Hunger
This Hunger-hole you cannot fill, Though Craving bids you try. You cannot bend it to your will; It simply leaves you, by and by.
It goes by other names, you know: Desire, Envy, Lust - A fire burns, deep down below And stoke its flames, you must. For only when it's satisfied, Will Craving take its leave; And only when it's undenied Will Hunger be appeased.
—Holly Jahangiri
Today’s Poets
Edward Hirsch
– a best-selling American poet, educator, and critic, author of numerous books of poetry and books on poetry. Read more here.
Gabriel a Poem – Edward Hirsch (an excerpt from Hirsch’s elegy for his son)
Thomas Hardy – an english poet and writer. He wrote an elegiac poems for his first wife, from whom he had been estranged some 20 years, upon her death. Read more here.
Your Last Drive poem – Thomas Hardy (best-poems.net)
April is National Poetry Month. This year marks its 27th year. NaPoWriMo – 30 days of writing poems – is poets’ answer to National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo).
This coincides with the A to Z Blogging Challenge, now celebrating its 13th anniversary. Some participants choose a theme; others wing it. Doesn’t matter! The real challenge is to build a practice of writing daily. I think I stuck with it…once. There’s still time to sign up – registration ends April 9. You can see the list of participants – I’m sure they’d love it if you’d visit and comment on their blogs.
This month, my goal is to:
- Write a poem a day and share it – uncurated – here; and
- Highlight some poets you may be unfamiliar with.
I encourage you to click the links to read about them and their work. I plan to choose a diverse array of classical and contemporary poets – indigenous poets, Black poets, women poets, LGBTQ poets – that challenge us to see the world differently while also tapping into universal themes and emotions.
Remember, too, that comments and conversation are always welcome here. (Spammers, on the other hand, will be tossed into the moat or mocked, so before you leave an irrelevant comment or drop a link, consider that it’s fair game!)
This poem is deep and invites us to debate. I think that there are two types of cravings: psychological and physical. The poem supports physical, in my opinion. My view of psychological cravings is that you have to reframe the focus of desire. Maybe they are cravings, per se, but wanting and needing are obviously two different things.
Physical cravings are like addictions. Satisfaction is the only way to alleviate them. I’m not 100% sure, but isn’t it the case that addictions can never be cured?
Your analysis is spot-on. I wrote this while trying to ignore the ginormous container of jellybeans I bought at Costco. 😉 But I had managed to stave it off by writing that afternoon. I do think we can be distracted from physical hungers and cravings by fulfilling our psychological needs. (In a sense, the poem is about “emotional eating” or “emotional overeating” – is it really a physical hunger or are we just stuffing our faces to distract us from emotions we’d rather not focus on?)
Your analysis is spot-on. I wrote this while trying to ignore the ginormous container of jellybeans I bought at Costco. 😉 But I had managed to stave it off by writing that afternoon. I do think we can be distracted from physical hungers and cravings by fulfilling our psychological needs. (In a sense, the poem is about “emotional eating” or “emotional overeating” – is it really a physical hunger or are we just stuffing our faces to distract us from emotions we’d rather not focus on?)
I liked your poem, Holly. And thank you for your comment above that makes it easier for people like me to understand the meaning behind the poetry. (I am not into poetry and find it difficult to comment on it, tbh. Apologies!)
Much love!
Shilpa! Hi! Thank you for reading and commenting. I know many people who are “not into poetry” for the same reasons – they find it hard to understand (and that makes them feel “stupid” but that’s not the case at all). As I said to another friend, that’s probably the fault of the poet.
On the one hand, poems that are just TOO obvious are usually nursery rhymes for children or “greeting card verse,” and the writer hasn’t dug deep enough or exercised all the rhetorical devices at their fingertips to give it layers of meaning. It’s superficial. There’s nothing wrong with that! Critics are dismissive of that kind of poetry but readers often prefer simple.
Then there’s more nuanced, layered poetry – but even there, I think, it shouldn’t be obscure. The trouble, there, is that it sometimes alludes to historical events or to places we, the readers, don’t share with the poet. Is poetry about the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020 going to resonate the same in 2060 as it did two or three years ago? Does an ode to haggis, written in Scots, resonate…at all – if you’re not Scottish? Language plays its part.
Now, the reader could at least try to look up any unfamiliar words. I put that on the reader. I had a friend who used to complain that every time he read one of my posts, he had to have a dictionary at hand. Evil me, I took that as a good thing – especially since he kept coming back for more, and admitted his vocabulary had grown as a result. Sorry – not sorry at all! But sometimes, poets get too precious with language and forget that a poem really IS supposed to mean something. It’s not supposed to be a chore to read.
I remember reading Shakespeare’s sonnets in college. One, I had to analyze line by line (and we didn’t have the internet to give us clues). It was Sonnet 116. I can recite it to this day. I can explain the meaning of each line, each metaphor. It wasn’t obvious and there were many words – words we don’t commonly use today – that I had to look up. “Wand’ring bark”?? What? But once I understood the poem, I fell in love with it. Good poetry is like peeling an onion – each layer reveals something new, maybe makes you smile with its crunchy texture and flavorful aroma – maybe makes you shed a tear. It’s flavorful, colorful, sometimes complex – and yet – not complicated at all.
Later, I encountered Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130. Oh, my God – there’s no obscurity in the meaning, there, is there? Shakespeare could write such lofty, romantic verse – and then, THIS? I loved Sonnet 130. No idealized goddess of a woman I could never be, not in Sonnet 130. And he was MAKING FUN OF other poets of the day, and their tendency to write flowery verse about their beloveds. Now, I fell in love with the poem AND the poet!
I recommend reading both, if you haven’t. One line at a time. It won’t be a pleasure, at first. Look up the words you don’t know. Then think about the meaning in each line. And after you’ve spent a little time with them, check your understanding against some of the many analyses online that explain the meaning of these sonnets. I think you’ll already know or have a good sense of it. In any case, go easy on yourself – language evolves and CHANGES. These were written in the early 1600s!! But rejoice! It’s not Beowulf. 😉 Both really do make sense.
Thank you for understanding and also for explaining how I can enjoy poetry. 🙂