Women's Voices For Change

“To Be Held” falls within the pastoral tradition of a poet wandering in nature and finding inspiration there. In it, the speaker encounters a tree in her desert landscape that then becomes a springboard for a larger reflection about humanity.

Poetry Sunday columns this month will reprise previous features of black women poets and poems that take up questions of social justice.

In some ways, Pablo Neruda’s poem almost seems to anticipate the situation the world finds itself in now.

The poem makes its political point lightly, touching on it and then moving immediately into a lyricism that steers the poem back into more personal—and universal—concerns.

Maybe the best way we can all help now is to stay calm and focused on the goal of emerging from seclusion into a healthier climate in a few weeks or months. And, when we do go out or otherwise interact with others, to be kind and to treat everyone with an extra level of compassion and respect. That’s why “Small Kindnesses” is an important poem to feature this week.

In the poem, the speaker finds the confines of her small shelter-in-place space invaded by a visitor in the form of—an ant. But Jane Hirshfield takes the opposite view, welcoming the tiny creature into her home and then rescuing it to release it again outside.

“When I begin to dig” begins with what sparked the poem: Martha Silano’s discovery that the English word “verse” derives from Latin for “to turn,” itself derived from the action of a plow’s turn at the end of a furrow during field cultivation.

“litany” opens with a bold and simple statement of identity—“today i am a black woman in America”—then moves into an ironic “lullaby” about what that means for too many such women.