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A lot of people I meet say they don’t know what to do with poetry. They don’t know quite how to read it and they don’t quite know what to make of it. Whether someone is more into fiction or non-fiction, whether they read exclusively horror books or ones about old boats, the prose is different from verse. It fits neither category and exists as a “yes, and,” and it’s fine to find what seems like improv as less than enchanting.
In Little Alleluias, a Mary Oliver collection released six years after her death, she offers another explanation on the difference and why poetry is appealing. “The prose-horse is in harness, a good, sturdy and comfortable harness, while the horse of poetry has wings. And I would rather fly than plow.”
Here’s the catch, though: Any poet’s work isn’t about a preference, but in knowing they have to do both. The glory of flight and all its offerings paired with the gravity—the weight—of each day’s steps pulling us down as a matter of natural law is what puts words on the page. It’s not an escape, but a negotiation.
In Gabrielle Calvocoressi’s newest collection, The New Economy, they end with a series of six poems titled “Every Day but Sunday.” Sometimes poets do this, and while it’s a tack that might fluster readers, it also brings delight. It’s a practical strategy for offering the way the same thought can come up in different contexts and mean different things, but all fit under the same umbrella. The series opens with aches, physical and whirring, with questions of how far exhaustion can go. There isn’t any baseball, not yet. It’s holy season. It’s this time of year, right now, Lent on the Catholic calendar, a time inherently tied to waiting for new risings.