And, while I love my work and treasure the incredible opportunities I have to learn from so many dedicated Americans, sometimes I just want to stay home. I want to settle in with the newspaper and our Christmas tree and a strong pot of coffee. I want to lounge in my pajamas until noon and help the girls finish their holiday project. I want to go to the annual latke party of dear friends and walk the dog through the drizzly park.
Today, I didn’t want to get on that plane, and I was sorely tempted to come down with a case of the vapors. But I didn’t.
I showed up at the airport—thanks to David’s faithfulness and middle-of-the-night driving skills—at 4:30, breezed through security, and sulked my way into a triple latte. I refused to make eye contact with any of my fellow travelers, answered a pile up of lingering emails, and dragged myself onto the plane at the last possible minute. At that point, I had to face up to it – I was flying to North Carolina, and nothing was going to rescue me from it.
So, I wrapped myself in my big black shawl, accepted a cup of weak coffee in a Styrofoam cup from a sweet flight attendant with a big smile, pink lipstick, and a jingly bracelet. Then, I dug in to Kevin Young’s new anthology: The Hungry Ear: Poems of Food and Drink . Now, this is a beautiful book, and I’ve poked around in it here and there over the last few weeks. But from Portland to Chicago, I literally devoured the entire book from page 1 to page 300. I found old friends—Seamus Heaney’s “Oysters”—and new treasures—Judith Ortiz Cofer’s “Beans: An Apologia for Not Loving to Cook.”
I learned that poems about blackberries are like a Rorschach test. Apparently, nearly every contemporary poet has written one—Mary Oliver, Seamus Heaney, Robert Hass, Galway Kinnell, Yusef Komunyakaa, Sylvia Plath, William Stafford, Richard Wilbur. In fact, I think everyone should be required to write a blackberry poem—we will understand ourselves as poets –as citizens—in whole new ways.
But, this book kept me company, transported me from 30,000 feet to nearly every state in the Republic. I didn’t get to scuff around my own stove this Sunday morning, but I got to sit at the kitchen table of Roethke and Young and Thylias Moss. I got to have coffee with Naomi Shihab Nye and peel onions with Adrienne Rich. And once again—embarrassed at my own petulance—I was reminded of the miracle that is poetry, that is art. Sometimes humans are lonely and grumpy. Sometimes they drag their feet at their fate. But poems can break their heart, can lift their spirits, can bring them home.