This book grabbed my attention with the very first sentence. Smith describing poems as greeting her with “urgent compassion” was bold and lovely. The way that she proceeds to reframe negative feelings (vulnerability, desperation, uncertainty) as “signs of life” and “tools for moving forward” was powerful.

”Our very selves from day to day are the result of where we’ve been, what we’ve seen, how we’ve hurt and healed, and what we are on the threshold even now of discovering. We never cease in our becoming.”

This is a sentiment that has always touched me deeply, and I loved the way in which Smith wove it into a discussion about poetry as an ever-evolving tool and art form. Her stance that “poems use words but are not about words” reminded me a lot of Victoria Chang’s thoughts from her new collection Tree of Knowledge, “Some days I think poems are measured by light. / Other days I think they are buried by it. // Sometimes I think poems are resistant to force. / Other times, that they are force. It’s possible // that poems are resistant to children. It’s possible / that poems are resistant to words.” Smith ends that very first page by taking this sentiment of poem’s being about words and telling us that if we remember that, we “are already perfectly equipped to experience and even to claim a relationship to the art form.” I thought the word choice of “claim a relationship” was interesting—what do you think of it?

The moments from the rest of this first chapter that struck me the most were the ones directed at people who do not feel they are capable of reading/understanding poetry.

”I wish I could say to everyone who lives with the fear of poetry: You don’t always have to understand it.”

Can I wallpaper my house with those words? I’m also intrigued, again, by her word choices, her framing of this fear as something one lives with, like a condition or affliction. It’s not “a” fear of poetry, it’s “the” fear of poetry. What are your thoughts on this? Why do you think she worded it that way?

”In order to get to community, we have to go quiet, slow down, allow ourselves to be both vulnerable and brave, and approach one another with an idea as simple as, I’m me, you’re you, we are not the same, and yet perhaps we can feel safe here together talking about something as simple as a poem, which encourages the notion that your life must be as important to you as mine is to me. If we let them, poems also encourage the more difficult notion that your life ought to be as important to me as my own life is; that I can only truly honor and protect myself by honoring and protecting you.”

This is probably my favorite sentiment from the whole chapter. While already directing us to fear less—or to use fear as a tool—she is also directing us to use this art for community-building. Her words are so striking.

To wrap up, I really enjoyed how toward the end of the chapter she spoke about ways to approach a poem, saying that “there are many points of entry” and that “there is nothing in a poem that does not wish to be noticed”---I want to direct every new and seasoned poetry reader alike to this book. I’m excited to explore further chapters.