A Movement of the Natural Human Mind.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At Seventy-Five: Rereading An Old Book

by Hayden Carruth

My prayers have been answered, if they were prayers. I live.
I'm alive, and even in rather good health, I believe.
If I'd quit smoking I might live to be a hundred.
Truly this is astonishing, after the poverty and pain,
The suffering. Who would have thought that petty
Endurance could achieve so much?
                                                      And prayers --
Were they prayers? Always I was adamant
In my irreligion, and had good reason to be.
Yet prayer is not, I see in old age now,
A matter of doctrine or discipline, but rather
A movement of the natural human mind
Bereft of its place among the animals, the other
Animals. I prayed. Then on paper I wrote
Some of the words I said, which are these poems.

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I love Hayden Carruth's poetry.  His poems are a unique combination of realism and spirituality.  Whenever I start to feel a little off-balance, or lost, I read Hayden Carruth.

A book of Carruth's letters was recently published.  The book is called Letters to Jane.  The title refers to the poet Jane Kenyon, and the letters in the book were written in the months just prior to Kenyon's death from leukemia.  The letters are a window, looking inward at the friendship of two great poets.  Carruth's presence in these letters is huge.

What's wonderful about Carruth's letters to Jane is that they are so honest.  One of the things Carruth is honest about is what it is like to be a writer.  He's so honest in saying that sometimes writers are just wasteful of their time.  For instance, in his letter of May 9, 1994, Carruth writes:

"So I frittered away the weekend: read a short manuscript, wrote a few letters, watched a hell of a lot  of basketball, read what we used to call cheap-screw fiction. I haven't heard that term for a while. At first it meant under-the-counter porn, but later came to mean any escapist literature. As a consequence, on top of the desperation and depression, I feel guilt. What else is new?"

For those who picture the writer's life as one in which the author sits thoughtfully poised over a manuscript 24-hours a day, this may come as a revelation: writers waste time, they struggle to keep themselves on track, they fail, they get depressed.

I find this revelation uplifting rather than sad.  Ah, so, I'm not the only one!

Carruth was also honest about many of his other human failings.  For example, in another letter to Jane he tells about having to take his laptop computer to a repair shop because of "excessive cat hair." Carruth, a lover of cats, says that his repairman suggested he get rid of the cat whereupon Carruth admits:

"I said immediately, 'Oh, I can't do that,' implying that my wife wouldn't stand for it, which was a cowardly way out, and no doubt sexist too. The fact is I wouldn't stand for it either."

I really had to laugh at that.  There are so many useless little lies we tell to save face.

Looking at Carruth's poem just now, I find myself believing that prayer is really an avenue to help us to tell the truth.

How different might my writing be if I thought of it as a prayer?