Prompt 207. "A" is for...

A bit of good news, back to school, & a poem by Roger Reeves

Hi friend,

I met with my transplant doctor earlier this week, and it was one of the best appointments I’ve had in a while. I got good biopsy results, which was a huge relief, as well as a chemo reprieve. The effects of these last couple rounds have been pretty debilitating, and my doctor thought it made sense for me to take a month off, to give my body a chance to heal and gain strength. It’s the longest break I’ve had since I started treatment again, and I’m elated.

I left New York the next day for my little farm house in the Delaware Valley with River, Jon, and two straw baskets of books and watercolors. This is my favorite time of year—that transitional moment of no longer summer, not yet fall. On my morning walks with River, it’s been cool enough to make me wish I’d brought a sweater, and some of the leaves are very slightly starting to change color. And yet, my garden is still in full bloom, and I’ve been spending the afternoons outside in the warm sun.

This season carries with it that distinctive back-to-school vibe, which always energizes me. Along with it is a renewed hopefulness about having more energy to do the things I love. When I got here, one of the first things I did was tidy up my potting shed-turned-writing shack, where I hope to spend a lot of time, whether sitting in my armchair with a book, or painting a new watercolor, or finally starting on an essay I’ve been mulling for months.

But for today, it’s not prose, but poetry I’m trying my hand at. Last week, Carmen shared a stunning poem with me—it’s by a brilliant poet-friend of hers named Roger Reeves, called “The Alphabet, for Naima.” As the title suggests, it’s an abecedarian, where each line begins with a letter of the alphabet. You might remember the form from elementary school, but here it’s put to a gorgeously sophisticated use: As his father dies, the speaker of the poem addresses his daughter, telling her about love and loss, braiding together beauty and hardship, considering the complicated legacies we leave behind.

As I read it, I found myself surprised, uplifted, sorrowful, and inspired. I was fascinated by how each letter took him in such different directions, and how the form allowed them all to coalesce into a resonant whole—but also by how he breaks form in surprising ways, then circles back to it. I kept finding myself thinking, “Wait a second—what’s he doing here? And how is this coming together?” Which is to say, it’s the kind of poem that made me want to write.

So today, with Roger’s permission, I’m sharing “The Alphabet, for Naima.” I hope you find it as moving as I do and that you’ll attempt your own abecedarian. I’d love to see it if you do!

Sending love,

Suleika

Prompt 207. “The Alphabet, for Naima” by Roger Reeves

from Best Barbarian (Norton, 2022). Shared with permission of the author.

A is for almost, arriving, my father’s death.

B is for bear, which he does and does not do.

C is for care and critics and leaving them to their caskets.

D is for damn, which your father does not give but must.

E, for empire—a thing to impale, kill, break 

Breach. F is for farther along we’ll understand why

Fire greets us at every door and we’ve lost our way 

In the sky. Now where, where should we turn?

G is for good, the shy speechless sound of fruit

Falling from its tree. Me, you, there in the woods

Watching the pines shatter shadow in the light

Wind. H is for horses in the high cotton,

The crack in their hooves carrying your grandfather

And your grandfather’s grandfather down the hill

Until two stomps on the barn floor orphans them

Again, dust, dust. I is for in, as in in the blood we bear

All sorts of madness but bear, bear we must.

J is for jaundiced, which you never were.

K is for keep. Keep your wilderness wild, your caves neat.

L is lift and lymph, the node they cut

From beneath your grandfather’s arm.

M is for misery, which turns and breaks in

Though I wish it would not. Leaf

Leaning on a pond. Blood on a sock.

N is for nature and nearly and how I’ve come

To love; nearly, nearly I come to you, my falcon

Hood pulled tight; my talons tucked; Lord,

Let me not touch. O is for out and the owl

You say sits on your nose. P is for please

As in “Please, son, don’t visit me”

And yet I visited and did not please, and he would not

Touch your leaf, afraid his rot would

Make the petals fall. A lovely love—

No, not at all. Q is for quince, its yellow-breasted

Bell knocking against my father’s deathbed

Window, the light, the light too on his dying

Bed, what you opened your mouth to and tried

To swallow. R is for road where we lay,

Sometimes, because we wish not to exist

And wish and wish and wish. And must.

S is for…

Your prompt for the week:

An abecedarian is a poetic form where the first letter of each line or stanza follows sequentially through the alphabet. In “The Alphabet, for Naima,” Reeves invokes this form to explore love and loss and to bridge time and space and generations.

After reading the poem, reflect on a pivotal moment—maybe loss, maybe new life—and use the abecedarian form to share that memory with a loved one. Allow the letters of the alphabet to take you where they will, to gather the varied strains of human experience into one resonant song.

If you’d like, you can post your response in the comments below, in our Facebook group, or on Instagram by tagging @theisolationjournals.

Today’s Contributor

Roger Reeves is the author of two books of poetry, most recently Best Barbarian, which the poet Terrance Hayes called “a monumental and elegiac tour de force” that is “peerless and unprecedented.” An associate professor of poetry at the University of Texas, Austin, Reeves is the recipient of a Whiting Award and a Pushcart Prize, as well as fellowships from Cave Canem, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Poetry Foundation, and Princeton University. You can get your copy of Best Barbarian here.

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