A life in poetry

All art is history. Not only is it obviously part of the past once it has been created, but it is also itself a way of remembering. Many readers may recall William Wordsworth’s remark in his preface to the Lyrical Ballads that “Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings,” but fewer may remember what immediately follows: “it takes its origin,” Wordsworth continues, “from emotion recollected in tranquility.” Poetry records what was felt or happened in the past—or some version of it—before it is lost.

This is particularly true of Paul Mariani’s latest collection of poetry, Sing Me a Song, She Said (Slant Books, 74 pp.). The volume is divided into three sections. It is centered by a verse drama that revisits the speaker’s tumultuous childhood in Queens and early adult years in the city. The “she” in the title is the speaker’s mother, who regularly asks her son and others to “Sing me a song, a song. Just once before I die. / A song with love in it … and memories.” The son can’t do it, at least not while his mother is alive, but this volume is that song, though it contains more than love.

It is a song, among other things, about a woman who gets pregnant at 16 and marries the father—an abusive alcoholic—and does her best to raise her children (there would be seven in 16 years) “full of hope” while living in poverty. It’s also about a father who himself grew up on “leftover love / when there was any to be had,” a profligate brother who thinks “love’s just some urge / that needs to flow,” and a son who tries to make sense of it all.

Mariani frequently revisits the past in his work, but he does so with particular power in this volume, which is narratively tighter than some of his previous collections. His work has lost nothing of its frankness or clarity, which is striking considering he is well into his 80s.

In the third section of the volume, Mariani ponders the indignities of age: The body and mind have weakened; the will is quickly broken; hope is more readily displaced by despair. Yet, Mariani, like his mother, chooses hope (or hope chooses him). In “Aubade at Eighty Five,” he writes:

It is true, then, you ask yourself,
what the psalmist sang,

that in the long run it all comes
down to nothing?

An image bubbling here, then
floating off, swirling down

the chasm as the flickering light
drowns in some silent spring.

Still, you find yourself searching
for a word and then another.

Say it! Speak the truth. You are my
hope, O Lord. I place my trust

For the ten thousandth time in You,
even as my enemy grins,

Mocking me with his mimicking:
Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.

This may be Mariani’s best volume of poetry. It’s a shame it might be his last. But what a gift that we have it nonetheless.