we want our resources

ways and means for the new regime

In this moment when we face horizons and conflicts wider than ever before, we want our resources, the ways of strength. We look again to the human wish, its faiths, the means by which the imagination leads us to surpass ourselves.

If there is a feeling that something has been lost, it may be because much has not yet been used, much is still to be found and begun.

Everywhere we are told that our human resources are all to be used, that our civilization itself means the uses of everything it has—the inventions, the histories, every scrap of fact. But there is one kind of knowledge—infinitely precious, time-resistant more than monuments, here to be passed between the generations in any way it may be: never to be used. And that is poetry.

It seems to me that we cut ourselves off, that we impoverish ourselves, just here. I think that we are ruling out one source of power, one that is precisely what we need. Now, when it is hard to hold for a moment the giant clusters of event and meaning that every day appear, it is time to remember this other kind of knowledge and love, which has forever been a way of reaching complexes of emotion and relationship, the attitude that is like the attitude of science and the other arts today, but with significant and beautiful distinctness from these—the attitude that perhaps might equip our imaginations to deal with our lives—the attitude of poetry.

What help is there here?
Poetry is, above all, an approach to the truth of feeling, and what is the use of truth?
How do we use feeling?
How do we use truth?

However confused the scene of our life appears, however torn we may be who now do face that scene, it can be faced, and we can go on to be whole.

If we use the resources we now have, we and the world itself may move in one fullness. Moment to moment, we can grow, if we can bring ourselves to meet the moment with our lives.

I’ve thought of this passage periodically since the 2016 election. It comes from Muriel Rukeyser’s The Life of Poetry, her 1949 interdisciplinary collection of essays on poetry as an urgent “saving force” in American culture. Rukeyser was herself an interdisciplinary poet, biographer, children’s book author, political activist and mentor to several second-wave feminist poets¹—these disciplines all being interconnected for Rukeyser, each informing and reinforcing another.

“With the sincere spite of a Woman.” Undated fragment. Emily Dickinson Collection, Amherst College Library.

Though I wish its urgency and resonance had lessened in the 75 years since its publication, I’m grateful that The Life of Poetry still offers real encouragement, in its turn toward growth and possibility, even in the thick of chaos and grief. I keep returning to this passage because it reaffirms what feels true to me: the most belligerent, destructive forces are vastly outmatched by a quieter collective will to imagine and create.

In that spirit, I’m beginning this series for notework subscribers that I hope will be a reminder of our shared resources and ways to deal with this treacherous moment. I’ll send occasional installments with what’s helping me bring the attitude of poetry to life under the new regime. Like Rukeyser’s, I see this as an interdisciplinary project, one that includes all forms of imaginative activity, whether poetry, art, music, crafts, gardening, cooking, rituals, mutual aid, protest, or other affirming practices.

I’d also love to hear what’s been helpful to you this year. If you’d like to share your readings, songs, community work, plantings, recipes, or anything else that has been a source of growth, please send me a note (and let me know whether you’d like to remain anonymous if I include your note in a future newsletter). If you know someone who might like or want to contribute to this series, please consider forwarding this email to them.

For now I’ll share one of my favorite poems from Rukeyser’s 1973 collection Breaking Open: