A poem & Poetry Salons
Love Like Salt by Lisel Mueller
It lies in our hands in crystals
Too intricate to decipher
It goes into the skillet
Without being given a second thought
It spills on the floor so fine
We step all over it
We carry a pinch behind each eyeball
It breaks out on our foreheads
We store it inside our bodies
In secret wineskins
At supper, we pass it around the table
Talking of holidays by the sea.
I was considering poems for the next Poetry Salon when I came across this exquisite piece. I recently had a conversation with some friends on the nature of love and was awoken again to the many perspectives and possible models of love. As we ascend to the end of Dante’s magnificent vision in Paradise, I am surprised how deeply we struggle to understand the relationship between Beatrice and Dante- and how fundamental that understanding is to the work as a whole even as we consider the architecture of the universe Dante created, his levels of shining souls residing in Paradise, his theological arguments and political concerns.
In Love Like Salt, the careful and economic choice of words (Love is never named in the poem) reinforces the quotidian nature of love. Moving from its precious, ineffable nature in the first stanza directly to the kitchen floor in the second and third, the poem does not attempt to obscure love but by the playing out of the extended metaphor (love = salt), I am brought anew to my occasional thought of the absolute necessity of love in my life- not just as an enhancer, but as life-giving.
Even the final line- that seems to pint to our distraction from the thing at hand, contains within it a further image of the love/salt duo- the holidays at by the sea involve being immersed in the buoyant salty world; again without awareness, without consideration. We are immersed in our love all the time.
Poetry Salon: October 23, 20.00-22.00
After the pure pleasure of the September Salon night, this looks to be a Salon regular feature. My aim is to have the Poetry night occur at the start of the new series. Please sign up by your email commitment and I will send you the specifics including poems as they are determined. The cost is 10 euro and a suggested contribution of a nibble or boisson. I am considering some Emily Dickinson works perhaps to paired (oh, it is so cliché but the contrast brings each into clarity) with Walt Whitman (some stanzas from Leaves of Grass or A Noiseless Patient Spider) along with Louise Gluck or Phil Levine or Sharon Olds…there is so much to choose from! And while I am procrastinating the choice, I must read more poetry every day…