On Silence, Space, and the Healing Power of Poetry 

The value of loss is relative, like the difference between one, a million, and a billion. Do you know the folktale of the hand, full of cookies, in the cookie jar? Unable to free itself or enjoy the plunder until it drops its catch? A cookie or two, ok. Sharable. More becomes a trap. And no, it’s not always greed we grip with, or that grips us. And we don’t necessarily lose our cookies by letting go. That’s just a nice point of departure. Suppose we can choose what to let go of and how to let go of it.

I lost my grip on silence, with courage I didn’t know I had.

I got it from those who know what free is and what it’s not.

(from the title poem in The Lost Grip)

Ilya Kaminsky, author of Deaf Republic, had me at “everything is language.” Silence, words; absence, presence; holding on, letting go — it’s all language.

What would silence do? I ask myself often. What is the last thing you said with a silence? Was it just a pause, a loss of words, an erasure or endorsement? Did it make you an accomplice or a foe? Did it ally or oppress?

Poetry uses blanks, feints and other more traditional literary devices to startle or seduce us toward our own solutions for our own crises, to take space and give it. I don’t write to add noise, I write a refuge of stillness so that you can hear yourself think and feel your own feelings. Being at a loss for words might be the best thing that happens to you today. Space on the page, space between words, words not chosen, line breaks, all that space is poetry, inviting the reader to their own senses. 

I take the suffering that life deals, the uninvited trauma, and let it go. What takes its place is healing. 

Those who have read the law know 

it would not be murder if he’d killed me.

I did replant my soul. 

(from Grief Much?) 

The poems in The Lost Grip address the panic accompanying my free-fall over the edge of change and loss, as well as the healing and profound comfort, the parachute, if I follow my own metaphor, that takes its place when I let go. In this collection, I practice give and take. I write give and take.

I used to be a mediator, and sometimes asked clients, if they had nothing else to give, to give their attention. Jericho Brown, author of The Tradition, raised me one: to offer one’s imagination, if nothing else. Poetry has the potential to call up the imagination — just go on and bypass, let go of hope with its expectations. Imagination can tap latent urgency in each of us, giving us again the will to live. I write poetry as an insider’s link to imagination, a hook-up for the soul and inspiration for the body.

I waited a long time to spill some of what I put into The Lost Grip. There was so much to let go of before I had room for more, and something to share. I was brought up by survivors of other trauma; my father taught us the “need to know” code of espionage and between them, my parents compiled an encyclopedia of omissions I was only able to recognize as an adult. I speak of that kind of silence as an imminent, lethal form of bystanding, or of standing by as the accomplice. Finally, my silence needed its own stage, its own pairing with words. Urgency developed a life of its own, and I couldn’t wait another moment to let it out.

—

Eva Zimet is the author of The Lost Grip: poems (Rootstock Publishing, Dec. 15, 2020) and the author and illustrator of Lucy Dancer, a children’s picture book (Rootstock Publishing, 2019). Her first career was as a dancer. Zimet is a strong advocate of recovery therapies, teaches writing, ELL, and Argentine tango, making use of improvisational techniques drawing deeply on methods of connection and meditation. She now lives in Vermont. Her website is evazimet.com.

 

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