Instructions for Traveling West | poems by Joy Sullivan

Don’t hang up! Please! I know lots of people see the word “poems” and think, “Not interested…Don’t get it…Whatever.” But, really, these are good. Very “approachable.” Similar in that way to Billy Collins—not the kind of poetry that might make you feel like you need to study it to understand.

I wish I knew who to give credit to for telling me about this Instructions for Traveling West | poems.* I put it on hold at the library because someone recommended it, but I didn’t note down who it was. I love it!

Shh! Don’t tell the library!

When I’m reading a book from the library, I know it would be sacrosanct to underline and write in it, which I dearly want to. So I dogear pages and then carefully straighten them out before returning the book. You can see in the picture I posted here that I dogeared a whole bunch of pages. I guess I should order some of those tiny post-its and use those instead. I plan to purchase this book so I can re-read poems, which I’ve already been doing.

There are so many good ones! I am thinking about recording myself reading them and perhaps also talking about them. Shamelessly copying Padraig O’Tauma on Poetry Unbound. It could be a fun experiment with my podcast feature I’ve already tried out (Mavis Moon’s Podcast). I just looked at microphones recommended for podcasting but that is quite intimidating, especially for me, a hater of A/V equipment. If I do this, I think I’ll try with just my headset and see how it goes.

Here are a few poems I especially liked—and some reflection.

Long Division

My first friend was built like a willow tree. We were the same age but she was taller and leaner and impossibly graceful. Hadessah is the Hebrew name for Esther—the biblical beauty who saved her people from genocide. I was envious of her name and its heroism. Mine was Joy—flimsy and monosyllabic like pond or soap or cheese. Hadessah was smarter than me too, got better grades, and understood long division where all I saw was a thin bridge with numbers jumping off. But she laughed at everything I said and my god, I adored her. When you’re little, love really knocks you out.

We said what kids say when you move. That we’d write. That we wouldn’t forget. That, every night, we’d look up at that one weird winky star and make a wish. After she left, I could still see her bike leaning against the house, its blue body trembling in the rain.

Nothing is as lonely as childhood, and the person to finally interrupt that ache is a big miracle. You never forget the hero who slides into the bus seat beside you or scoots their tray over at the lunch table. The silhoette of someone small and familiar running down your street—sweaty and hopeful that you can come out to play. To this day, I can still hear Hadessah’s voice at sunset. The bats winging in the dying light. She’s calling out my dumb name. She’s making it sound almost beautiful.

(page 4*)

“…long division where all I saw was a thin bridge with numbers jumping off…” Can’t you just see it?

“Nothing is as lonely as childhood, and the person to finally interrupt that ache is a big miracle.” This line, the whole poem, makes me think of the miracles—the heroes—of my childhood. I recently realized how lucky I was that, nearly every time we moved and I went to a new school, a girl would kind of adopt the new girl (me), show me where to go, sit by me at lunch, and introduce me to her friends.

On another note, I heard Billy Collins define poetry (WAMC Northeast Public Radio, “The Book Show | Billy Collins - Water, Water,” wamc.org):

 …From Henry Taylor, he says, poetry is an arrangement of lines whose length is determined by some principle other than the width of the page. Okay? The line does not go out to the end of the page. And that turning back, making the line, then turning back into the poem, there used to be a metrical reason for that. You know “Whose woods these are, I think I know.” And you move back. “His house is in the village though.” Well, if you don't write metrically formal or regular verse, then you can turn back anytime.

But you have to turn back before you get to the end of the page. Otherwise, you're writing prose. You don't want that to happen. Alright. So the turning back also is telling the reader, get back in here. Get where you going. Get back in here. This is the body of the poem. Come back into the body of the poem so it's recirculating your attention back into the poem.

Shakespeare sonnets are good like that, you know, the way it holds your attention in that grip. So that's what I'm writing, I'm thinking about good lines. I wanna write one line at a time, and I want it to be a unit of something. Could be a unit of grammar or a unit of metaphor, humor or whatever.

Charles Olson said no line must sleep. No line must sleep. Every line should be aware of the lines of the words around it, the other lines around it. That brings the attention of the poem to itself—when the poet is writing one line at a time.

Seemingly, this poem does not fit into that definition since the lines go to the page's end, although Joy Sullivan was, I imagine, “writing one line at a time,” “good lines” that are “aware of the lines of the words around it.” I think another writer I love, Brian Doyle, would call it a proem, a combination of poem and prose. It is hard to define poetry, but I like this passage. I like the words, the images they evoke, and the feeling they give me.

“When you’re little, love really knocks you out.” Right?

Safe

For Tasha

watch out for the ice, i say.
be careful on the road, in the snow.

the fog, the rain, don’t be sad,
please sleep, eat this argula,
drink some water, wear your coat.
call me when you land.

there are a million ways to say i love you

& forgive me, i know nothing
about baseball, but something
in me breaks with joy when
the runner rushes in, body flung
& reaching, & the umpire
lifts his arms out like a prophet
or a mother & makes him safe.

(page 6*)

To my great annoyance, my mom used to say, “Don’t fall!” I wanted to answer, “Do you think I want to fall? Do you think telling me not to will make me not fall? If I fall, it will be an accident.”

This poem made me think of my own fears for the safety of my children. We lived near a big, busy intersection, and it was a rite of passage when we allowed the kids to cross that street on their own. Even when we trusted them to do it, if I heard sirens when I knew one or the other of them had crossed, I would walk out to the corner, just to check. I realized my kids were onto me about that when my son walked toward me one day as I got close and said, “Heard the sirens, didn’t you, Mom?”

My sister and I mock my mom by telling each other, “Call when you get home,” like our mom used to. It’s especially ridiculous now that we live in the same small town and could realistically walk home, we’re so close. But, as the poem says, “there are a million ways to say i love you.”

I Haven’t Prayed in Years

I haven’t prayed in years
but if I did start I would never say the word please
because if you’re praying
then, well, that’s implied.

And I would never say the word
dear because that is too formal
like a thank-you card to your grandmother
that your mother made you write
after you got the ugly ornament
that one Christmas when you were ten
and you still have it because throwing
it away now somehow feels like cheating.

I would never swear in a prayer
because that seems risky and if
you are praying, you generally aren’t
feeling ballsy. You are all out of balls
and that is why you are praying.

I’d never write down a prayer either
because written prayers are sort of like flags
in that you can’t burn or rip them
up so you bury them and then
are secretly disappointed when
nothing grows out of the ground.

I think if I started praying
I’d put bees inside
that prayer so it buzzed in my mouth
and fell off my tongue and into the air
thick and swarming, a hot cloud
that could sting and sweat and swab
like honey.

I’d put a matchbox in my prayer
so I could make a fire and if
God didn’t hear the prayer
at least he’d see the smoke.

(page 75*)

This is one of my two favorites of the collection. In one of her poems, “Roads,” Joy Sullivan wrote:

Before Ohio and the roar of adolescence, my childhood was spent in Central African Republic. Because my parents were medical missionaries, I grew up transient and seeking movement, slow to root. (page 10*)

So, she was a missionary’s kid. I imagine she knows praying. But as noted in the title of this poem, she hasn't prayed in years. Something happened there.

My favorite stanza:

I would never swear in a prayer
because that seems risky and if
you are praying, you generally aren’t
feeling ballsy. You are all out of balls
and that is why you are praying.

Don’t you love it? “…you generally aren’t / feeling ballsy. You are all out of balls…” “All out of balls.” Ha ha. It reminds me of Jen Hatmaker saying she is “all out of f**ks.” And who would swear in a prayer anyway? I like the understatedness of “because that seems risky.”

I do write my prayers down, but I still like the words about why not to, and the image of a prayer with bees inside is excellent. And this stanza sounds very Holy Spirit to me:

I’d put a matchbox in my prayer
so I could make a fire and if
God didn’t hear the prayer
at least he’d see the smoke.

Here is the other of my two favorite poems in the collection:

Pushing the Belly

When you meet the beluga of yuor grief
in the open ocean, do not pierce or pet it.
Do not ride or tame it.
Do not feed it anything other than yourself.
Instead, let it roll you in its mouth,
mold you with its gargantuan tongue.

Let it swallow you whole.

Arrive like Jonah in the soft underbelly of lament,
in the whale of your own sorrow, drown.
Settle among the tattered fish, the carnage,
the fishermen’s hooks carved into bones of rust.
feel it beat wildly against your palms.

Begin to crawl.

Up the colossal throat and past monoliths of teeth,
climb out like a hymn. Rise like a stupid miracle
flung upon some sun-fragrant rock,
shocked and land-hungry, wet with whale spit and resolve.
Cup your hands to your heart—full now with the sonar
of sadness. Remember how it propelled you,
breathless, towards the shore.

(page 108*)

Grief does feel like a beluga, doesn’t it?

I hope you’ve enjoyed the poems I copied here. If you did, you might want to check out the book. Highly recommend.

* Instructions for Traveling West | poems by Joy Sullivan, Dial Press Trade Paperback (April 9, 2024).