I love the way poetry sounds when it is read aloud. Hell, I love the way any well-written piece of writing sounds when it’s given a human voice to project its truth – the curling of the words as they roll off your tongue, the natural rhythm that can’t be missed when you give the phrases their own air time.
Many moons ago in college, I attended a poetry reading by the poet/writer Julia Kasdorf. She read a lot of poems that night, but there was one in particular that stayed with me. The poem is titled Flying Lesson and I felt it was time to share this beauty with you.
Disclaimer: It’s not lost on me that you are reading this right now and not actually hearing this poem. So this is what I want you to do – take a minute to read this poem out loud to yourself. If you are self-conscious like me, shut the door or go somewhere no one will hear you. If you are a skeptic, I promise you the last few stanzas will make it worthwhile.
It is one thing to read poetry quietly to oneself, but it’s another experience entirely to put your voice into it, almost like, by lending the words your voice you are giving the words your energy, your charge, your spark.
Flying Lesson
Julia Kasdorf
Over a tray of spent plates, I confessed
to the college president my plans to go East,
to New York, which I’d not really seen,
though it seemed the right place
for a sophomore as sullen and restless
as I had become on that merciless
Midwestern plain. He slowly stroked
a thick cup and described the nights
when, a theology teacher in Boston, he’d fly
a tiny plane alone out over the ocean,
each time pressing farther into the dark
until the last moment, when he’d turn
toward the coast’s bright spine, how he loved
the way the city glittered beneath him
as he glided gracefully toward it,
engine gasping, fuel needle dead on empty,
the way sweat dampened the back of his neck
when he climbed from the cockpit, giddy.
Buttoned up in my cardigan, young, willing
to lose everything, how could I see generosity
or warning? But now that I’m out here,
his advice comes so clear: fling yourself
farther, and a bit farther each time,
but darling, don’t drop.