Sarah Arvio: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Sponge

 

Soul like a dirty sponge that soaked up all the dark bits

from yours   all messed up and mixed in

 

with the dirt of the days   the old hairs and hatefulness

Oh my god I knew there was hate in the human world

 

but I didn’t know it was the job of my soul

to clean it up   How can I clean it up if my soul

 

is the sponge sponging it up   In the end   it doesn’t

go anywhere except into my dirtier and dirtier soul 

 

And I say   well   crying will clean it up   but then I’m

bent over crying because my beautiful sponge of a soul

 

that lay in the depths of a cool warm aquablue tropical

sea with little fishes flitting about in their exquisite

 

jewel colors   and rays of sunshine raying through 

has been used to sop up an angry man’s leftover

 

cruelty   Yes   cruel does sound like jewel and there

should be a jewelty   How can I squeeze it out   I'll

 

need a new sponge   but I can’t throw out my soul and if

each tear is one drop of an aquablue tropical sea       

 

maybe I can cry back my sea   It’s not so easy

to clean a soul   some say weeks   and some say centuries

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Sarah Arvio’s new book of poems is Cry Back My Sea (2021), which has been called “an ode to love.”  Earlier books are Visits from the Seventh (2002), Sono: Cantos (2006), and night thoughts: 70 poems & notes from an analysis (2013), which is a hybrid of poetry, essay, and memoir.   Her translation of poems and a play by Federico García Lorca, Poet in Spain (Knopf, 2017) has been received to wide acclaim. Among her honors are the Rome Prize and fellowships from the Bogliasco and Guggenheim foundations and the National Endowment for the Arts.  Poems have appeared in such places as Poetry, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, and Boston Review, as well as in many anthologies, including two editions of The Best American Poetry.  A poem from Poet in Spain appears this winter in 100 Poems That Matter, curated by the Academy of American Poets.  Arvio worked for many years as a conference translator for the United Nations in New York and Switzerland.  A graduate of the Columbia School of the Arts and a lifelong New Yorker, she now teaches poetry and literary translation.

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Comments

[Michael Mark]

What is “the job of the soul?” This beautiful poem reaches in places I’ve never traveled. Now I will. Thank you.

[Indran J Amirthanayagam]

There should be jewelty and the sea will cry back. There is a wry wit breaking throughout these deeply moving lines. Thank you Sarah.

[Grace Cavalieri]

I like the repeated words, they are like the sponge, like the soul.
And I am alive with this weekly art.

[Eileen]

This poem is beautiful.

[Maureen Owen]

I really, really like Sarah's poem. " It’s not so easy

to clean a soul" or a sea.

[Don Berger]

I've admired Sarah's poems for many years just as I find this one striking today, how the soul finds a sustained language, and a colloquial one at that--it's a poem whose thread forcefully travels such an impressive length without losing power or momentum. Thanks for finding it Terence.

[Lisa Citron]

the urgent present receives a fresh entry into Tonglen practice - receiving and sending.

[jim c]

Lovely poem, Sarah.

[Phyllis Rosenzweig]

Totally moving in a surprisingly gut-punch kind of way. I really loved it.