RWL #226
poetry special
Happy Mother’s Day from the University of New Hampshire! Finals begin on Friday - it’s hard to believe! I always say that because it always catches me by surprise.
I listened to an interview with the poet Dana Gioia last week and it got me thinking about poetry. I’ve mentioned that I’ve been trying to fit some writing in of my own, but Gioia’s interview really pushed me to make more time to read more poetry this past week. One of the things that is interesting about American poets is that most of them have day jobs. It’s a calling that rarely pays the bills. Gioia worked in business for a long time before choosing to dedicate himself full-time to his writing. I had not read much of Gioia’s work - I had come across Summer Storm (below) in a collection and had dog-eared the page - but I really enjoyed his thoughts on literature and art and how they relate to life.
Poetry has been turned into an elite sport that even elites rarely enjoy. I think that happened with the Modernists after WWI. Poetry is making a resurgence with the advent of Hip-Hop culture, though it’s not being called poetry. Poetry and music have always been intertwined throughout human history. I recall (but cannot cite) hearing a poet talking about her experiences in South America - when she told someone she was a poet, they asked her to sing one of her poems.
My formal literature training ended in 1992, so I’m sure my colleagues in the English Department would cringe if they read my comments, but for me, poetry is distilled language and idea mixed together. The line between poetry and prose is quite blurred. Poetic prose is quite lovely and powerful - prosaic poetry is, well, basically just bad poetry.
A few weeks ago I said I was going to be thinking about what I want to do with this newsletter this summer. I am thinking I may change the format a bit. I am experimenting this week with a slightly different format. This week I have picked four poems that I think should be of interest to leaders, especially healthcare leaders. I’ve included at a minimum a link to the poem, and if possible a reading of the poem by the author, or a reading of the poem by someone who does a good job reading it. If you find poetry intimidating, I would recommend reading the poem out loud. There are some poems that aren’t really meant to be read out loud, but most of the time reading them out loud will unlock parts of the sounds that the author intended as part of the experience.
I hope you enjoy these poems - they are all short and take less than 2 minutes to read (or listen to). They explore a range of topics that relate to management and leadership, but I’ve tried to link them together for you. Let me know what you think!
(spring flowers are blooming everywhere - the leaves are returning - the LHH will be hidden from the road soon - photo from the back yard gardens)
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What: Dana Gioia, Summer Storm
See him recite it:
Read it: https://danagioia.com/summer-storm/
Podcast interview with Dana Gioia: https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/dana-gioia/
Why: This poem is a touch melancholy, but it raises an important point in an elegant way: we often overvalue the choices we did not take. From a work perspective, careers evolve from a sequence of choices about jobs. The outcomes of our careers are the result of many choices over many years (especially when one finds himself at 50 - just sayin’). It’s impossible to know what the results will be when we make a particular choice - the future results are clouds of possibilities contingent on many more future choices.
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What: Gary Snyder, Hay for the Horses
See him recite it:
Read it: https://poets.org/poem/hay-horses
Why: I first encountered Snyder in Bill Moyer’s The Language of Life. This poem connects to Gioia’s poem above in thinking about possibilities and outcomes. I know I have quoted many (many) times the Talking Heads line, “You may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?” and I think many people feel the same way about their careers (and lives). In this poem, Snyder tells the story of an old man who has a moment like this. The days go by and suddenly you have lived your life. This poem will make you chuckle, but also feel warned.
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What: William Stafford, A Ritual to Read to Each Other
Read:https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/58264/a-ritual-to-read-to-each-other
Watch it be read:
Why: Stafford is one of my favorite poets. Like Snyder, his language is very accessible. This poem links to the two above, again, by considering how much control we exercise on our lives - and how much we just let the river of time carry us. The opening verse sets up the premise:
If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.
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What: Carl Dennis, Progressive Health
Read it: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/41182/progressive-health
Why: This poem comes from Carl Dennis’s collection, Practical Gods, which is one of my favorite collections of poetry. I couldn’t find a good recording of this one, and honestly Dennis doesn’t have a great voice (unlike Gioia or Snyder). This is a humorous poem in which the author proposes that you move up your promised organ donations to immediately, rather than waiting until you die. The joke is a challenge to you (the reader) to justify your life and the value you are actually creating. It sounds dark, but he writes it very lightly.
In a sense this is what corporate raiders do all the time - they look at a firm and decide if the sum of the parts of the firm are actually less than the parts of the firm separately - in which case it makes sense to break the firm up and sell it off. Applying this same logic to our lives is a good way to challenge our choices and ask if what we are doing is worthwhile or should be reconsidered.
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What: Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Solitude
This link has the poem and also a recording of Garrison Keillor reading it: https://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php%3Fdate=2014%252F06%252F15.html
Why: Wilcox is something of a joke in elite poetry circles, which is part of why I don’t like elite poetry circles. Wilcox is a 19th century American writer, and you will feel that in the language. You’ll know this poem as soon as you read the first lines -
Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone.
though you may never have read the whole thing.
My wife and I have been watching The Crown - the Netflix series about the British royal family and Queen Elizabeth in particular. The main theme of the series seems to be the personal cost of conforming to a public role. This is true for business people as well. I will probably write more about The Crown in future letters. But the connection I see to this poem is that as leaders, no one really wants to see your fear, sadness, or pain. The role we fill as leaders is to fill a role. I know Brene Brown’s vulnerability is very popular right now, but when you are a leader, people don’t want too much of you. They want you to inhabit the role and help them succeed. Followers look to leaders to expand the “halls of pleasure”. That has a cost.
Thanks for reading and see you next week! If you come across any interesting stories, won't you send them my way? I'd love to hear what you think of these suggestions, and I'd love to get suggestions from you. Feel free to drop me a line at mark.bonica@unh.edu , or you can tweet to me at @mbonica .
If you’re looking for a searchable archive, you can see my draft folder here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1jwGLdjsb1WKtgH_2C-_3VvrYCtqLplFO?usp=sharing
Finally, if you find these links interesting, won’t you tell a friend? They can subscribe here: https://markbonica.substack.com/welcome
See you next Friday!
Mark
Mark J. Bonica, Ph.D., MBA, MS
Assistant Professor
Department of Health Management and Policy
University of New Hampshire
(603) 862-0598
mark.bonica@unh.edu
Health Leader Forge Podcast: http://healthleaderforge.org
'It is the small things, everyday deeds of ordinary folk, that keep the darkness at bay. Simple acts of kindness and love.' - Gandalf (The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey)