Thee
An image of connection with poetry by Joshua Bennett
Where does my influence, my aspiration, end and the child begin?
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The money of the mind is attention, maybe. Which is not, initially, where I thought I’d begin, but we’re already here now, using the language of care and economy, though God-talk was truly my first way in. Sustained attention is how we approach a flesh and blood experience of the Divine I say to the therapist nodding her head, only moments after we disagree over whether her dress is coral or yellow -based red, as opposed, of course, to a blue-based red, like the square on her tartan scarf. My jacket is the color of snow on television. My eyes are as brown as my father’s when he lifted a stranger off the ground he saw through the driver’s side window beating a woman on Broadway. I am almost the age now he was then, and am still studying the difference between what a man proclaims in speech and what he says with his body. Tomorrow marks another year on Earth for his third son, and he is a father now, with a boy he is trying to teach the benefits of apprehension. Who instead prefers to walk on his hands, leap from the playground slide, climb on countertops to watch TV from another room entirely. Where does my influence, my aspiration, end and the child begin? Who refashions the cosmos with his laughter.
Joshua Bennett is a professor of literature and distinguished chair of the humanities at MIT. He is the author of five books: Spoken Word: A Cultural History (Knopf, 2023), which was named a New York Times Notable Book of 2023; The Study of Human Life (Penguin, 2022), which won the Paterson Poetry Prize and was longlisted for the Griffin International Poetry Prize and The Massachusetts Book Award; Owed (Penguin, 2020), a finalist for the New England Book Award; Being Property Once Myself (Harvard University Press, 2020), winner of the MLA’s William Sanders Scarborough Prize; and The Sobbing School (Penguin, 2016), winner of the National Poetry Series and a finalist for an NAACP Image Award.
Metaphortography offers a quick dose of visual and literary inspiration to launch your writing week. This is the Monday section of Aimee Liu’s MFA Lore. Our Wednesday section is Writer In The World, a curated collection of essays on the writing life by acclaimed MFA faculty and alumni. Writers in Conversation and other MFA Lore essays on the craft and business of creative writing will drop each Saturday.
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A wonderful and thought provoking poem: ‘he is a father now, with a boy he is trying to teach
the benefits of apprehension.’ And those last lines!