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Double Good News
By Stephanie Kemp

Dear Friend (I consider you my friend if you’ve gotten this far reading my words, even if I’ve never met you),

You should always write a letter to a poet* if you have questions about one of their poems, or anything else. Poets are - or have - or can help you find - the answer to almost everything. This is true even if you don’t read (or like) poems.

In the middle of a super shitty time (2016, my mom dying, pandemic, climate chaos turned crisis turned WTF is going to happen to us all, the man in the gold plated underpants - you get the drift), I stumbled upon a poem called “Valentine for Ernest Mann” by Naomi Shihab Nye, that changed my entire lens on life:

You can’t order a poem like you order a taco.
Walk up to the counter, say, “I’ll take two”
and expect it to be handed back to you
on a shiny plate.

Still, I like your spirit.
Anyone who says, “Here’s my address,
write me a poem,” deserves something in reply.
So I’ll tell a secret instead:
poems hide. In the bottoms of our shoes,
they are sleeping. They are the shadows
drifting across our ceilings the moment
before we wake up. What we have to do
is live in a way that lets us find them.

Once I knew a man who gave his wife
two skunks for a valentine.
He couldn’t understand why she was crying.
“I thought they had such beautiful eyes.”
And he was serious. He was a serious man
who lived in a serious way. Nothing was ugly
just because the world said so. He really
liked those skunks. So, he re-invented them
as valentines and they became beautiful.
At least, to him. And the poems that had been hiding
in the eyes of skunks for centuries
crawled out and curled up at his feet.

Maybe if we re-invent whatever our lives give us
we find poems. Check your garage, the odd sock
in your drawer, the person you almost like, but not quite.
And let me know.

My friend, the writer Laura Munson, told me to read it after I’d sent her some of the hundreds of poems I couldn’t stop writing in the middle of the night, usually against my will and always against my better judgment (sleep is very important!) after having emailed the following prompt to everyone I had ever met:

Send me a picture, I’ll write you a poem.
There’s no turning back, my mind needs to roam.
Don’t worry too much about what it should be,
If it matters to you, it will matter to me.

(I got a great response and tons of pictures because I have been very lucky when it comes to all the people I’ve ever met.)

Laura wanted me to read Naomi’s poem because it was the flip side of mine. (Laura is also a teacher. And on a related note, I should probably mention that Naomi is one of the most famous poets in the world and a former Poet Laureate, but that would just be me name dropping and/or preemptively bragging, so I won’t do that here.) 

I read “Valentine for Ernest Mann” 5000 times and couldn’t stop thinking about it. At first I was paralyzed by the idea that someone could think like that, string words like that AND be so ballsy in their poetry and meaning. But then the existence of this poem in my life quickly became my Helen Keller at the Pump moment and I realized that maybe:

...I didn’t have to figure everything out by myself.

...There were people like me (or that I wanted to be like....or meet......or find.....or read.....or aspire to be....or share with.......or talk to.....or listen to.........or let my guard down with...or learn from). 

...People who inspired me to try, trust, cry, laugh, fail, succeed, try again, take a break, take a risk, keep going, chill out, take a nap.

...People who knew more than me but would - and wanted to - share what they know, not hoard it or hide it it.

...People that were rooting for me.

How did I know this? (In addition to all the people who had sent me pictures and the wise council of my friend, Laura?)

Because after I’d read Naomi’s poem 5001 times, I met a friend of Naomi’s named Todd Parr who had helped me (via his childrens’ books) raise my kids and offered to introduce me to her.

Because I met Todd through another friend named Nadine Zystra who thought I might be good at developing and producing a kids’ show about the fun and importance and world of kid books and reading.

Because I met Nadine after my husband and I started making Sesame Street films by accident after having gotten fired from our day jobs.

Because my husband and I were hired by someone named Ronda Music to work on Sesame Street projects after we had brought her on board one of our day job projects before we got fired.

Because I met my husband on a big cool job that ended before we had to take day jobs to support our growing family.

See how confusing this can all be?  

This is why we need each other.

And poets.


Now, to be honest, I didn’t reach out to Naomi for a long time because I didn’t just want to say:
“Hi. Todd gave me your email. I write poems. Can you help me?”

(Plus I am a terrible networker...)

But then I realized that I had real questions for her and was needing and hoping for real answers, so I sent her an email with my questions and she answered them almost immediately, giving me the first part of the title of this piece. (I bet you forgot what it is. I almost did too, but it’s called “Double Good News.”)

My questions are below. I am keeping most of the answers private because they are specific to my brain and my reading of the poem, but you are welcome to ask any poet, anywhere, anytime, any question you might have. I have found that they are very generous with their time and wisdom, in addition to their words and takes on the world.

After a few back and forths, Naomi did say that it was ok for me to share that the husband and wife stayed together, because it was the second part of my Double Good News and because it really is pretty amazing, given the gift of the skunks. (The first part of the Double Good News was that Naomi wrote me back.)

There is actually one more piece of good news, I realize as I type. Even though it might appear that the village (and whole entire world) is in massive motherfucking shambles, there are people out there that actually still come through. A lot of them.

I am going to remind my daughters of this.

(I will try to remember it, too.)

Valentines for everyone!

(Please remind me that I said this.)


Love,

Stephanie Kemp

*There is also good news for you (if you are still reading):  I am a poet! I have several hundred poems to prove it....(and I love getting - and writing -letters).  



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