On the Fire That Creates Light

Art exists in the space of transformation.                           

It lives in our minds and bodies intimately, ready to be called upon in our time of need: whether when we recall a poem for ourselves or share it with a loved one, or the way a song calls attention to us, to all the things we had forgotten to feel—art is the great witness to our aliveness. It is the thing that says we are here listening, reading, watching; here thinking, feeling, being; here living, here moving, always and suddenly here.

Poets and other artists are often, in times of unrest or uprising, at the intersection of our thinking and our doing. A poem can inspire us to act, a film can frame our resistance, a song can be the refrain at a protest or the protest itself. Art’s power lies in its ability to inspire action; yet also, and perhaps even more importantly, its power lies in the subtle yet equally meaningful ways in which it changes us.

While art’s ability to influence us to act—in protest or in resistance—is evidence of its political power, I am most interested in the subtle shifts that take place within us, when we are moved or seen by a poem, the shifts that transform the heart, the mind, and the body. I am interested in how art transforms us in its path (emotionally, spiritually, physically) and what we become after. I ask, what does poetry incite in the reader and how are we transformed by this experience? How are specific poetic forms—performance, lyric, and visual—particularly ripe for eliciting such transformation? And how does this change that takes place within us give us the strength to survive and to move beyond survival, to live?

Has a poem ever sung to you and asked you to sing back?
Then, what becomes of the song?

Language charts a path through the world and toward somewhere beyond. By way of a poem or song, we have the ability to recall words when we need them the most.

Understanding language as a part of our everyday memory, we might say words are how we think, how we see. Within this context, sits the poem: that which forms the image, and the image that transforms mind and body. When I say I know a poem or a song by heart, I am also saying I know it by the way it moves within my body. By the way it speaks to me, and I speak back. By the way it listens. By the way we understand each other. I am saying that it has transformed me in some way, and I have committed this change to memory.

When we are affected by a poem or a particular image, something happens, something in us is not like it was before we read that poem, and something about how we will read the next poem or see the next day or see each other changes. When words show us how to better care for ourselves and for each other, we are sustained. Such sustenance gives us the energy and eyes to move through the world. 

Has a poem ever shouted at you and asked you to shout back?
Then, what becomes of the song?

Last Spring, I attended an online reading that featured poets reading “into” each other, their readings overlapping. This was a simulation of touch—an invitation for words to cross, clash, or even sing together. Among those reading was the poet Douglas Kearney, who performed work from his latest book Sho. As always, Kearney found a way to ignite the room. His words entered ahead of themselves, sounds from his mouth (police sirens, screams, exhales) formed a chaotic song that reverberated through the speakers, through the screen. At the time, early in the pandemic, when it felt so hard to be engaged or connected to the body, suddenly, I was here, suddenly we were all here.

In an interview with Poetry LA, Kearney was asked, “How do you solve the tension between what has to be said and what you believe is going to make more fire?” Kearney responded:

The fire that one can make—is it a fire that lights or is it a fire that just brings heat? … the best kind of fire that we can hope to be able to spark is one that creates light and also creates heat … I’ve spent a long time trying to create a kind of light, that even if it’s not lighting anything for the greater social populous … I’m putting light to a grappling with a question.

What Kearney suggests here, is that the poem is a fire that startles and awakens us. Its heat calls us to think, to act, to move; and its light allows us to see. The poet, wielder of this fire, has a responsibility to decide what else these flames will ignite. Will they shock, will they stun? And what do we do with the shock, or, as Kearney goes on to say, with that “vulnerable” space the viewer then inhabits?

Ultimately, poetry can do more than ignite a spark—it has the power, in that space where we are vulnerable, to keep us warm, to make sure we are fed, to sustains us. It can inspire us to live. This is how the poem is political: the poet is conjurer of light, of heat, of warmth. What do we make of the fire?

Has a poem ever ignited a fire and asked you to become the flame?
Then, what becomes of the song?

While writing my book, speculation, n. in which performance happens on the page and in the physical space the reader inhabits, I deeply considered this fire. I asked myself, what do I want to ignite in the reader? How can I draw heat and also make light? How can I put myself in that heat, in that vulnerable space alongside the reader? Kearney goes on to say that what happens in this space is a kind of shock that “stuns a person for a moment and so allows what: them to be vulnerable. What do you want to put into that person, in that state where they’re not guarded?”

Performance is the mechanism through which this friction, and the fire ignited by it, is activated. At this intersection, between heat and light, the poet at once writes into and against the world. When I bring my words to life, when I move through a crowded space, using my body to activate language—to propel the line or sound or image across the room—I am myself in this “heat,” in this space of vulnerability alongside the viewer. I become the song and this sound is charged, it is political, and at best it is filled with so much light. After all, how can we survive, how can we fight without this sustenance?

This is the site of transformation. It is the vulnerable space in which the viewer is held. It is this shock that inhibits us and allows us to be changed: the same way the song is suddenly here in the line, here in the heart, here in the body—whatever is said in that moment passes through. It is this heat that never quite leaves the bones.

Then, what becomes of the song?

Then, what becomes of the song?

Then, what becomes of the song?