Laura J. Braverman

The Open

—after Anne Carson’s “Lark”

The small cube of text won’t let go—

            daffodils

            April snow

                        and Hal, going at 64.

How he sang kaddish

for another soul not long ago—

how someone once said, Even the lark

is bound.

It was Heidegger who spoke: only the human sort,

no lark

knows what the Open is.

Can understand what difference means,

that being ends—

my father standing there

at the sliding door, staring out—

            desert plants

            the backyard fence

                        blue-tinged backbone of the mountains.

Or,

was there something else he saw

from his anteroom—

And could he hear

from some Nowhere, after

the words his boyhood friend offered up

every day for a year,

            the mourner’s prayer.

Without the word,

the lark has no then, no next—,

immune to any possibility of otherwise—

while we, the human sort

are immersed in our alternatives. Always turning

      from.

Perhaps the thinker had it wrong. The lark,

      it greets the morning sun,

      takes wing—

            and sings, as it climbs.

This is prayer enough.

____

Statement of Homage

Anne Carson’s work has been an important source of influence and motivation for me ever since first reading her haibun-style essay, “Kinds of Water,” many years ago. I was jolted by her use of form, as well as the ingenuity of her way with words: an incisive kind of clarity, a creative strangeness, a driving intelligence. Eros the Bittersweet followed, and then, If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho. These translations of Sappho’s poetic remnants left a profound and continuously-renewing impression; again, there was this luminous lucidity and precision, as well as a feeling of urgent and immediate presence. Ancient Greece became the here-and-now through her poetic constructions. The poems of Decreation, too, greatly affected my own writing practice as I took inspiration from her masterful play with form, rhythm, and word-music. “Lark,” the source of my own poem “The Open,” is a small piece I came across while reading the London Review of Books in 2020 during the height of the Corona pandemic. The nine short lines haunted me, and, in wanting to understand the last three, I set off on an exploration of German philosopher Martin Heidegger’s concept of the Open (das Offene).

Anne Carson

Anne Carson was born in Toronto, Ontario, and now resides and teaches in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Her love of Greek language and culture was inspired by one of her high school instructors and has deeply infused a career as poet, essayist, classicist, translator, and professor. Her awards are many, including the T.S. Eliot prize, Guggenheim and Macarthur fellowships, and an induction into the Order of Canada. Among Carson’s many published works, the following have had a specific impact on my own writing and thinking: Eros the Bittersweet: An Essay; Plainwater; If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho; Decreation; and, Iphigenia among the Taurians.

____