Emily Fragos: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

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The Sadness of Clothes

 

When someone dies, the clothes are so sad. They have outlived

their usefulness and cannot get warm and full.

You talk to the clothes and explain that he is not coming back

 

as when he showed up immaculately dressed in slacks and plaid jacket

and had that beautiful smile on and you’d talk.

You’d go to get something and come back and he’d be gone.

 

You explain death to the clothes like that dream.

You tell them how much you miss the spouse

and how much you miss the pet with its little winter sweater.

 

You tell the worn raincoat that if you talk about it,

you will finally let grief out. The ancients forged the words

for battle and victory onto their shields and then they went out

 

and fought to the last breath. Words have that kind of power

you remind the clothes that remain in the drawer, arms stubbornly

folded across the chest, or slung across the backs of chairs,

 

or hanging inside the dark closet. Do with us what you will,

they faintly sigh, as you close the door on them.

He is gone and no one can tell us where.

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Emily Fragos is the recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry, the Witter Bynner Poetry Prize  from the Library of Congress, and the Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters. She is the author of four acclaimed books of poetry, Unrest, Saint Torch, Hostage, and Little Savage, and the editor of seven poetry anthologies for The Everyman’s Pocket Library: Music’s Spell, Art & Artists, The Great Cat, The Dance, The Letters of Emily Dickinson, Poems of Gratitude, and Poems of Paris. She has also written numerous articles on music and dance, and served as guest poetry editor for Guernica. Her work has been translated into Spanish by Natalia Carbajosa and into Japanese by Yuka Urushibata. Emily Fragos has taught at Columbia, Yale, and NYU. She lives in New York City.

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                                                      Király Nikoletta, 1978. Hungarian Painter.

Comments

[Diane]

Exquisite, tender, smart poem. Love it!

[Indran Amirthanayagam]

"Words have that kind of power." Thank you Emily Fragos for including us in this beautiful and universal lament. The clothes that make the man. The living clothes. Guardians of energy, of breath, of memory.

Love and Poetry

Indran Amirthanayagam
Publisher, Beltway Editions
(www.beltwayeditions.com)

[Denise Duhamel]

I love this poem! And it also makes me think of all the Goodwill, thrift, Salvation Army clothes...the tenderness of those who came before and wore them. And where these clothes will go..."Do with us what you will..."

[Jack Skelley]

Lovely. Sometimes the simple and otherwise overused word "sad" is the most perfect for a poem that speaks this directly. Thanx, Emily & Terence

[Grace Cavalieri]

This poem is perfect for its purity, dignity, sweetness, and surprise. Emily Fragos is one of my favorite poets for this reason. And one of America's Best Poets! Her colors are just right, not too bright and not too pale. She gives us the center of poetry, where it is truest.

[Beth J.]

Straight to the heart.

[L. Fiore]

Emily Fragos has perfectly captured loss in her very moving poem. The accompanying painting is equally perfect.

[Alice Quinn]

Yes, this combination of art and poetry is superb! Bravo!

[Rebecca Goldstein]

Such a perfect image--the clothes that "cannot get warm and full"--to capture grief. Stunning.

[julie moses]

solace, i remember when...

[Susan Campbell]

Great poem Great painting

[Stacy Pies]

Wonderful poem and painting! As in so much of Emily’s beautiful work, the poem transcends its sadness.

[Mary J Rieser]

This poem touched my heart!

[Robert Engelman]

Exquisite limning of an experience that becomes, at some point, all but universal. For me it was going through some of the personal effects of my father, especially his shoes, worn just so by walking miles and miles, walking he would never do again.

[漆畑 祐佳 Yuka Urushibata]

What a great imagery for a life to go! I was deeply moved to read this GREAT poem!! Thank you so much for awakening me!!

[Barbara Rosenthal]

I adored this poem by Emily F. It captures all of the grief when someone has gone. There is no tragedy, only loneliness and loss remain.

[Greg Miller]

The poem moves as if effortless, as if without artifice. The clothes speak after having been spoken to, and what they say is true. The clothes will have nothing to do with transcendence or battle. Emily sees their fidelity, their stubbornly folded arms. She hears the clothes speak. She writes it down, and I want to cry, her tenderness is so startlingly sharp.

[Natalia Carbajosa]

Clothes as words, words as weapons against the inexorability of time. Beautiful.

[Don Berger]

A new and intelligent way to express grief, which through its art joins forces with beauty.

[Allen Wright]

Using clothes to express grief is brilliant and at the same time heart rending.

[Terence Winch]

Jack: Thanks for the comment.

[Jody]

I grabbed the cuff of my shirt remembering them.

[Susanne Braham]

Now I know why I kept and wear so many of my beloved mother's clothes, now overwhelming my closet, and why I sent a package of my deceased husband's ties across the country to our only son. I didn't want them to be sad!
I felt so much of this poem, dear Emily.

[Anne Harding Woodworth]

Lovely lovely elegy. Thank you.

[Peter Kearney]

The comments have such emotion and grace that they are like an extension of the poem itself, which is so expressive and so clear and so readily seen as true even though we likely never expressed its feeling so beautifully ourselves.