July 28: Only the Good, Camille T. Dungy, "Association Copy"

Tonight's poem by the Poet of the Week is about a person who died at the age of 40--poet Lynda Hull.  After publishing two books, Hull was killed in a car accident in 1994.  Her voice was amazing, and it was silenced way too soon.

In the poem, Dungy writes about finding a book of poems by Phil Levine that has Hull's signature in it.  It probably was from Hull's personal library, sold in the aftermath of tragic passing.  It's difficult giving up a loved one's belongings.  It's sort of like losing the person all over again.

I still have small pieces of junk that my sister gave me squirreled away in dresser drawers and between pages of books.  Yesterday, at work, I came across a note she'd written.  There they were, her unmistakable fat letters.  For a moment, it was like hearing her voice again.  My family still has a whole closet full of her belongings (and that's just the tip of the proverbial iceberg).  Letting go is shitty, hard work.

I'm glad I found this poem.  It made me happy.  I don't know why.  It just did.  Perhaps it reminded me of the discovery of my sister's little note yesterday.  That note was a gift.  She's still with me, watching.  Somehow.  Somewhere.

Saint Marty agrees with Billy Joel.  Only the good die young.

Association Copy

by:  Camille T. Dungy

Lynda Hull

Maybe you sold it to buy junk. Though I like to think not.

And I don't want to think you used the money for food

or rent or anything obligatory, practical.

A pair of boots, perhaps. Thigh high burgandy boots

with gold laces. Something crucial as lilies.

Mostly, I want to believe you held onto the book,

that your fingers brailed those pages' inky veins

even in your final weeks. I want to believe

words can be that important in the end.

Who can help the heart, which is grand and full

of gestures? I had been on my way out.

He was rearranging his bookshelves

when, in an approximation of tenderness, 

he handed me, like the last of the sweet potatoes

at Thanksgiving, like a thing he wanted

but was willing to share, the rediscovered book—

he'd bought it years ago in a used bookstore

in Chicago. Levine's poems, with your signature inside.

That whole year I spent loving him, something splendid

as lemons, sour and bright and leading my tongue

toward new language, was on the shelf. These

weren't your own poems, autographed, a stranger's

souvenir—we'd spent vain months leafing through

New York stacks for your out-of-print collections—but you'd cared

about this book, or cared enough to claim it, your name

looped across the title page as if to say, Please.

This is mine, This book is mine. Though you sold it.

Or someone else did when you died.

We make habits out of words. I grew accustomed

to his, the way they spooned me into sleep

so many times. Now I am sleepless and alone

another night. What would you give for one more night

alone? No booze. No drugs. Just that hunger

and those words. He gave me The Names of the Lost.

Need comes down hard on a body. What else

was sold? What else—do you know?—did we lose

Lynda Hull