Urgent--Let me own my own time

Entry Word: urgent
Function: adjective
Text:
Synonyms: PRESSING, burning, clamant, clamorous, crying, exigent, imperative, importunate, insistent, instant
Related Words: driving, impelling; demanding

A lot of people recently have been doing lists in their journals.  The most recent list is the 10 things the writer has done that the reader (probably) has not.  I've entertained the notion of doing such a list; it would be good for my imagination, but I am finding it difficult.  I think I need to consult with my husband and ask him to help me to remember some of my "finer" moments.  I seem to have settled into a form of complacency lately, and I wouldn't mind some kind of a lightning bolt to strike me and wake me up.  A list of my feats might do the trick.  Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, I recently read articles about two poets, Kenneth Koch and Jack Gilbert.  What struck me about both men is that they seemed to understand the meaning of the word "urgent."  We see the word "urgent" in so many bland contexts that it's easy to forget the extent of its meaning.  We see it in e-mails and on our snail mail--"urgent you reply."  Our colleagues, bosses, students often leave messages on our phones:  "Urgent I speak with you."

Koch kept his work and correspondence in folders, on which he would write things like:  "Occasional poems," "Letters from before to respond to now," "Do this."  I understand from the article that his favorite label was "Urgent."  He wrote "urgent" on the front of countless folders.  URGENT!  Most of these folders remained untouched for years.  Meanwhile, he wrote beautiful poems, taught his classes quietly, competently, with humor, wrote a novel, short stories, vacationed with his wife. 

In one poem, he invokes the Greek gods as a way of illustrating the poet's role:

The exigent poet has his

   satisfactions...

But that is not the only  kind of poet

   you can be.  There is a pleasure in

   being Venus,

In sending love to everyone, in being

   Zeus,

In sending thunder to everyone, in

   being Apollo,

And every day sending out light.

Jack Gilbert experienced fame as a poet in the sixties, traveled, taught, but mostly disappeared from public view.  He felt no need to keep publishing, although he contined to write--he felt that publishing robbed the writer of savoring his own work, of letting it deepen and become richer through time.  I understand that he has published a mere fraction of what he has written--and this only at the behest of writer-friends.

What I liked most about Gilbert was that he said:

"When I was a boy, I used to pray when I went to sleep at night.  Among my prayers was:  Let me own my own time."

That--it seems to me--is worth being urgent about.

The Great Fires

by Jack Gilbert
 

  Love is apart from all things.
Desire and excitement are nothing beside it.
It is not the body that finds love.
What leads us there is the body.
What is not love provokes it.
What is not love quenches it.
Love lays hold of everything we know.
The passions which are called love
also change everything to a newness
at first. Passion is clearly the path
but does not bring us to love.
It opens the castle of our spirit
so that we might find the love which is
a mystery hidden there.
Love is one of many great fires.
Passion is a fire made of many woods,
each of which gives off its special odor
so we can know the many kinds
that are not love. Passion is the paper
and twigsthat kindle the flames
but cannot sustain them. Desire perishes
because it tries to be love.
Love is eaten away by appetite.
Love does not last, but it is different
from the passions that do not last.
Love lasts by not lasting.
Isaiah said each man walks in his own fire
for his sins. Love allows us to walk
in the sweet music of our particular heart.