For this “On This Day” post, I’d like to try something new. Instead of breaking it down into separate years, I’d like to put all 7 years in conversation with each other. This conversation idea is partly inspired by the Billie Eilish Vanity Fair same interview each year and partly by the ongoing conversation I seem to be having about poetry in these entries. I remember watching this BEilish video and a month ago and thinking it would be cool to get to interact with past versions of yourself, then I realized I was doing it here!
First, some data:
weather/movement activity
- 2017: 51 degrees, about the rain / 3.2 mile run
- 2018: 20 degrees, 100% snow-covered / 4.05 mile run
- 2019: 26 degrees, 8.5 inches of snow / shovel
- 2020: 5 degrees, feels like -5 / 4.2 mile run
- 2021: 19 degrees outside / 3.25 miles on treadmill
- 2022: 36 degrees, sunny / 2.6 miles
- 2023: 25 degrees, light snow / 5.5 mile run
2018 Sara: Poetry is to snow, as prose is to rain
Discovered a few great lines in Snow in America:
‘In prose,’ the Mexican poet Octavio Paz writes, ‘the word tends to be identified with one of its possible meanings at the expense of others…the poet, on the other hand, never assaults the ambiguity of the word.’ Poetry is to snow what prose is to rain, says Howard Nemerov, because ‘it flew instead of fell.’
2019 Sara: Snowflakes as the poem of the air, from Snowflakes/ Longfellow
This is the poem of the air,
Slowly in silent syllables recorded;
This is the secret of despair,
Long in its cloudy bosom hoarded,
Now whispered and revealed
To wood and field.
2020 Sara: Poetry wrenches words from familiar habits
Discovered this wonderful essay over at Poetry Foundation by Edward Hirsch on poetic language. Here are a few of my favorite bits:
Poetry charts the changes in language, but it never merely reproduces or recapitulates what it finds. The lyric poem defamiliarizes words, it wrenches them from familiar or habitual contexts, it puts a spell on them.
As the eighteenth-century English poet Christopher Smart put it, freely translating from Horace’s Art of Poetry:
It is exceedingly well
To give a common word the spell
To greet you as intirely new.The lyric poem separates and uproots words from the daily flux and flow of living speech but it also delivers them back—spelled, changed, charmed—to the domain of other people
2017 Sara: Wrenching from habits? Reminds me of my undisciplining project on this blog:
My marathon training, much like most things in my life, is a combination of focused dedication to building up helpful habits (in this case, running slower in order to run farther and to avoid injury) and breaking down harmful ones (like running too fast in order to be fast and to be faster than others).
Is this a combination of becoming disciplined (building up) and being undisciplined (breaking down)? With my interest in virtue ethics and the ethical effects of accumulated practices, and my virtual identity as undisciplined, I’m fascinated by this question and the difference between becoming and being here. In my training, I’m giving the edge to being undisciplined, focusing my attention on breaking bad habits and being vigilant against developing new ones that could be just as bad, or worse. This undisciplining work enables me to become disciplined–or focused, dedicated, committed?– in my practices.
20 feb 2017
2021 Sara: Yes, undisciplining isn’t just about poetry and breaking down language, it’s also about daily life and breaking old habits:
Decided today I would start to break my habit of having to pee between biking and running. I did it! I went straight from the bike to the treadmill. It was difficult for the first few minutes, then it was fine. Will I be able to not do it again? How many times do you have to not do something to break a habit?
20 feb 2021
2022 Sara: Agreed. Undisciplining is about breaking bad habits, but it’s also about learning to live with/in uncertainty. Poetry gives us tool for navigating that uncertainty. Here Sara 2024 adds: That might be one of the main reasons I love poetry!
Before I went out for my run, I was listening to Lulu Miller’s story, “The 11th Word,” on Radiolab. (It was originally published in 2020 in the Paris Review). In it, she considers language and how the ability to name might shape us in negative ways. She discusses how we use language to name things, and while that give us order, and some sort of control, it also strips us of our ability to live in and with uncertainty. I kept thinking, as I listened, about poetry and how it often attempts to make words and language uncertain again. There are ways to use/play with/invoke language that aren’t about Knowing or controlling or getting rid of the uncertainty.
20 feb 2022
2022 Sara again: Yes, I love poetry for uncertainty, but also the connections it provides, and the opportunities it gives for learning from and being inspired by other poets — like Tommy Pico:
Tell me
as I switch between lenses—
which is clearer: A… or B. One
more time? Okay, A… or B.
I want to do something with their mention of switching between lenses and whether it is better in A or B. Very cool. Yes, the idea of being better with A or B (or 1 or 2), makes me think about this in-between state I’m in with my vision right now, both how well I can and cannot see, but also which world is better or preferable or more true, whatever that means — the world I was in where I could see mostly normally, or the world I’m slowly entering now where my central vision is almost gone or totally gone. I always struggle with either/or choices and the binaries they create.
20 feb 2022
2023 Sara: Connection and inspiration! I’ve been studying Linda Pastan this month and reading her words has been very inspiring! I’m sure it inspired this conversation between Saras.
Open your arms
to the dying colors,
to the fragile
beauties
of November.
Deep in the heart
of buried acorns,
nothing lost.
Nothing lost. I like imaging my past selves — not past lives, but the many selves I’ve been throughout my life — as not lost. Buried acorns to become, over time and slow, steady growth, a new forest of trees. Now I’m imagining a forest of Saras. I’d like to walk through that forest! This makes me think of something I’ve been noticing about Pastan — she loves trees. She wants to be a tree, she links trees with the act of writing poetry, she finds hope against the inevitability of death in trees. A forest of Saras also makes me think of a poem I started a few years ago about a lake of Saras, different ages, lining up to make a bridge. It also makes me think of something funny I did last night. I positioned 2 of the mirrored doors of our bathroom medicine cabinet in such a way that I could look into the small wedge between each mirror and see around 20 of me. I stuck out my tongue and all these Saras were sticking their tongues out too. So many Saras. I kept looking to see if one of them might decide not to stick out their tongue. Nope, at least not that night.
20 feb 2023
A few other things I’d like to note from these entries:
For future Sara, when she finally does more with her workbook project, from 2020 Sara:
When I got to the Falls I stopped for a minute to take off my hood and to look at the water. Then I started again. I noticed as I was running that my shadow was right in front of me. So clear and sharp and fully present! Then I had a revelation: my shadow is who is writing my workbook. My shadow is talking to me and giving me advice on what to do. In my exercises, my shadow is the implied I and I am the you she’s talking to. Very exciting to figure this out.
20 feb 2020
And from 2023 Sara, some helpful tips for winter Saras (if we ever have enough snow again — hardly any in 2024):
a few tips to avoid slipping
It was difficult for me to see where it was icy, but within a few miles I had developed a system that mostly worked.
First, look for the footsteps that stretch, the ones that seem longer than a foot. That is where someone has slipped or slid from ice underneath. Try to avoid these spots.
Second, accept that every single crosswalk entrance will be slippery and that you need to slow down in those spots. Slow down by shortening your stride and lifting your feet more often but with less height. Do a shuffle. Or, slow down to a walk. Keep your foot flat as you step down.
Third, stay focused, constantly reminding yourself the ice is lurking everywhere. Do not look away or try to pick up your pace.