Poem of the Week: 9.22.22
"Work, Life, Balance" by Ricky Novaes de Oliveira
“Work, Life, Balance” by Ricky Novaes de Oliveira
It’s not going to work, from home. Morning paper: emails and comments and breakup texts. Feedback. Live now. The life out there, behind my screen. Staring. Seeking meaning in the spelling errors. Guilty lounging. All the work to do. Looking at my phone. Looking for answers. Search bar. Refilling cups. Milling “things'' over. Sitting here and sitting there. Spilling: over-thinking: precipitate. Space in the cloud. Without closure or catching up on office chisme. Don’t worry. Online learning how to move on. Connection issues. Try toggling. Hide self view. Teaching teenage absurdists that all these implosions matter, get better, are just a part of life. Zoom. Entry sounds. Funeral—excused. Streaming, still dreaming. Control+F. Dead lines—missing assignments. De-liverables. Delivering a baby, then asking for help with “problem number two.” Balance is a decision of what is thrown out the window: I’m working on it.
This is the third edition of the Poem of the Week! Thanks for reading. I tried out an audio recording of this as well—check it out if you are a fan of listening.
I wrote this poem out of frustration in the midst of online teaching, distance learning, and the pandemic. The poem is in the style of one of my favorite poets, Lyn Hejinian (author of my favorite book of poetry), who writes in a seemingly deceptive way. Though this poem has a prose form (paragraph instead of stanzas) and seems to be stream-of-consciousness, the poem is more focused on the word-level and word relations. There are puns (“Dead lines—”), double entendres (“Hide self view”), and wordplay (“Live” vs. “life” vs. “De-liverables”). Whereas the speaker is initially hung up about a break up, the poem shifts focus towards what actually matters and the problems outside the self. And there is the beauty of prose poetry: you can dive into language/life, get lost/found in it, and find your way back up/through.
Peace. Ricky