The first semester has come to a close. Too much time on our hands. Not enough staring at Excel spreadsheets. Back to interpersonal relationships outside of MBA world. Back to dealing with emotions and everyday people not obsessed with talking about their “careers”. Which means, I can’t find anything to talk about with them…
Jokes aside, there is an overwhelming emphasis on the logic and analytical processing skills in business school, which at times leaves my emotional development atrophying with each passing vlookup (ya right, that’s n00b status, it’s all about using index(match())…
So during this holiday, I wanted to share with you some of my favorite passages of great poetry from Poems That Make Grown Men Cry….and me. As I read this book, I grew comfortable with crying–an act men are frowned upon doing and are equally uncomfortable and clueless with what to do when confronted with someone performing that act.
Men crying was respected in 19th century as sign of high moral character
Crying also drains excess chemicals released into blood when we experience extreme stress or high emotion. Tears unite us; we are the only species that cries. So hey, it’s good to cry. And there’s nothing better to cry over than some good ole’ timeless poetry.
Poetry is not to be understood but to understand. Poetry celebrates our shared compassion and common humanity. We turn to art to help us express whatever is valid or has meaning in our short span of existence. All great poems are about each one of us, they are universal, and to understand poetry is to find its secret key, to pack so much meaning in so little.
We fall into love as if into an abyss
to end as both dust, but dust in love
(loving dust when all is said and done)
Over all the hilltops
is calm.
In all the treetops
you feel
hardly a breath of air.
The little birds fall silent
in the woods.
Just wait …soon
you’ll also be at rest.
The regrets, constraints of life, shall underwrite the joy and liberation of his child’s.
But it’s not enough to remember her as though she’s there; loyalty demands we must never forget that she isn’t and will never be again: terrifying, unconsoling paradox
Better by far you should forget and smile
than that you should remember and be sad
To live is to harbor so many profound losses
As freezing persons recollect the snow – first chill then stupor – then letting go
If I should die, think only this of me
That there’s some corner of a foreign field that is forever England
Those who are near me do not know that you are nearer to me than they are
Those who speak to me do not know that my heart is full with your unspoken words
Those who crowd in my path do not know that I am walking alone with you
They who love me do not know that their love brings you to my heart.
Whistle and I will hear
and come again another evening, when this boat
travels with you alone toward Iffley:
as you like looking up from thunder again,
this cool touch does not betoken rain;
it is my spirit that kisses your mouth lightly.
By the power of the word
I regain my life
I was born to know you
And to name you liberty
When old men decide to barter—young men for pride and profit—the transaction is called war
The goal in all life is not necessarily happiness or success, but simply contentment psychologically
It is only because I have wanted so much
That I have always been found wanting
Being brave
lets no one off the grave
death is no different whined at than withstood
Here’s a drink
to your bones
that
this dog
still
dreams about
You must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go
What did we hear?
It was the breath
we took when we first met
Listen. It is here
That sort of love can only be fully understood in hindsight
The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.
No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly–
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thing plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.
I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.
She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light
and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.
Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth
that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.