6 May 2016: Today has been a good, if busy and slightly stressful day. I had my summer class in the morning and then the first A&R session all day and both went very well. Nevertheless, I found myself feeling more anxious than I thought I would, mostly likely because I had a lot to get done before tomorrow morning.
As I was taking a walk just a bit ago, I was listening to the Poem of the Day Podcast and thinking about what to blog about for today. Then this poem, Kim Addonizio's "Scary Movies," came on. I think I had heard it before (some of it was vaguely familiar), but I certainly hadn't connected to it so strongly before. If you follow the link above, you should listen to the audio version, which contains an extra stanza--actually the stanza that moved me most.
It's not that this is an uplifting or happy poem--it's not. It's about nagging (and sometimes crippling anxiety), the sort of movies of what could happen that play in your head and threaten to disrupt your life or at least your peace of mind. Again, not cheery stuff. Yet I found beauty and comfort in hearing this poem tonight because I am familiar with these kinds of moments from time to time. In fact, I was feeling them earlier in the evening.
In a lovely way, this recognition--this moment of "that sounds like me"--forms a kind of bookend to my day. In my class this morning, we were talking about what good literature can offer: sometimes tiny but powerful moments of recognition, seeing yourself, your emotions, your experiences in someone else. These are some of literature's most profound gifts to us.
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