Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash. ~ Leonard Cohen
What is the evidence of my life I wonder as I read this, given that I write almost no poetry any more. Maybe I had a life once that burnt well so poetry came to me naturally. Somewhere the flow stymied a little, I could still write but it did not touch the heart anymore, merely tugged a little like scab peeling off from tender skin. The pain was raw then as was all expression of it.
The metaphor reminds me of Walter Savage Landor quote I love. There is reference to both fire and life but in very different context. At a certain level I can relate to both and the contrariness that it implies.
I STROVE with none;
for none was worth my strife;
Nature I loved, and next to Nature, Art;
I warmed both hands before the fire of life;
It sinks, and I am ready to depart.
An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t
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For poetry to be the "evidence of life", you don't necessarily have to write it. You could read it, experience it, inspire it, live it... and not just in words.
Speaking of Leonard Cohen reminds me of one of my favorite romantic songs: Dance Me To The End Of Love. I heard this song for the first time in the movie Kiss the Sky. Since then, the song has found its way into my "Desert Island collection".
PS: "Desert Island collection" is the collection of songs you would wish to have on only one CD, if you ever got stranded alone on a deserted island.