Friday night, I had the pleasure of being present on the birth day of Kim Rosen’s new book Saved By A Poem: The Transformative Power of Words, about how poetry can save your life. The book cover says, “Poetry, the most ancient form of prayer, is a necessary medicine for our times: a companion through difficulty; a guide when we are lost; a salve when we are wounded; and a conduit to an inner source of joy, freedom, and insight.” Well said, Kim.
Many of us erect barriers to poetry early on, scarred by high school English teachers and plagued with self-doubt about whether we’re sophisticated enough to “get it.” But I feel the same way about poetry as I do about art. When you find a piece that touches you, you experience it to the core. You don’t think it, you live it. You BE it, even. It changes you. As Kim would say, it might even provide exactly what you need to save your life.
In her reading, Kim told the story about her visit to the Tasaru Ntomonok Rescue Centre for Girls in Kenya, a shelter opened by Vagina Monologues author Eve Ensler and her organization V-Day to protect Maasai girls escaping female genital mutilation (FGM). My ears perked when Kim read these words. I spent several years working as the physician in a public health clinic where all of my patients were refugees from Somalia or Ethiopia and 99% of them were victims of FGM (meaning that, as children, their clitoris and vulva had been cut off and sewn together, leaving only a matchstick-sized hole to allow the egress of urine).
As a young doctor straight out of residency, I felt overwhelmed by this new responsibility, to care for hundreds of women who spoke little English and suffered many complications of their wounds. Most of them saw me because they were pregnant. Many were in the country illegally, having paid large sums to sneak in through Mexico. I felt self-conscious around them, and made efforts to understand them better. I wrote up anonymous surveys in an attempt to try to learn how to better serve them, forgetting that they barely spoke, much less wrote, English. I had to communicate via a Somali translator, my nurse, Amina, who adored these women and dedicated her life to helping serve them. I called upon the help of Jai Jai Noire, an anti-FGM activist whose girlfriend was an FGM survivor. Her website (sadly, now appears to be defunct) was committed to educating doctors about how to care for women with FGM.
Over time, they grew more comfortable with me. They invited me to the one Somali restaurant in San Diego, which served curry and spaghetti, reflecting the culinary influence of Somalia’s colonial days. Slowly, they began confessing their stories, about how they were cut at nine years old, how the other women waited on them while their legs were bound together for 30 days, how friends died from hemorrhage or infection. They told me of the shards of unsterile bone used to perform the procedure and the pain. They told of how they would be rejected by their tribe if they didn’t do it, how they would never be able to marry.
One woman asked me to cut her open before her upcoming wedding day. When I asked why, she said, “So I don’t get bruises on my head.” When I looked confused, she said, “From when they bang you against the wall to open you on your wedding night.” I burst into tears right in front of her, and she held me like a mother would. These women humbled me. Doctor-patient barriers fell. When I got married, my patients gathered in one of their homes to give me my wedding present- henna tattoos all over my body in honor of being the bride. Some of the tattoo artists were children, who took turns drawing on me. I was their canvas. They were my teachers. My marriage didn’t survive, but the memory of those patients lives with me still.
The Universe has blessed me with so many signs lately that it didn’t surprise me in the least when Kim read from her book about girls seeking refuge from FGM (Sign from the Universe #153). Knowing what I know about the culture in East Africa, I know how much courage it must take for a girl to leave her family in order to escape her fate. The moxie, the chutzpah, the mojo….
Kim read about how she sat shyly among these girls, trying communicate. When Kim admitted to loving poetry, one girl, Jecinta, said, “I write poems.” Kim invited her to recite one of her poems, but Jecinta said she was too shy. So Kim offered to recite a poem for the girls. She wracked her brain for just the right poem. What poem could possibly resonate with these young girls whose life experience so drastically differed from our own?
A poem appeared in Kim’s mind, and she recited it in her signature way, her lilting voice making music of the words, wrapping you in a river of forward movement, her tongue the instrument, the poem the opus. The poem she read was this:
The Journey
by Mary Oliver
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice–
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do–
determined to save
the only life you could save.
I will quote Kim’s book here:
“It is difficult to describe what happened in that crowded, smoky kitchen as I delivered the poem. There I was, a white, middle-class American woman, surrounded by Maasai girls who had grown up in tribal villages in the Rift Valley, in families so poor that the two cows their parents would get when they gave their daughter to an old man in marriage were their only hope of a better life.
But as “The Journey” filled the kitchen, there was no separation between us. We were transported into a timeless, placeless, languageless realm where we were the same. By the end of the poem, tears were running down my face and several of the girls were crying as well. Several of them dove toward me, wrapping their arms around my waist. There was a long silence. Then Jecinta asked, “Who is this woman, Mary Oliver? Is she Maasai?”
I shook my head, barely able to speak. “American,” I whispered. “Mzunga. Like me.”
“How did she know?”
Later, Kim writes, “When you speak a poem that is written in the language of your soul, you become a voice for the heart of the world, and everyone around you is blessed by a sudden grace.”
By the time Kim got to this part of the reading, I was choking back tears, and I was not alone. A profound stillness overtook that bookstore, as if we were in church, and her words spoke our gospel. One person in the audience called her “a perfect metaphysical poetry jukebox,” playing the poems our hearts needed to hear. But it occurred to me that Kim was a sort of missionary, bringing the words of the heart to those who need to hear them.
I planned to share here some of my favorite poems and some of Kim’s, but I think that must wait for another post. This is enough. The story of Kim and a poem touching those Maasai girls needs no embellishing.
So I leave you with Kim’s words at the end of her talk. “Crisis births poetry. The tectonic plates of consciousness rub against each other and the diamonds of poetry emerge.”
I feel a poem coming now…. Stay tuned.
How ‘bout you, Pinkies? What is your experience with poetry? Do you love it? Do you have post-traumatic stress about Mrs. Finley making you memorize The Canterbury Tales in Middle English? Have you revisited poetry now that you’re awakening? What is the language of YOUR soul? Share your favorite poems and let us all learn from them.
Waxing poetic and sending loads of love,
Lissa
I’m about to teach a series of workshops titled
