"Z" is for "Zoo"

                            ‘Love is the original mission of language,’ I heard—

                             That I could listen inside of it.

                                                                                                     (from “Send Word”)

As I began this post, the final in this particular series of alphabet inspired-and-organized essays, I realized (as I reviewed the full archive) that I posted the first of the series (“A” is for “Anxiety”) exactly five years ago…and I mean to the day.

That surprised me…and then didn’t, the numerological coincidence of that tidy circle of time, with its suggestion that I might have been engaging all along in a personal project that was participating somehow in a larger one.

Which, even just on the face of it, I have been: poets and prose writers have long been employing the alphabet and alphabet-derived forms and structures to inspire, compose and/or organize everything from individual poems to collections of poems, stories and essays.

But as I started reflecting more deeply on my own choice to write an abecedarian series, I remembered something that I had forgotten I knew: that the practice of engaging the alphabet to organize or otherwise formally shape and determine poetry and prose was originally a form of prayer, with a long tradition in Anglo-European poetry (14th-century English poet Geoffrey Chaucer’s poem, ABC being one of many examples), and an ancient, sacred one in Hebrew poetry.

In fact (as I learned when that memory sent me to various sources on the subject, both religious and poetic), the oldest abecedarian poems known are of Semitic origin, and include large portions of both the Book of Lamentations and of Proverbs, as well several of the Psalms. Including Psalm 119, for example, an abecedarian acrostic in which each stanza begins with successive letters of the Hebrew alphabet.

In the Hebrew mystical tradition of poetry-prayer, each letter of the alphabet is understood not only to signify, but to activate a particular facet of Divine wisdom and instruction. Together, in sequence, they both signify and activate by enacting the all-encompassing nature of Divine presence.

This sent me in turn on a tour of contemporary abecedarian acrostics, where I discovered Jessica Greenbaum’s marvelous A Poem for S , which considers the spiritual power inherent in the practice of a reverential relationship with the alphabet (note that the “A” is in the title):

Because you used to leaf through the dictionary,
Casually, as someone might in a barber shop, and
Devotedly, as someone might in a sanctuary,
Each letter would still have your attention if not
For the responsibilities life has tightly fit, like
Gears around the cog of you, like so many petals
Hinged on a daisy. That’s why I’ll just use your
Initial. Do you know that in one treasured story, a
Jewish ancestor, horseback in the woods at Yom
Kippur, and stranded without a prayer book,
Looked into the darkness and realized he had
Merely to name the alphabet to ask forgiveness—
No congregation of figures needed, he could speak
One letter at a time because all of creation
Proceeded from those. He fed his horse, and then
Quietly, because it was from his heart, he
Recited them slowly, from aleph to tav. Within those
Sounds, all others were born, all manner of
Trials, actions, emotions, everything needed to
Understand who he was, had been, how flaws
Venerate the human being, how aspirations return
Without spite. Now for you, may your wife’s
X-ray return with good news, may we raise our
Zarfs to both your names in the Great Book of Life.

That all of creation proceeds from the alphabet, and that from Within those / Sounds, all others were born, all manner of / Trials, actions, emotions, everything needed to / Understand who he was.

I love that so much!

And that’s it; that’s exactly what it has been (and is) to let the alphabet take the lead in these essays: a series of acts of prayer. Not the kind of prayer that constitutes a petition for Divine intervention, but prayer in its deepest sense: an agenda-less surrender into the kind of open, attentive curiosity that opens in turn into imagination, and by way of it (at least I’ve found this to be so) a deeper capacity for empathy, and its transformational effects.

                                he had / Merely to name the alphabet to ask forgiveness—

By way of my own alphabet-directed series of surrenders, I’ve engaged with topics it would not have occurred to me otherwise to even be curious about, much less explore. The topic-identifying and the writing, both, have often been a slow process…as I find to be the way of processes that are more exploratory and listening-based, and less about expressing pre-existing opinions and positions. More often than not (as my subscribers know; thank you for your patience!), it has often taken a couple of months at least for each next letter/word/topic to present itself, and then to find its footing and way somewhere.

Which was exactly my experience of how each arrived: it would simply, eventually present itself, if sometimes after a few false starts and pivots…but those scenic detours were all part of the process.

And in the course of engaging with each of these topics without already knowing what I had to say about them, I have found myself in-formed and even transformed in some visceral (as distinct from simply attitudinal) and important ways.

In the writing of ‘T’ is for ‘Thank You (The World Is Short-Staffed)’, for instance, which really does seem to have made me more generous, grateful and kind—not just sentimentally, but behaviorally— to a degree that had previously been more aspirational than actual, having eluded my more willful efforts in that direction.

                                          Love is the original mission of language

* * *

                                          how aspirations return / Without spite.

Now I feel an inner silence settling in, which I read as signifying that this reflection is complete, and with it, this particular A-to-Z series. I will continue to post on ‘Are You With Me Here?’ as usual otherwise, so do continue to subscribe and stay tuned.

Meanwhile and always, please receive my now and future thanks for reading and receiving ‘Are You With Me Here ?’ posts, and for the comments and conversations which sometimes follow.

Finally, so as to let poetry and the alphabet have the last word in both this post and the series, I’ll close with an abecedarian poem of my own written years ago, which (like A Poem for S) also enacts what it is about: the word, creating worlds.

                                                       After bathing,

                                                      cinquefoils dream
                                                      exotic fecund
                                                      gardens, hospitable
                                                      islands joining &
                                                      kissing. Long
                                                      moonrises nudge
                                                      open petals &
                                                      questions. Resplendent
                                                      sleep’s tailings
                                                      unfold a veiled
                                                      wild, Xanadu’s
                                                      yeasty zoo.

After notes

I haven’t yet imported the complete archive of both this abecedarian series and other Are You With Me Here? posts from their previous location on Wordpress to Substack, but it can be accessed through the link on my website: https://donnacatehenderson.com/blog

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