Stack Takeover: Mischa Willett. Over the next two months, we’ll be reading poetry from Mischa every week, including four poems published for the first time on this Substack. For an introduction to Mischa, read Ben Palpant’s interview with him here. The Cold-Hearted Son Almost Speaks Up
This was a tough poem to write, as I was processing a difficult time in our family and wondering how to feel. I also set myself some fun formal challenges: it looks like the rhyme scheme is ABCB, but really it’s ABAB, only the alternating “rhymes” are otherwise-than-sonically related: so “understand” rhymes* with “sitting”, and “end” rhymes* with “begun.”
I feel like this sums up the poem for me. The short answer to the question asked in the first sentence. "to grow glad" and know when to return to normal, just let life take its normal pace, including the nows, and its flows to the future.
Mischa, you describe very well the tension between the "oh, wow the end is near," and "oh, well maybe it's not."
Especially these lines,
"And now shouldn’t the song
switch from dirge to dance? Televised, this
would be the scene of the second chance,"
Thanks for giving us this glimpse via your poem.
So many near misses, in life, in art!
Beautiful Mischa!
This was a tough poem to write, as I was processing a difficult time in our family and wondering how to feel. I also set myself some fun formal challenges: it looks like the rhyme scheme is ABCB, but really it’s ABAB, only the alternating “rhymes” are otherwise-than-sonically related: so “understand” rhymes* with “sitting”, and “end” rhymes* with “begun.”
"to grow glad we have this dry meanwhile,
if dull, and brief."
I feel like this sums up the poem for me. The short answer to the question asked in the first sentence. "to grow glad" and know when to return to normal, just let life take its normal pace, including the nows, and its flows to the future.