Read Like A Poet July 22

Hello everyone,

Welcome to Office Hours. We talk about poetry here. How to read it. How to connect it to the world. And Why it’s important. If that sounds interesting to you, I hope you’ll consider sharing this post with friends and consider a paid subscription.

Today I’m sharing the poem “Saints” by Stephen Dunn, from his 1998 collection Riffs & Reciprocities.

Saints
by Stephen Dunn
Those who earn their names know what suffering is… and elect it anyway. They love without ambivalence one shining thing, yet some—the even more saintly—are tortured by the manifold richness of the discernible world. I’ve known one secular saint. I watched him fast so an idea would swell. I didn’t want to be him, though once or twice, by design I’ve felt that strange sumptuousness born from doing without. For him it must have been an imagined feast, like a wafer on the tongue. For me: just another something for the body to have known before it dies and becomes dust. Saints, like revolutionaries, walk headlong into the cool, dry wind, are always serving a hidden flame, are terrifying because of what they do not need. The saint asks, What will you die for? The revolutionary adds, For what would you kill? Either way, sacrifice is an ugly business, as ugly as history itself. Choose between these terrible things, history often says. We are only commentators until, for us, it comes to that choice.

Let’s talk about this poem. Saints is from Dunn’s book Riffs & Reciprocities, which is a collection 45 pairs of prose poems in conversation with each other. So 90 poems total. The description of the book mentions that the poems play off each other in the manner of jazz improvisations. All of this is useful context.

Part of what I enjoy about jazz is the break from established patterns. I remember going to a jazz show last year and seeing a pianist lay down a melody. When it was his turn to solo he played notes from the melody, but left other notes missing. It was riveting to expect a familiar melody and instead only be teased with a single note or a small slice of the melody. While the pianist played, my mind tried to fill in the blanks. Sitting in the audience, I felt like I understood something about poetry and the way silence can be more important than the actual words on a page—that maybe you could teach a reader to fill in the blanks. To finish a line themselves.

Dunn’s poem is not quite so radical. Its spirit of improvisation seems be directly related with the spirit of play. I also like that Dunn’s training as a poet shines through: The poem ends on a volta.

“Saints” reminds me of the poem “The List of Famous Hats” by James Tate. The tone is similar. Both poems are playful and both poems end on a revelation. If you’re into prose poems, you should check out Jose Hernandez Diaz, a contemporary master of prose poems.

I do not like the spirit of “Saints.” I do not like that Dunn treats saints and revolutionaries like they are extraordinary beings- like they possess a drive or a soul that is beyond ordinary human beings. To believe otherwise, lets the rest of us off the hook. There’s nothing innately different about saints and revolutionaries. They are not born with different genetics than anyone else. I believe we can and must all choose to actively participate in making the world we want to live in.

And this brings me back to the ending of “Saints:” “We are only commentators until, for us, it comes to that choice.” — This sentence feels true to me. “We are only commentators until, for us, it comes to that choice.”—that choice is coming for everybody.

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Reminder: tomorrow, I am hosting Office Hours from 8pm-9:30pm EST. Here is the link. Come through if you want to ask questions about a poem you are working on or publishing at large or anything else. Or come ask a question about pro wrestling. Whatever. I’ll be here.

See you soon,
José