What We Wonder: On Loneliness
Dear Reader,
Where to start? Perhaps at the foundation of it all: ourselves, in this world, at this moment in time. One of the things I've tried so hard to avoid—and maybe you feel the same way—is being alone.
I had a friend in my early twenties who once said: "I know I will always be OK because I will always have myself." This was wild to me. I remember thinking: could she really feel that way? Because at the end of all this, if I'm stuck with just myself, that feels like a punishment, not some sort of safety net. So that feeling—the possibility of ending up entirely alone—became one of my biggest fears.
I grew up in a big family, without my own room, in a small house. I also grew up playing team sports year-round until I went to college. For better or worse, I was never alone. But as I got older, I realized it was possible to be alone even if I was surrounded by lots of people. It is possible to be alone in a family, in a friendship, in a marriage. It is possible to feel alone even if you talk to people all day long.
The funny thing about loneliness is that the more you talk about it, the less alone you feel. To say "I feel lonely" to someone is perhaps one of the most vulnerable things we can do. There are all kinds of societal judgements that get slapped onto to people who admit that. Even if it's something we all feel, we rush to come up with valid reasons as to why they could be feeling this way like" they must be depressed; or, their partner just left them; or their parent just died. And yes, all of these could be really valid reasons why someone feels lonely, but what if there's not a clear reason? What if we just feel lonely and don't know why?
This used to terrify me. I'm a fixer. I want to find the problem, come up with a plan, and then rectify it. But I've learned that loneliness often doesn't work that way. In my late twenties, I swung entirely the other way. When I couldn't "fix" my loneliness, I decided I didn't need anyone. I aimed the fixing on myself in some really destructive ways, thinking I could become a person that wasn't lonely if I were a little more perfect. I completely isolated myself from people in the process. And needless to say, that wasn't the solution either.
Maybe there isn't a clear-cut, easy solution for feeling alone, and I'm learning to be OK with that. Maybe sometimes we just have to feel alone. But I do know one thing: we also need connection. We need to feel seen. We need to feel heard, even if it is just to say "I am lonely." In so many ways, that's what poetry has done for me, which is why I decided to begin with this topic.
Poetry had gifted me with community, the kind of community where I can show up as completely and authentically myself. It's allowed me to say things that I thought were previously unsayable. It's helped me feel more connected to others—to show up for them as they completely are. In that process, I feel more connected to myself. And suddenly, without me trying to fix it, I feel less alone. I truly do believe that I can support myself no matter what. It doesn't feel like a wild idea anymore.
Today's three poems, written by three of my favorites poets—Ada Limón, Shira Erlichman, and Sarah Kay—are unabashed about their need for community. They are unapologetic in their knowledge of and identification with loneliness. In admitting this loneliness, these poems enact a sort of antidote to loneliness.
All of these poems live in my body now. I've heard these poets read them, and I've read them aloud to myself numerous times. They are the kinds of poems I want to share with friends. To say, "Look, this is what happens when you lean into that loneliness." You realize your voice is not the only one. You realize that in your loneliness you are not alone.
***
Ada Limón's "The End of Poetry"
"The End of Poetry" first appeared in The New Yorker during the beginning of the pandemic. It is easily one of my favorite poems of 2020. One of the most effective things in the poem is its repetition of the word "enough," which creates a kind of incantation that immediately draws you into the poem and propels you through it. The poem begins:
Enough of osseous and chickadee and sunflower
and snowshoes, maple and seeds, samara and shoot,
enough chiaroscuro, enough of thus and prophecy
and the stoic farmer and faith and our father and tis
of thee, enough of bosom and bud, skin and god
not forgetting and star bodies and frozen birds,
From the beginning, the poem creates a kind of rebellion. It takes so many things that are typically found in poetry like the "chickadee and sunflower / and snowshoes, maple and seeds" and says "enough" with them. There's something else the speaker wants to say, and all of these other things need to move aside. The poem continues with this same kind of urgency:
enough of the will to go on and not go on or how
a certain light does a certain thing, enough
of the kneeling and the rising and the looking
inward and the looking up, enough of the gun,
the drama, and the acquaintance’s suicide, the long-lost
letter on the dresser, enough of the longing and
the ego and the obliteration of ego, enough
of the mother and the child and the father and the child
Every time I read the line "how / a certain light does a certain thing" I have to laugh out loud. As a poet, sometimes I feel like it's my job to bring the light into a dark poem. To balance the dark lines by pointing out where the light is in the room. But this poem rejects that, it keeps building toward something that is lurking in the shadows, and Ada refuses to explain it away with the language about light. She ends the poem with an ask—an ask so simple that it almost hurts to read it:
and enough of the pointing to the world, weary
and desperate, enough of the brutal and the border,
enough of can you see me, can you hear me, enough
I am human, enough I am alone and I am desperate,
enough of the animal saving me, enough of the high
water, enough sorrow, enough of the air and its ease,
I am asking you to touch me.
The first time I heard Ada read this poem was on the VS podcast, which is a podcast I love from the Poetry Foundation, and at that time was hosted by Danez Smith and Franny Choi, who are two other incredible poets. It's an a gorgeous reading. If you want to check it out yourself, you can listen to the whole podcast, or start listening at about 57:16 of the podcast episode here. You can hear the exact way the poem builds into this moment, and you won't be sorry you listened.
Sarah Kay's "The Minister of Loneliness"
Even if you aren't familiar with many poets, you may be familiar with Sarah Kay's work. Her 2014 book No Matter the Wreckage took the poetry world by storm—she was just 25 when she published this beautiful collection. Sarah is an accomplished poet, and in particular, a spoken word poet. All poems are meant to be read out loud, but Sarah's truly are. She's not just a skilled writer of poetry, but also, she's a wonderful performer.
I first heard her read her 2021 poem "The Minister of Loneliness" on the VS podcast. (Yes, there's a pattern developing here.) Sarah wrote this poem during the pandemic to describe Japan's appointment of its first Minister of Loneliness to combat social isolation and suicides that were at particularly high levels during COVID-19.
I have only ever heard Sarah read this poem—first on the VS podcast and then once at a reading for a new poem she had out in Adroit called "Unreliable," which is also a fabulous poem. The "Minister of Loneliness" is not available anywhere in print yet (as far as I know), but you can check it out on the VS podcast here starting at about 1:13.00. It is well worth the listen.
Like Ada's poem, Sarah's last line—"he does like to wonder"—just kills me. There's something that poet Laure-Anne Bosselaar says about poem endings that I often think about—they either swing the door open or they swing the door shut. For me, Sarah's ending line "he does like to wonder" swings the door wide open.
But before getting to the ending, if you listen to the poem, Sarah builds up to this moment by describing all the ways the minister tries to build community by "installing tin cans on every windowsill with a piece of string to someone else’s window." One of my favorite lines in the poem is "All of Japan is a ball of string now." I love imagining all of our collective loneliness intertwined into a tangled ball of string. It's striking. It's in and of itself a thing of wonder.
So when Sarah begins to close the poem, and describes that the minister "has a crush on a middle school teacher across town, and everyone eavesdrops to hear the way he stumbles when she answers," it brings the the poem full circle. Even the minister feels loneliness. Even the minister craves meaningful connection. But then, here is where the wonder, the curiosity comes in:
He is nervous she prefers the quiet, but he does not know for sure yet. He does not know what she is thinking, does not know how she spends her Saturdays, or how she prefers her tea, or whether she likes to walk in the rain. But he likes wondering.
There's something completely freeing about saying "I don't know about this thing, but I'm going to lean into that wonder." I think about that all the time when writing poetry (hence the title of this newsletter), and this poem, does exactly that: it leans hard into what happens when we give ourselves expansiveness, when we give ourselves the freedom to wonder.
Shira Erlichman's "Somewhere Real"
Sometimes, I come across a poem that I know I am absolutely going to love just from the first few lines. "Somewhere Real" by Shira Erlichman, which first appeared in The Nation in December 2020, is absolutely one of those poems. Don't get me wrong—I like the unraveling of a poem. I like following it to a place I don't expect. This poem does that too, but this is a poem that I knew was headed somewhere good right from the start.
I first heard the poem on the VS podcast (I swear this is the last time I will mention it!), and I literally screamed when Shira finished reading it. Podcast host Danez Smith also screams after she reads it—it's just that good. You can listen to it yourself here starting at about 06:15.
The premise of the poem is that the speaker is driving a car, in which she invites people, well-known and not, concepts, objects, memories, and more to "get in." The premise itself is incredibly gutsy, and that gutsiness starts right from the beginning, when the speaker invites George Eliot, the pen name of English author Mary Ann Evans, who wrote the classic novel Middlemarch:
Get in, George Eliot. I packed PB&Js. I’m bringing
that rainbow parachute we held hands under
as eight year olds. Get in, right beside Autumn, beside
every manic pixie dream girl screenplay written by
a man, beside “bad weather,” beside Allegra’s pomegranate
split into five uneven offerings, beside Allegra herself,
she’s a mother now, as I write this.
I'm obsessed with the first two sentences of the poem: "Get in, George Eliot. I packed PB&Js." It demonstrates one of the most successful things about this poem, which is its use of juxtaposition. The idea of Mary Ann Evans, a preeminent Victorian writer, being told to "get in" because the speaker packed PB&Js just breaks my brain. I can't help but smile.
It feels impossible to keep up that kind of momentum in a poem, but Shira does it. In just a few lines we go from George Eliot, to PB&Js, to "every manic pixie dream girl screenplay written by / a man" (I love this line too), and it goes on. It would be easy to perhaps lose the reader with so many associations, but somehow, I feel completely oriented in the poem, even if I miss some of the references along the way.
It also would be possible for the poem to feel too fantastical or frivolous with so many references that make you laugh or smile, which the speaker acknowledges, but the poem gets grounded by some serious moments too:
I’m trying desperately not to sound cute,
which is, of course, adorable. But, please. Eleven siblings
killed in the camps, get in, next to my grandfather.
Pillheadedness, get in. Pema Chodron’s forehead
and everything behind it, get in.
The speaker address points out the poem could "sound cute" but the next line really seals the deal that this is definitely not a "cute" poem: "But Please. Eleven siblings / killed in the camps, get in, next to my grandfather." That line takes my breath away every time I read it—it stands in stark contrast to a lot of the lighter moments in the poem, but still, it belongs in this poem. It feels so important to what the speaker is trying to say—I want all the range of human experience, even the ugly, hard parts, to get in.
My favorite part of this poem, as with the other two poems, is the ending. Shira builds the up the momentum by amping up the use of repetition of words like "order me." And in terms of swinging the door open or closed, this ending feels like it is closing the door—metaphorically and literally with the last words of "get in" still repeating through the final lines. But it's a closure in the best possible way:
Order me fries.
Order me lungs. Order me around. Order my manuscript.
Here’s a handful of pennies, of ketchup packets, of sky.
I know you’re exhausted, get in, I’m driving you home. Roll down
your window, the forecast is alive. The dog’s kicking in his sleep
which means a brain the size of a lemon can squeeze a whole
dream. Poor poet, get in, you never could say goodbye with grace.
Lucille, get in. Dead family, get in.
As the poem wraps, it starts to zoom in on these micro moments—the "handful of pennies, the ketchup packets, of sky" and the dog "kicking in his sleep which means a brain the size of a lemon can squeeze a whole / dream." But then it also counterbalances this with some larger moments and figures: the "poor poet" who can't "say goodbye with grace," "Lucille [Clifton]" a poetry legend, and once again the speaker's "[d]ead family." You can tell the poem is building toward some larger insight, and Shira delivers, closing the door shut on this poem:
I want to show you something:
I had no map when I started and now here I am, somewhere real
called loving you, get in.
Gosh, what an ending. The whole poem is entitled "somewhere real," a title the poem earns through its honesty and vulnerability in every line. But there's also an acknowledgement that the poem didn't have clear place to land at the outset—"I had no map when I started." Shira admitted during the VS podcast that she wrote the entire poem in one shot, except for the ending. It was only after sitting with the poem did she realize that "somewhere real" was called "loving you."
It's that last line that makes me think this poem is about loneliness because it seems clear that the "you" could be anyone of us—it could be any of the people mentioned into the poem, it could be anyone reading the poem, it could even be the writer herself. I love how universally specific that "you" can become.
***
These three poems—"The End of Poetry," "The Minister of Loneliness," and "Somewhere Real"—are my current go-to poems for feeling less alone. They are clear, unapologetic, and expansive works. I have read and listened to them countless times, and every time I do so, I come away with the same feeling: it's OK to feel alone. So much of art, of story, of connection starts from that feeling of aloneness.
But also, there's something important about sharing this aloneness—it's like what Brené Brown says about shame: it can't live in the dark. It can't live when we hear from someone else: "Yep, I feel that way too." It doesn't mean that loneliness goes away, it just loses some of its power. It loses that "it's only me" quality that can feel so suffocating.
Thank you so much for joining me on this first iteration of my new newsletter—it's a long one, but if you read this far, I'm so glad you stuck it out with me! I'd love to hear your thoughts on how this was for you. Feel free to reply. As always, I read and respond to every message.
Take care and talk soon,
MEK