Tony Hoagland

Early mornings, it’s dark now, the rain hammering on the lid of the LP gas tank outside the bedroom window. My older daughter slumps at the kitchen table and complains about the dark, the cold elbowing in, summer now fully escorted out the door.

As gently as I can, I tell her, It’s nothing personal.

I took that nothing personal line from her, the very line I’m turning back as mirror on her. After one angry tirade at me, she said very genuinely, It’s nothing personal, mom. I’m just telling you. Don’t be upset.

And so, with a real feeling of lightness, I said to her, That’s just the way the world is.

And our day went well.

To have to carry your own corn far–
who likes it?
To follow the black bear through the thicket–
who likes it?
To hunt without profit, to return weary without anything–
who likes it?
You have to carry your own corn far.
You have to follow the black bear.
You have to hunt to no profit…

“Song of Speaks-Fluently,” in Tony Hoagland, Twenty Poems That Could Save America

A few days ago, I inserted Lucille Clifton’s “The Lost Baby Poem.” In graduate school, a professor passed around copies of this poem at the beginning of one workshop. We all sat there, silently, and then a friend of mine began to cry, tears streaming down her face, soundlessly.

My professor cleared his throat and said sadly, Nothing said about this poem is enough said.

My house of females has a lot of talking, but sometimes I remind my daughters that silence can be just as mighty, the absence of words as powerful – for good or ill – as speaking or writing. That sometimes enough is really enough.

To underestimate the appeal of art is to underestimate not only poetry but also human nature. Our hunger for myth, story, and design is very deep…. If we are not in love with poems, the problem may be that we are not teaching the right poems. Yet ignorance of and wariness about art gets passed on virally, from teacher to student. After a few generations of such exile, poetry will come to be viewed as a stuffy neighborhood of large houses with locked doors, where no one wants to spend any time.

–– Tony Hoagland

Woodbury, Vermont

Stony Soil Vermont

Vermont Writing

Early Fall Mornings, Before High School

The Silence Means Something, Too