Grief’s Weird Sister, Gratitude by Jennifer Michael Hecht

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend June 29, 2016   Grief’s Weird Sister, Gratitude   Jennifer Michael Hecht

How to read a tome of Collected Poems? Read one that pivotally changes you and lose track of the page and title. How to clean a house? Lose your ring in it.   Milosz not having to make peace one day because the people are dead, nor revisit some cities of his blood, because they are razed. I’m still reading for that one.   If I wince that I got cuppy, said too much, maybe years ago, sometimes the sudden knowledge that my auditor is no longer will come in as wistful relief, if with grief.   So I’d like to find it. This “how” isn’t an engineering question, but angle, here alchemically translated to hope by way of loss.            Copyright © 2016 Jennifer Michael Hecht. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “The Milosz poem I can’t find reminded me of having over-shared at a party to a fellow scholar, a severely mean and brilliant much older woman by whom I’d long been fascinated. I enjoyed her complete attention that night, but later had remorse, until we lost her. Now a chance memory of the true crime tale I told still brings a flicker of shame, but it is snuffed out like a candle when I recall where she is now. The poem links its many losses with my dear and departed arch scholar, and admits to benefits. Without a poem that said these things, I wrote one, and feel much better—another benefit of loss. Still, if anyone knows the Milosz poem in question, please contact me through my website.” —Jennifer Michael Hecht   Jennifer Michael Hecht is the author of Who Said (Copper Canyon Press, 2013). She is writing The Wonder Paradox: Using Poetry to Find Meaning, Make Choices, and Stay Human in the World We Have Made for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. She lives in Brooklyn, New York. Poetry by Hecht   Who Said (Copper Canyon Press, 2013)    "Sentimental Education" by Mary Ruefle "You and Your Ilk" by Thomas Lux "What I’m Looking For" by Maureen N. McLane Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038