Language

"So when people say that poetry is a luxury, or an option, or for the educated middle classes, or that it shouldn't be read in school because it is irrelevant, or any of the strange and stupid things that are said about poetry and its place in our lives. I suspect that the people doing the saying have had things pretty easy. A tough life needs a tough language—and that is what poetry is. That is what literature offers—a language powerful enough to say how it is.
It isn't a hiding place. It's a finding place."
(Jeanette Winterson, Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal)

Reviewers of Adrian C. Louis' Ceremonies of the Damned say it's a book about Alzheimer's and the loss of love. The poems are "tough-minded and moving." The book "elegant, crafty and a quiet victory."

I don't claim to understand Louis' work. I need it. It floats in troubled water. My constant refrain while swimming is "don't drown don't drown don't drown." I reach the edge and hold on. I can no longer swim in public pools and I'm afraid to take to the ocean. Still the waters overwhelm me. They are familiar. I think they are familiar to Louis.

The summer of 97 was cruel, or maybe it was the woman. I was teaching a summer class on American Indian Literature (full of the men I loved) and doing research for $10 an hour. I was also packing boxes for the impending move to Riverside California. The woman, my woman, got a job and we were taking it—together. For 5 years we had done everything (except write and file my dissertation) together.

Days before the move she left me for a man, well maybe not a man, but because she didn't know if this was all there was and if it was, well, maybe there was more. Maybe there would be more with him. "Lesbians." That was what she didn't want. She didn't want to be walking down the street and have someone yell that at her. It had happened before. She didn't want it to happen again. When they walked down the street people got out of the way. How could I compete with a six foot something Black man?

I haven't written, or talked about this, for fifteen years. I haven't avoided it. I haven't felt it necessary. The particulars of that end are an ugliness I chose to turn away from. But that summer I was teaching, and every day I had to stop crying and stand before a room of humans and say something.

I couldn't figure out why I assigned these men (Louis, Vizenor, Ortiz and Alexie). What was I thinking? So much violence. How would I survive? I thought I could illuminate the beauty within the violence. Hubris.

IT HAS COME TO THIS
Three days a week I imprison you
among the shrieking aged,
the palsied pukers, the damned
and abandoned, the certifiably insane.
I do this because I am weak
and I think I'm going crazy, too.
(Adrian C. Louis, Ceremonies of the Damned)

I have always refused to accept the notion that the damage has defined us, but that summer I realized I spent too much time fingering the hole of despair—my own and the collective. Fifteen years later I am only beginning to face the impact of mental illness on my soul. The relationship between that end and recent others. Seeking compassion for myself within rigorous honesty. Understanding that "Sometimes it's hard to comprehend that ceremonies of the damned are useless."

I know there is no alibi in being. We can be, more beautiful than broken.