Poesien har enten redda deg, eller ikke redda deg ennå

Rebecca Lindenberg

«Our psychic selves have their own rhythms, like it or not. Better to try to understand them than ignore them, I think. Each year around now, I always forget why I feel especially crazy and out-of-control, until I remember that one night I was memorizing Keat's Ode to Melancholy and getting ready to take my doctoral exams, and the next morning, I was getting a phone call from Japan. Craig Arnold was one of the most spectacular, brilliant, wild, impressive people I have ever known. No, I'm not entirely over it. No, I do not feel particularly bad about that. Yes, life does go on. No, it is not the same. Nothing is ever the same. Wonder is infused with pangs of memory or panic or guilt. Anxiety interferes with joy. Longing feels distressed, and nothing feels safe. Your brain gets re-wired. Your sense of what matters changes. You wish you could just be normal, but the idea that you should be like a person who has not been through trauma is a silly thing to ask of someone who has been through trauma - as plenty of us know. We downplay its importance in our lives, mostly to protect other people, often enough to protect ourselves. We isolate ourselves, because that is so much easier than having to explain something we do not ourselves entirely understand. We struggle with a basic human conundrum - the desire to be heard, and the desire to hide. Many people handle this with real grace, and I SO wish I could claim to be one of those people. But ‘I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow, I learn by going where I have to go.’ Read a poem by Craig Arnold this weekend, and remember that we came to poems for magic, for the sublime, for the dream. And the dream (ibid): Either poetry has saved your life, or it hasn't yet.» Rebecca Lindenberg, 26/4/2015

Du kan lese Rebeccas dikt i samlingene Love, an index (2012) og The Logan Notebooks (2014), eller boksingelen vår Kjærlighet, et register

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