Transcript

I’m Ada Limón and this is The Slowdown.

Something we don’t often talk about is the strangeness of poetry. How poetry makes room for the memories in the back of the brain. It twists and turns and allows us to, purposefully or not, misremember images and, at the same time, remember feelings with extreme clarity.

There is even the danger, sometimes, that as a writer, we will become so beholden to the good line, the vibrant image, that we will write the poem and then forget the memory. This has happened to me. I’ve written a poem that conflates two or three memories and now, I couldn’t separate them with a crowbar. Did that actually happen or did I write a poem about it?

I sometimes hold on to something that matters to me so tightly that I won’t let it near my poetic impulses because I want it to remain true, to remain pure. Or maybe it’s too painful to see it transformed on the page into anything other than just...pain. So I avoid the page.

Then there are times when poetry’s ability to make room for strangeness is perfect for the true, but otherworldly memories. For example, once my mother and I walked along a shoreline thinking we saw a shark, and as we walked further we realized it was a seal, and then we kept walking and realized it was not a seal but a man wearing a wetsuit that had a protrusion like a shark. First it was a shark, then it was a seal, then it was a man dressed like a shark. This is a true story. Not particularly profound, but strange nonetheless. If I put it in a poem, folks might think, I made it up.

But my mother and I remember it perfectly, the long walk down the coastline, the panic at the thought of a shark so close, the elation when it was a seal, and then the confusion when it was a man. Oh man, the most disappointing animal of the sea.

Today’s poem holds space for the strangeness of our lives, of our family stories. I love how this poem celebrates the legacy of learning through the surreal way our memory works.

Deep Learning
by Ryann Stevenson

Fall arrived after a long summer.
We sat on the porch with a friend,
inviting the cold to make our breathing visible.
Our friend asked if we have any memories
that can’t possibly be true.

Days after, I tried again to write
the impossible memory
I’ve been trying to write forever
about my mom digging up
the enormous birch in our front yard
with her bare hands.

She dragged the tree’s long body
through our starter home, trailing dirt
up the stairs (I can see the dirt
on the cream carpet),

then shoved it under their bed,
the roots sticking out from the bottom.
I remember how, after catching
her breath, she said
nothing, wiped her hands
on her cut-offs as if
she’d only just made a sandwich.

All these years
I’ve taken this away from her.

"Deep Learning" by Ryann Stevenson, from HUMAN RESOURCES copyright © 2022 Ryann Stevenson. Used by permission of Milkweed Editions.