Another poetry gift exchange is to select two to three people in your life and to pick a poem you think each of them will especially love. Then, give it to them outside of any occasion. It's very special. When I've made this gift-giving assignment for students, I require they give a poem along generational lines, one for a grandparent, one for a parent and one for a peer. Then they record why they selected the particular poem for the, say, father, and what his reaction was.
As in: "I gave my father Li-Young Lee's 'Have You Prayed' because solace is so important to him." Then the father reads the poem, and the student reports: "Suddenly my father began to cry because he was amazed that I just gave him a poem out of the blue, that I was thinking about him. And then we talked for a few minutes about how his father used to make my father pray every night when he was little before going to bed."
Lee's "Have You Prayed" is a poem straight out of gift consciousness. The poet feels a breeze through the window that reminds him of his late father. It's a poem rich with memory and fulfillment, two of poetry's most essential, gift-like elements.
When the wind
turns and asks, in my father's voice,
Have you prayed?
I know three things. One:
I'm never finished answering to the dead.
Two: A man is four winds and three fires.
And the four winds are his father's voice,
his mother's voice ...
Or maybe he's seven winds and ten fires.
And the fires are seeing, hearing, touching,
dreaming, thinking . . .
Or is he the breath of God?
When the wind turns traveler
and asks, in my father's voice, Have you prayed?
I remember three things.
One: A father's love
is milk and sugar,
two-thirds worry, two-thirds grief, and what's left over
is trimmed and leavened to make the bread
the dead and the living share.
And patience? That's to endure
the terrible leavening and kneading.
And wisdom? That's my father's face in sleep.
When the wind
asks, Have you prayed?
I know it's only me
a flower is one station between
earth's wish and earth's rapture, and blood
was fire, salt, and breath long before
it quickened any wand or branch, any limb
that woke speaking. It's just me
in the gowns of the wind,
or my father through me, asking,
Have you found your refuge yet?
asking, Are you happy?
Strange. A troubled father. A happy son.
The wind with a voice. And me talking to no one.
-- Li-Young Lee
"Have You Prayed," from "Behind My Eyes" by Li-Young Lee. Copyright ©2008 by Li-Young Lee. Used by permission of W.W. Norton & Co.
-- David Biespiel
David Biespiel's newest book is "Every Writer Has a Thousand Faces." He is the founding director of the Attic: A Haven for Writers. His column on poetry appears one Sunday each month.