Elise Eystad
I have felt overwhelmed lately. Between a global pandemic, a presidential election, and college courses now offered in various formats, it’s been hard for me to find ways to budget my mental space when it feels like there are so many voices calling for my attention. In this season of hurry and anxiety, I’ve been drawn to art that feels comforting; art that can acknowledge the pain and anxiety around us, and not minimize it. Instead, it offers slivers of hope and healing alongside that acknowledgement. Most of this art often centers around nature, also. Nature: that steady reminder of life and beauty that comes with changing seasons and resilient wildlife.
A couple weeks ago, I wrote an article for CVWG interviewing four local creatives about what art has proven comforting to them in this season, specifically Covid. I suppose this article is my own swing at that prompt.
“Below, I’ve combined some of the art that I’ve found most comforting: poems and songs paired together based on atmosphere and mood. The interplay between the two mediums has been significant in my own life. As a poet and songwriter myself, I see these two forms of expression overlapping in many ways. ”
Below, I’ve combined some of the art that I’ve found most comforting: poems and songs paired together based on atmosphere and mood. The interplay between the two mediums has been significant in my own life. As a poet and songwriter myself, I see these two forms of expression overlapping in many ways. Often, my song lyrics start as poems, though the converse, is also true: sometimes I’ll take a lyric and turn it into a line in a poem. The first song on my EP was written when I rediscovered a line of poetry I had written when I was 15!
Music and poetry on their own have always held the power to comfort people, along with the catharsis of self-expression that comes with creating. Though both powerful individually, when combined, they take on a new power. Music can bring out the emotion of a poem more fully; words on a written page can give a reader space to feel lyrical words in a more contemplative way.
Below you can find five poems and five songs. Feel free to scroll down, click the links to read lyrics or see the poems online. And don’t forget to log into your Spotify account to listen along with the playlist provided!
Read, listen, and may you find your comfort, too.
Pairing #1
“I Worried” by Mary Oliver &
“I Have Made Mistakes” by The Oh Hellos
I worried a lot. Will the garden grow, will the rivers
flow in the right direction, will the earth turn
as it was taught, and if not how shall
I correct it?
Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven,
can I do better?
Will I ever be able to sing, even the sparrows
can do it and I am, well,
hopeless.
Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it,
am I going to get rheumatism,
lockjaw, dementia?
Finally I saw that worrying had come to nothing.
And gave it up. And took my old body
and went out into the morning,
and sang.
Pairing #2:
“Making a Fist” by Naomi Shihab Nye &
“Sadness Don’t Own Me” by The Staves
We forget that we are all dead men conversing with dead men.
—Jorge Luis Borges
For the first time, on the road north of Tampico,
I felt the life sliding out of me,
a drum in the desert, harder and harder to hear.
I was seven, I lay in the car
watching palm trees swirl a sickening pattern past the glass.
My stomach was a melon split wide inside my skin.
“How do you know if you are going to die?”
I begged my mother.
We had been traveling for days.
With strange confidence she answered,
“When you can no longer make a fist.”
Years later I smile to think of that journey,
the borders we must cross separately,
stamped with our unanswerable woes.
I who did not die, who am still living,
still lying in the backseat behind all my questions,
clenching and opening one small hand.
Pairing #3:
“The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry &
“Have You Stopped to Notice” by S. Carey
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron
reeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Pairing #4:
“Song for Autumn” by Mary Oliver &
“Autumn Leaves” by Tow’rs
Don’t you imagine the leaves dream now
how comfortable it will be to touch
the earth instead of the
nothingness of the air and the endless
freshets of wind? And don’t you think
the trees, especially those with
mossy hollows, are beginning to look for
the birds that will come—six, a dozen—to sleep
inside their bodies? And don’t you hear
the goldenrod whispering goodbye,
the everlasting being crowned with the first
tuffets of snow? The pond
stiffens and the white field over which
the fox runs so quickly brings out
its long blue shadows. The wind wags
its many tails. And in the evening
the piled firewood shifts a little,
longing to be on its way.
Pairing #5
“Yellow” by Anne Sexton &
“On the Mend” by Brian Bulger
When they turn the sun
on again, I’ll plant children
under it, I’ll light up my soul
with a match and let it sing, I’ll
take my bones and polish them, I’ll
vacuum up my stale hair, I’ll
pay all my neighbours bad debts, I’ll
write a poem called Yellow and put
my lips down to drink it up, I’ll
feed myself spoonfuls of heat and
everyone will be home playing with
their wings and the planet will
shudder with all those smiles and
there will be no poison anywhere, no plague
in the sky and there will be mother-broth
for all the people, and we will
never die, not one of us, we’ll go on
won’t we?