In a National Poetry Review essay. David Grubin quotes the last line of Stanley Kunitz’s poem, “The Layers”— “I am not done with my changes.” Kunitz was U.S. poet laureate at 95.
“Not many have done it—writing poems into old age,” says Grubin. “Thomas Hardy wrote well into his 80s, May Sarton published Coming Into Eighty when she was 82 after recovering from a stroke, while Linda Pastan published her last collection at 90, a year before she died. Sophocles is said to have written his last play when he was 90.”
Poems from the romantics seem to come from the breathless, hormone-filled exuberance of youth. When you get old, you’re likely to go flat. Sometimes that’s true. Of course there’s a difference between romance and marriage. One comes from inspiration—there you are, standing in the garden, and here comes a skylark. “Hail to thee, blythe spirit!” you call out, and pull out your pen. Marriage is full of breakfasts and cleaning up spilled orange juice. It comes from commitment.
"You are old, father William," the young man said,
"And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head —
Do you think, at your age, it is right?" Lewis Carroll (1865)
I am old, by any definition. Yet I love standing on my head, metaphorically. I am more committed to this work than I was at 30. I am not done with my changes. My final change will leave behind a dusting of words. Maybe they will mean something to someone, and we will relish our mutual being, across time.
Maybe my words will be compost. So what? Shakespeare didn’t write plays for undergraduate English class textbooks. He wrote them for a raucous contemporary crowd.
Some readers say I should put these posts into a book. Nah. I write them for right now. I am following my life. I’m curious about the moment I’m in. I like sharing my changes. Without you, I can’t make this thing work. They’re probably your changes also. We may resonate with each other.
Look at my arms and legs! I’m as spotted and tattered as a salmon swimming upstream to die. I’ve had a lot of stuff. Including, it seems too much sun on my skin. And physical troubles, heartbreak and—lucky me—joy.
Ack! Right now I have a bad case of bursitis (that even SOUNDS old). I can’t walk far without pain. I’m using trekking sticks outside. Supposedly this is a temporary condition and eventually it will ease. I’ve had worse, but I hate not taking long walks. I’m no longer riding my bike (although I may again!) I don’t know how swimming will be when we get to the lake. But who knows! And I’ve been discovering that simply watching someone else do the things I used to do engages my memory muscles almost as if I’m doing them myself. Maybe you know what I mean. If I’ve done it before, I’m doing it still, in some way. As for writing, I write less, but I feel in some ways I’m at my best. I feel confident, not tangled up in posing.
Worn Words
The late poems are the ones
I turn to first now
following a hope that keeps
beckoning me
waiting somewhere in the lines
almost in plain sight
it is the late poems
that are made of words
that have come the whole way
they have been there
--W.S. Merwin, from The Shadow of Sirius, 2008.
The P.S. . . .
I’m reading at the Bellaire library on July 19th. I would love it if Central Lake/Bellaire friends would show up. This will be my last scheduled reading until fall, when my full-length book, The End of the Clockwork Universe will be out! I’ll tell you more about that soon.