TRIBEZA

Yes, Poetically

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Story by Anne Elizabeth Wynn

“You go through Fiction, turn left at Mythology, and then you’ll find Poetry.” Yes, and Wow. The man at the Barnes and Noble counter hadn’t merely told my date and me where we could locate the e. e. cummings compilations. He’d all but mystically described the arc and aspiration of every romantic journey. Don’t we all begin with the hope of finding our way to and through a Love Story? And not simply a simple one, but a transformative and therefore mythic one, and ultimately a poetic one?

It was only our second date, but all early indicator lights were flashing pretty colors. Two bookish souls with a nascent buzz for each other, we had departed dinner early and decamped to the bookstore because, before dessert, I had declared mr. cummings to be the best poet in the English language. I love e. e. cummings, of course. Richard, being both a writer and an editor, wanted proof, and I wanted to prove it, while testing Richard in the process.

We tarried in Contemporary Fiction, flirting through authors and titles. “Show me some of your favorites,” which, of course, really meant, “Let’s show off a little bit” along with “Please show me something of yourself.” I smiled about The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen. He told me his cheeks had hurt from laughing so uncomfortably over it. He caressed the spine of Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain. I felt likecaressing him. Then I grabbed Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer and declared, “I am a groupie for this guy! I’ve been to three readings already. He is such an artist!”

Grinning, he parried with, “Oh, no. Not Foer. This could be a deal breaker!” All in all, a delightful encounter and a playful exploration, but we never did make it to Poetry. I mean, we perused a copy of cummings’s work and we ended the evening warmly, but when I left New York City the next day, we pretty much left things as they were. Sweet, momentary, but an intrigue that did not turn into an intimacy.

When my heart was younger, I would have taken this, or any, romantic ending to be a frustration. I presumed the path of love to be like a linear track, with some sort of finish line, some Big Prize to be won “at the end” if only I could get “there,” and, of course, the more quickly I could get there, the better. Thankfully, life has knocked me so off course so often at this point that I now better understand, and appreciate, the fact that there is no course to be run, or “won.” The fact that there is no “there” out there. That all of life and love is only in the here and now. That every encounter with life, even and especially the ones that seem to throw us off or back or even down, offers to us the amplitude and depth of our own experience, where we can begin to find our own real poetry.

So, I thanked the universe for a little Richard, got back into e. e. cummings and into myself, and met up again with the last line of an incredible poem that has become my first instruction for living: “as yes is to if, love is to yes” I take these favorite nine words from Edward Estlin to mean that love is the affirmation of Affirmation. That we first must say Yes to Life, to all of its contingencies and questions and risks, even to all of its disappointments and injuries and losses, and then Love will say Yes to us.

This is the Yes of profound acceptance, not of willful action. We can make love, but we can’t make love happen. If romance is a pursuit, then love is a being present, and a being still. Just a “being,” until you are finally calm and loving about love. Then, when you are no longer looking,you see that love is not “out there” but just There. Here. Now. And there, and then, is when I met Joaquin. He loves e. e. cummings too. So, of course I love him. I love him illimitably. Here, and now. Love, just beautifully and completely, Is. It’s like we didn’t fall in love, but are becoming in love. Coming into it. Being it. Being. In Love. Beings. In Love. Poeticamente. Yes. ■

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