It Happens In The Imagination

by Robert Pinsky

 

The obliterating strangeness and the spaces

Are as hard to imagine as the love of death …

Which is the love of an entire strangeness,

The contagious blankness of a quiet plain.

Imagine that a man, who had seen a prairie,

Should write a poem about a Dark or Shadow

That seemed to be both his, and the prairie’s—as if

The shadow proved that he was not a man,

But something that lived in quiet, like the grass.

Imagine that the man who writes that poem,

Stunned by the loneliness of that wide pelt,

Should prove to himself that he was like a shadow

Or like an animal living in the dark.

In the dark proof he finds in his poem, the man

Might come to think of himself as the very prairie,

The sod itself, not lonely, and immune to death.

 

None of this happens precisely as I try

To imagine that it does, in the empty plains,

And yet it happens in the imagination

Of part of the country: not in any place

More than another, on the map, but rather

Like a place, where you and I have never been

And need to try to imagine—place like a prairie

Where immigrants, in the obliterating strangeness,

Thirst for the wide contagion of the shadow

Or prairie—where you and I, with our other ways,

More like the cities or the hills or trees,

Less like the clear blank spaces with their potential,

Are like strangers in a place we must imagine.

 

 

Robert Pinsky was the Poet Laureate during Bill Clinton’s second term, a public position that was somewhat ill suited to his quiet nature.    However, change is good, even for old poets, and it offered him the opportunity to spearhead some unique projects, one of which was My Favorite Poem for the Library of Congress.   Originally intended to be only 100 poems, being a poet with a panel of poets,  they changed the rules because there were too many good ones and “the list” became 180.  People from all over the country and backgrounds submitted entries and those that were selected were recorded as well.  I am disappointed to report there were scant few sonnets, and of those included, I was not a fan.   However, I am happy to report there are a lot of other great poems.   If you’re looking for an eclectic free anthology on-line, check it out.  Thank you Robert!