Carmen Giménez Smith: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

___________________________________________________

No Apology: A Poemifesto

Isn’t there a line by Yusef Komunyakaa, “I apologize for the eyes
in my head.” Maybe what I am trying to say is that I apologize
for the sight in my eyes. Susan Briante

I would love to make a proposal, and it is out of love,
not patronizing love but true revolutionary love, and it won’t
upset the orbit tomorrow. So here’s where I’d like
to begin, and this might be the hardest thing you’ve tried to do,
or maybe you already do it and I’m grateful for you
because you’ve inspired me. I know it’s the hardest thing
for me because I haven’t done it consistently (not at all, sorry),
but I want to recommend that we stop apologizing.
Today I counted and I said I’m sorry approximately 22 times.
I apologized for my setting my stuff down on the counter at Kroger.
I apologized for being behind someone at a copy machine.
I apologized for someone else bumping into a stranger.
I apologized for taking longer than a minute to explain an idea.
Suffice it to say I am sorry all the time.
I won’t tell you what to do because that makes me
an implicit solicitor of sorry. Personally,
when the word comes into my mouth, I’m going to shape it into
a seed to plant in another woman’s aura as love. I only ask
that we get started. This is our first step toward world domination.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Carmen Giménez is the author of numerous poetry collections, including Be Recorder (Graywolf Press, 2019), which was a finalist for the 2019 National Book Award in Poetry, Her forthcoming book. Nostalgia Has Such a Short Half-Life, will be published in 2023. A 2019 Guggenheim fellow, she is a Professor of English at Virginia Tech. She has served as the publisher of Noemi Press since 2002.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

                                      Roberta Levitow, Apologia Pro Vita Sua, 2020.

 

Comments

[Grace Cavalieri]

YES and Yes and Yes. I am sending this to every woman I know. Thank you for formalizing this in poetic form, so it will travel easier and be understood more fully

[David Lehman]

Nice: a poem that works as a manifesto: quit apologizing.
There's a wonderfully funny prose poem by Catherine Bowman called "No Sorry." Check it out.
And the art is fascinating, especially death playing the Nutcracker.
Happy birthday to all artists born on this day.

[Denise Duhamel]

Terrific! I, too, say sorry all the time when I don't mean it! I once walked into a wall and apologized to the wall. (I wish I were kidding!) This poem is rad/radical! Love it!!

[Eileen Reich]

I love this message. A meaningful poem. 💗

[lally]

a definite knockout

[Don Berger]

Halfway through this poem, during the wonderful cataloguing of moments where the speaker had apologized, I flashed to Neruda, maybe the Odes in particular, admiring Gimenez for her clear-eyed insistence.

[Peter Kearney]

Early in the biblical book of Genesis, God expressed being sorry for creating humans. After sparing those on the ark and destroying all other life on earth, God was sorry no more, with the rainbow as a sign God was ready to accept forever the world as it was. Doesn't the apology-free and love-suffused aura proposed by our brilliant poet point toward a kind of rainbow arching over the whole world?

[Thomas E. Davis]

I absolutely love this poem. I'm sending it to my magical daughter.

[Terence Winch]

Thanks for the comment, Tom. Great to hear from you.