The Poet’s Job (Manifesto)

I was lying on a stretcher in a hallway at Staten Island South Hospital last week, hearing some 62-year-old man (the age of my father) die behind the curtain next to me, when I remembered the job of the poet.  Bear with me, I remember this well; however, I don’t remember proclaiming that I was absentminded, that I was a good driver, that I was ready to leave the beach.  But I did all of those things and ended up in an overturned car, hanging from my seat belt, thinking about the job of a poet.

Sometimes, when I remember my job, I remember how poetry is the place where the veil between worlds is thinnest, that the poet is to watch closely which world maddens on, beats us to a pulp, into the past, offers translation; the world that’s unforgivable, but the poet forgives.  The poet lies in the big-lit room with no injuries, the poet was saved by something, must have been, though who can say what?  And she listens to the whip-like whispers pass, a miracle, the whispers say, she should have died—

Really, what I mean by all this is that despite your exhaustive strategies to live a normal or even a slightly typical life, if you are a poet, you are a quiet presence in a hostel of god; you have a direct line to god—you must, as you know, for you have little control over what you write, and you have little control over what you hear—your only job is to listen, and follow the whispers.

An old friend once told me that when I write, it’s like I want the reader to think I’m holding them, which I swear I’m not, not really, but by the time they reach the end, I am holding them, they find me holding them, I was holding them all along.  After he said that, I wanted to say, you should just listen to Étude No.3 in E Major, Chanson de l’Adieu OP.10 No.3 or Uno che grida amore, and when you sit down to write you should just close your eyes and remember your job: to keep everyone’s secrets, and one day you’ll find that you can’t do that anymore, and then you’ll remember your real job, and you’ll blow that shit wide open.

Mackenzie Oliff is a poet from West Virginia. She is an MFA candidate in Poetry at New York University, where she is a Lillian Vernon Fellow. She currently lives in Brooklyn with her friends.