I began my poetry memorization journey in September 2018. I’ve become so enamored of memorizing poetry that I’ve learned a few extra poems By Heart that I have not written about in the monthly column. This August, I spent some extra time with two of my favorite poets, Jane Kenyon and Sara Teasdale.
It started this summer, with Kenyon’s Evening Sun, which I heard at The Slowdown. When I read its stark depiction of a lifetime of depres
sion, my jaw literally dropped.
Kenyon died from leukemia.
The same month, in preparation for Tweetspeak’s Poetry for Life retreat, I memorized Sara Teasdale’s Barter.
Teasdale died from suicide.
I can’t reconcile these two deaths.
If you handed me these two poems and asked me to guess, I’d say the poem about depression foretold suicide, but that’s not what happened. Kenyon’s “sorrow ignites / but does not consume / my heart.” She writes of depression and in depression and with depression with such love.
Then we have Teasdale, who describes a life full of loveliness, one that “for a breath of ecstasy / Give all you have been, or could be.” Perhaps for her that life was always out of reach, and her poetry was the way she reached for it.
Usually I don’t like to dwell on a poet’s biography. I want the poem to stand on its own, in black and white, and force me to reckon with it and it alone. But for these two poets I can’t separate word from life. 
Over the following months I read a poetry collection from each author, Teasdale’s Flame and Shadow and Kenyon’s The Boat of Quiet Hours. I went looking for answers. I left with wisdom of a different kind, the kind you get from swimming in the sound and silence of good poetry.
I noticed Kenyon often focuses on the day’s transitions — evening, dusk, even twilight — while Teasdale is the poet of night, stars, and moon. “Night is the mother of stars,” she writes in Pain.
My own poems often turn to drought to express the unrelenting wearying of situations that linger with no end in sight. When I was learning these two poems By Heart, I noticed a strange loveliness as evening descended on desiccated ground.
One winter dawn I combined one of Teasdale’s lines from “Barter” with part of Kenyon’s High Water into a haiku.
I’d give all I have
been or could be for eight days
of rain, high water
Photo by David DeHetre, Creative Commons, via Flickr. Post by Megan Willome.
Browse more By Heart
“Megan Willome’s The Joy of Poetry is not a long book, but it took me longer to read than I expected, because I kept stopping to savor poems and passages, to make note of books mentioned, and to compare Willome’s journey into poetry to my own. The book is many things. An unpretentious, funny, and poignant memoir. A defense of poetry, a response to literature that has touched her life, and a manual on how to write poetry. It’s also the story of a daughter who loses her mother to cancer. The author links these things into a narrative much like that of a novel. I loved this book. As soon as I finished, I began reading it again.”
—David Lee Garrison, author of Playing Bach in the D. C. Metro
- By Heart: ‘To Autumn’ + New Walter de la Mare Challenge - September 25, 2020
- Poetry Prompt: Wise Teachers - September 14, 2020
- Children’s Book Club: ‘Nine, Ten: A September 11 Story’ - September 11, 2020
Maureen says
Lovely haiku, Megan.
Kenyon was one of the first poets I read in any depth. And while I think she sometimes was overshadowed by her teacher and, later, husband Donald Hall, she left us with a marvelous legacy of words that that I often return to. I like that contrast of Kenyon as poet of a day’s transitions and Teasdale as poet of the night, stars, and moon, both about time. Pick up Kenyon’s ‘Other’ if you don’t already have it.
Megan Willome says
Thank you, Maureen. And I will look for that collection. I’m certainly not done with Kenyon.
L.L. Barkat says
This is beautiful, Megan.
My own Sara is endlessly attracted to the poetry of Sara Teasdale. She says Teasdale is the only poet whose poetry she likes in total and finds herself wanting to return to again and again. She’s done some research on Teasdale, to get insight into the suicide, and she has concluded that Teasdale’s decision was not related to depression so much as to chronic illness that had finally ruined the loveliness of life that the poet was always reaching for. Maybe that’s a nuance that few would care to make a distinction over, but my Sara finds it meaningful.
Poet partnership haiku. Maybe you’ve created a thing. 🙂
Megan Willome says
Thank you.
That’s interesting background on Teasdale. I definitely think it’s a distinction worth noting.
Sandra Heska King says
“I left with wisdom of a different kind, the kind you get from swimming in the sound and silence of good poetry.” I love this.
And what Laura said about poet partnership haiku.
Megan Willome says
Sandy, of course she calls it “poet partnership haiku.” I would’ve called it “haiku that steals, with attribution.” Hers is better.
I agree there is something profound about incorporating a poet’s words with your own and making both of them more yours than before.
Sandra Heska King says
Harvested haiku? 😉
Megan Willome says
Done.