Jen Lambert: Hand Theory

A man takes his sadness down to the river and throws it in the river
but then he’s still left
with the river. A man takes his sadness and throws it away
but then he’s still left with his hands – Richard Siken, “Boot Theory”

Humans are perpetual disposers. We love to get rid of things and trade up: cars, tvs, phones, emotions. We even barter our worries for security wrapped up in tiny pills. Our possessions pile in our backyards like dirty laundry and our fears come raging back in the weak gap of morning. We can throw and throw and throw, but nothing ever disappears. The lines from Siken’s poem got me thinking about how this relates to poetry and how quick we are as contemporaries to dispose of the poetic foundation that has supported our pulse outward. No matter how far we distance ourselves from tradition, our rhythms are still just an echo. We can throw away the ideas of our predecessors and create our own meanings in order to redefine who we are, but then how do we define poetry? Is it in your definition or mine? Or maybe everyone is right. Even so, no matter how far we expand our ideas in order to recreate ourselves, we are only as good as the hands of the men and women before, we are still left with their imprint in our empty hands. We can walk alone, searching for something new to turn over in our fingers, or we can recycle, make connections and create a balance in the dark, high above what we know.

Jen Lambert’s poetry appears in LAR Issue 9. Visit her blog, Plain, Burned Things, here.