u2019t find a card. Nor could I figure out what the text said.<\/p>

For an entire day, I was stumped. But then I rummaged through the packaging again and discovered a tiny piece of paper with a web address: cheirographon.net. (The word means “handwriting\u201d or \u201ca handwritten acknowledgement of a debt.”) So, I fed the address to Chrome, and up popped this message:<\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 My package has reached you and brought you here.<\/h2>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I encountered your poem as a reader hoping for practical consequences. For Phrases that might change perceptions and relationships or insinuate themselves into conversations. For wordplay, rhythm, and successive images. For reflections on morals and politics.<\/h2>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Inasmuch as I paint, I also came with ink and gouache. I took your poem as a quarry, foreseeing a painted form prefigured in the lengths of the lines, the whorls and shafts of the letters. And when it was finished, I posted the result to you like a note in a bottle. Should it bring you a moment\u2019s smile, I am glad. If not, discard it, fold it away, light a fire. It belongs to you now.<\/h2>

Reading the message, I felt like Moses seeing flames of fire from within a bush: my package has reached you and brought you here. <\/em>Surely, this is how God would speak to us if he spoke. And like Moses, surely, we\u2019d be perplexed by his instructions. It was embarrassing not to have recognized my own poem as the medium for this man\u2019s handiwork! I had been moving through the day too quickly, as is typical of me, and wanted every task completed, every problem solved, every mystery dispelled.<\/p>

Foreseeing a painted form prefigured in the lengths of the lines, the whorls and shafts of the letters. <\/em>According to the dictionary, \u201cto prefigure\u201d means \u201cto show, suggest, or announce by an antecedent type, image or likeness\u201d; \u201cto picture or imagine beforehand.\u201d In the context of Christianity, it means the foreshadowing of people, places, and events from the New Testament in the Old. Looking back, you look forward. Time folds in on itself. The sister arts of painting and poetry unite. Without even knowing it, I had written an ekphrastic poem!<\/p>

What is more, without even knowing it, I had saved myself by saving my son. I, too, suffered abuse as a child\u2014at the fists of my father\u2014and the agony of it left me swearing I\u2019d never have children. Yet have one I did. To find in the cheirographon a metaphor, love painted the pain that paradoxically prefigured it. As in pentimento, the past won\u2019t be hidden; what I saw in this calligraphy was the tumult of my own evolving faith. (In Italian, \u201cpentimento\u201d means \u201cto repent or change your mind.\u201d) Is there any suffering that can\u2019t be redeemed?<\/p>

The message continued:<\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I cannot recall when I began to paint words. I previously favoured images, but gradually these drifted away as I was attracted to the marks of language. I lingered over shop signs, online archives of the handwritten records of English parishes and courts, penmanship manuals, griffonage and graffiti. I collected books on Chinese and Islamic calligraphers, digital files of Spanish and Italian legal documents, rubbings of engraved stones and examples of hurufiyya. Occasionally, I wrote about street artists and the shifting historical and social place of Chinese calligraphy. I collected inks, pigments, papers, and brushes.<\/h2><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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What is a life, I asked myself, but an earnest shipwreck?<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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I had been thinking about the materiality of language when I received the cheirographon, but in the domain of sound, not of sight. In fact, I\u2019d published a number of scholarly essays devoted to the topic\u2014essays that linked attunement to the tangible in autism and attunement to the tangible in poems. By \u201ctangible\u201d I meant something your ear can touch. Archibald MacLeish once wrote, \u201cA poem should not mean but be.\u201d Mere semantics, in other words, are the mortician\u2019s trade, the lifeless body on display. If poetry is an art that calls attention to the incidental properties of words\u2014think of alliteration, assonance, consonance, meter, and rhyme\u2014then why do we settle for something so demure when printing a poem in a magazine or book? Why be so transparent and functional with our fonts? Instead of a mule bearing our burden, why not a show horse? Why not the word made flesh on the page<\/em>? Even if that word is almost unreadable. Sometimes I think God is the closed circle of the letter \u201cp\u201d or \u201cb.\u201d<\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cI thought, too, about meaning,\u201d the man from Lisbon wrote.<\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Where does it land? Who receives it? In what economy does it trade\u2014market, memory, or myth? How do objects gather fame or fortune, soothe loss, or disappear into landfill or ash? I am fascinated by acts taken to realize an intuitive necessity, by unexpected gifts and earnest shipwrecks. Of the debris that is the bait of meaning.<\/h2>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I also reflected on decay. How things gradually become strange and opaque. Iconography that no longer moves. The husks of words that are no longer understood by any ear. And how the hollowing out of forms is not only an interest of aesthetics or anthropology but an unsettling glimpse into the future. <\/h2>

What is a life, I asked myself, but an earnest shipwreck? Your very mouth spewing flotsam and jetsam. What is grace but an unexpected\u2014indeed, undeserved and prodigal\u2014gift? The bait of meaning<\/em>\u2014you cannot fish, as in a poem, without worms or some other allurement. From the trans-temporal perspective of God, your bones are the bait, and his love is the rod.<\/p>

The man then explained,<\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I don\u2019t paint every day and sometimes weeks pass quietly. I put poems to one side, collect colour samples, or tear pieces of paper to size. A day comes when I lay out my materials. I paint through a poem, pass from word to word, caress the shoulder or spine of each letter, stop at inter-sections, or play with scale and ungainly embellishment. Trunks and appendages sway and sweep, awkwardly turn or fall flat, tunnel through coils, creating a mycelium of lines. Lengthened tails mark a change of direction or a caesura. Pigments accumulate like luminous, wavering\u00a0kudzu. Sometimes the words are a dense and irregular rain or they\u00a0congeal into tangled structures. Elisions and mesostics occur.<\/h2>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Painting is extemporaneous, like strolling, cooking or playing with\u00a0children who invent the rules as they go. I have my habits, my tics, a\u00a0kaleidoscope of sources that please or sting me. While there is no\u00a0going back, successive strokes respond to preceding ones, constantly\u00a0adjusting the quivering of the page, which soon feels like a climate, a\u00a0landscape or an anthill, tangling or overwhelming reading.<\/h2>

On the wall of my living room in Iowa City hangs a poem by Seamus Heaney in the poet\u2019s own handwriting. Although I know the poem, \u201cThe Haw Lantern,\u201d well, I have trouble making it out, and this trouble renders it all the more glorious. Since hanging it, I\u2019ve filled the room with poetry broadsides, each one using art less to illustrate the poem than to give it a beautiful opacity. How far can we take this principle? A few years ago, a friend read a Japanese translation of one of my prose books, though he didn\u2019t know a word of this language. \u201cI followed the characters,\u201d he explained.<\/p>

Another friend who is autistic cannot read a book he loves without the words beginning to move on the page\u2014like ants or like tiny bodies stirring in their graves. Which brings me back to my son. One of the first things he typed on a computer, after hearing me read Dylan Thomas\u2019s \u201cFern Hill\u201d aloud, was \u201cVery great sound. Very great sound.\u201d He understood the poem perfectly\u2014meaning in Thomas, as we traditionally understand it, is always secondary. His poems are like lake-effect snow for the ear. The words rise as mist and then fall as glittering dream.<\/p>

\u201cFinally, I think about setting objects adrift,\u201d the man concluded his letter, \u201cand how walking away can be productive apathy.\u201d When I sent a note of thanks, he didn\u2019t reply; I shouldn\u2019t have expected him to. Like God speaking to Moses, he all but said, \u201cDo not come any closer.\u201d Perhaps this sort of communique is as close as we can get to the divine\u2014or, rather, an explanation of it. \u201cGod is in the details,\u201d wrote architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, which for writers means every shimmering letter and phoneme. But I wouldn\u2019t call his silence\u2014his dispersal and diffusion\u2014apathy. I\u2019d call it mystery.<\/p>

At the bottom of his website, the man from Lisbon declared in a short bio, \u201cI am not always an optimist, but I am addicted to possibility.\u201d And so is God. \u201cA drawing,\u201d said Paul Klee, \u201cis simply a line going for a walk.\u201d Write to write, pray to pray. Ask for nothing but the doing.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Illustrations by Sarah Clark, from photographs provided by the author.<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Ralph<\/span> James Savarese<\/strong> is the author of three books of prose and four books of poetry. In late 2024, Ice Cube Press brought out his most recent collection, Never Make Them Cry: Classrooms & Coffins<\/em>. He lives in Iowa City, IA.\u00a0<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the face of uncertainty, poetry freely offered brought gifts far beyond professional recognition, and united loved ones and strangers across insurmountable distance. 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