RSSA poem in my pocket
Apr 14
Poetry, Reading Jane Kenyon, keeping poetry present, lunch pail full of poems, national poetry month, poetry in your pocket No Comments
Today was Poem in Your Pocket Day. I love the idea behind this–though I must admit I feel like every day ought to mean a poem in my pocket–so I thought over the poems and poets I’ve been reading and settled on the perfect one.
Of late, I’ve been enamored of Jane Kenyon. I can’t do her justice in a small space, so I’ll be writing a full blog on her later, but today I just want to consider pocket poems. To mark the day, I carried Kenyon’s poem “Things” around with me.
I chose this poem because I love the intense focus on tiny details, like the sound of a pebble kicked into the leaves by a hen: “Never in eternity the same sound– / a small stone falling on a red leaf.”
I’m also envious of the way Kenyon uses such tiny details as a path to expanse, as she writes “the juncture of twig and branch / scarred with lichen, is a gate / we might enter, singing.” It is as though she looks through a pinhole and sees the universe.
There’s a certain contentment in Kenyon’s work, an acceptance of the way things are, birth and decay, life passing into death. She writes of things “simply lasting, then / failing to last.” But unlike many of us, who would do anything possible to avoid that failure to last, Kenyon knows that “into light all things / must fall, glad at last to have fallen.
It seemed fitting, then, to take this poem, this pinhole with an infinite view, and fold it up into my pocket, to carry those well-crafted words with me. It was a reminder of what poetry is and can be, a reminder that even the simplest language can become something profound.
Most importantly, it’s a reminder to keep poetry present. So do just that. Pick a poem, one that amazes you, one that sings to you, one that you don’t want to let go. Then keep it in your pocket or, failing that, tuck it in your purse, your wallet, or even your bra. Just keep it.