During my working years, I used to recite a short poem by a neglected poet. I would come home, exhausted by the day, and these lines by Charles Reznikoff would come to me:
After I had worked all day at what I earn my living,
I was tired. Now my own work has lost another day,
I thought, but began slowly,
and slowly my strength came back to me.
Surely, the tide comes in twice a day.
It’s a poem that beautifully expresses the divided nature of life for many artists: they earn a living, and then they work at their art.
Chief among the treasures of this poem is its brevity: five lines. Reznikoff uses few modifiers, but he uses one twice: “slowly.” He begins slowly. Slowly his strength comes back.
The poem is a meditation on “slowly” in artistry and creation. Or, as the poet Robert Francis liked to say: “Poems may be coaxed but not commanded.”
• Source: Poems 1918-1975, The Complete Poems of Charles Reznikoff, edited by Seamus Cooney; Santa Rosa, Calif.: Black Sparrow Press, 1996, p. 73.
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