#269: On finding the extraordinary in the everyday ✨🌷

"It was crucial to learn that poetry was about everyday people, places and things. It was finding the extraordinary in the everyday."

Dear reader,

I’ve been in a clean up mood, and so far, I’ve gently dusted my inbox and cupboard (bye for now, lovely sweaters) + foraged for poems and pressed flowers in old notebooks that got shelved away.

Perhaps it’s the relative idleness of summer creeping in that’s got me re-assessing what I’d like to hold onto. Or maybe there’s an underlying hope in finding gems in the dirt. I don’t want certain things to be out of sight, out of mind my. So I’m giving them a new home or a well deserved place in the To-Get-Rid-Of cartons.

I feel lighter with this de-cluttering. Even thought the hoarder in me is being confronted by old memories and forced to sit with the discomfort of letting go.

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In this process of discovering old words and worlds, I came across a lovely story from poet Kevin Young on Rob Walker’s TAoN No. 110 newsletter, which I had to share with you today:

As a high schooler, I wrote terrible poems. But when I realized the subject of writing wasn’t far away from me but close by — in the field behind your house, or the dirt beneath your feet — I understood what a poem could be. I wrote about my parents, my grandparents, my family in Louisiana — people I didn’t see in the books I read. Understanding that literature was about them was probably the biggest leap for me. I didn’t discover some confidence in myself; it was more like, “I have to tell this story.” Doing so was very urgent and important. I stand by that. It was crucial to learn that poetry was about everyday people, places and things. It was finding the extraordinary in the everyday.

Here’s to finding the extraordinary in the everyday. Yes indeed!

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Postcard Sale!

I just realised that I’ve made a LOT of postcards over the past few years. So this whole month, I’m hosting a Birthday Sale on my Instamojo Merch Store until I turn 33 (on 1st April) or the stock runs out, whichever happens first.

20% off on everything + Free shipping + Free stickers & goodies with each order!

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Poetry Corner

Five poems that made me go Ooooof.

Art by Stelios Petroulakis

1. A Poem by Gregory Orr
   Knowing life grinds us,
   And dust
   Is what we’ll become.
   
   Sensing, likewise,
   That the moral
   Of our story
   Has to do
   With being mortal.
   
   Yet love grounds us.
   
   And the beloved
   Grows in us:
   We are her slow cocoon.
   
   And the poem is a door;
   The song, a little window.

2. In the Shape of a Poem by Blythe Baird
   This is an
   apology
   
   to all of
   the wounds
   
   I locked
   in the cellar
   
   of myself
   
   to punish them
   for refusing
   
   to heal
   
   in the shape
   of a poem.

3. Go Ahead by Roger Mitchell
   Go ahead, said the great crested flycatcher,
   lie in your bed all morning with the yellow curtains drawn
   and write poetry. No one will see.

   (via Pome by Matthew Ogle)

4. A History of Mourning by Robert Bly

   It’s odd that evening is so speckled with grief. 
   Birds start singing when the branch reddens. 
   But we write our poems when the sun goes down.

   Our ancestors knew how to cry at death; but they 
   Had enough to do finding big stones to cover 
   The dead, and begetting new souls to replace them.

   We slept on the limestone plains, and woke 
   Night after night, tracing the route the dead take 
   Through holes in limestone and on into the stars.

   Some hands outlined with blown powder 
   On the walls of the cave have missing fingers. 
   We drew maps of the night sky in the dust.

   How slowly it all went! One day a woman wept 
   When she saw a bone reddened with ochre. 
   A thousand years later, we put a bead in a grave.

   Some graves stand among woods. We still don't 
   Understand why a pine coffin is so beautiful. 
   We are still brooding over why the sun rises.

5. Sappho to Erinna by Noelle Kocot
   Come. It’s morning.
   Let me brush the stars
   from your hair.

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Recommended Listening

This month’s Spotify playlist is coming along just great. Happy listening!

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Links of the Week

• Watch: Stupid Dinner

• Fascinated by the prospect of loooooooong-exposure photography: This camera is taking a 1,000-year-long exposure photograph of Tucson’s desert landscape

• Batman sings Bohemian Rhapsody

• Chronolog: Time lapses of Earth powered by community science

• A Mustard Deep Dive (nom)

• I like love the idea of a Kitchen Rave

• What is your biggest regret?

• “My baby, Byline!”: Madeline Montoya on creative directing one of the most exciting new publications

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“I know of no greater pleasure in life than being able to sleep. The extinguishing of life and soul, the complete withdrawal from everything that makes you human, a person, the night empty of all memories and all illusions, having no past and no future, […]”
—Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet (tr. by Margaret Jull Costa)

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May you experience extraordinariness in your everyday! 🌷

Love,
Rohini

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