Keeping Things Whole

A difficult few days...but I've learned over the years, to prepare for this. I know where to go. I try to make it easy for myself... I keep Mark Strand's Selected Poems on an open shelf reserved only for "working books". Most of my novels, art books, poetry books etc. are boxed. But I know that sometimes, from time to time, I need to read Strand. He's a literary soulmate. A lot of people I know don't like his work at all but it works for me...I've always really, really liked him. Strand always makes me laugh and cry. "Keeping Things Whole" is one of his best known poems and one I read this weekend. It really helps me to pull myself together.

Keeping Things Whole

In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.

When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body's been.

We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.


- Mark Strand

I also grabbed Ray K. Metzker's Landscapes (one of the best books of photography I have ever seen) and flipped through it. It's partly what every photo monograph is - a collection of best shots- but it's also a cohesive experience. You can't really just flip through it - it's not a casual, detached experience: you're drawn in. We bought it by mistake thinking it was a different book of Metzker's photos but when I opened it for the first time and started to look at it, to read it, I couldn't put it down. I loved it. As I moved in and through the photos, I thought of Strand's poem "Keeping Things Whole". I still don't know why. But in an uncanny coincidence, facing one of plates about 80 pages into the book, Metzker had reproduced that very poem as illustration. And I'm feeling better already...just writing about it!