{"id":10257,"date":"2025-03-16T15:09:29","date_gmt":"2025-03-16T19:09:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/any-common-desolation-the-marginalian\/"},"modified":"2025-03-16T15:09:29","modified_gmt":"2025-03-16T19:09:29","slug":"any-common-desolation-the-marginalian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/any-common-desolation-the-marginalian\/","title":{"rendered":"Any Common Desolation \u2013 The Marginalian"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Profit<\/a>
\n<\/p>\n

\n

\"Any<\/a><\/p>\n

The morning after a relationship of depth and significance long bending under the weight of its own complexity had finally broken with an exhausted thud, I opened the kiln to discover a month\u2019s worth of pottery shattered \u2014 two pieces had exploded, the shrapnel ruining the rest. All that centering, all that glazing, all the hours of pressing letterforms into the wet clay \u2014 all of it in shiny shards. And meanwhile spring was breaking outside and a little girl in bright blue rain boots was jumping in a puddle, smashing the reflections of the clouds with savage joy. <\/p>\n

And I thought, this is all there is: breaking, breaking apart, breaking open. <\/p>\n

Breaking alive. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Card from An Almanac of Birds: 100 Divinations for Uncertain Days<\/em><\/a>, also available as a stand-alone print<\/a> and as greeting cards<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It is not an easy assignment, being alive. Coming awake from the stupor of near-living that lulls us through our days, awake to the knowledge that on the other side of the neighborhood ICE trucks are handcuffing people and on the other side of the planet children are dying in gunfire, while outside the first birds of spring are singing and everywhere people are falling in love and in some faraway mountain village a shepherd is singing under a thousand stars. And somehow, somehow, all of it has to cohere into a single world in which we, in all our incohesion, must live this single life. <\/p>\n

Ellen Bass<\/a> reckons with all of this in her splendid poem \u201cAny Common Desolation,\u201d originally published in The Academy of American Poets\u2019 poem-a-day<\/a> newsletter and later included in James Crews\u2019s lifeline of an anthology How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (public library<\/em><\/a>), shared here with Ellen\u2019s blessing. <\/p>\n