Get It Done: Remembrance as Absence, Presence, Resistance
And Poems by Jordan Davis
Home decorated in cempasuchil for Día de Muertos.
Despite the fact that Día de muertos begins the eve of November 1 and ends the next day, the celebration seems to cover the whole month of October as well. Already the cempasuchil (marigolds) that are key decoration are flowering everywhere. And figures of calaveras (skulls) are starting to appear in stores and store windows, in homes. I resist any Halloween comparisons with the US—Muertos is a much more serious holiday, though US ideas, including trick or treating, are a common part of the culture. A kind of creeping commercialization of Muertos here does remind me of the United States, especially when walking through certain markets and stores. The buy-buy-buy call of the coming holiday.
I plan to write more about Day of the Dead in Mexico in Poet in Mexico when we get closer to the end of the month, but there’s something in it that always resonates with me and resonated particularly this past week: the idea of remembrance. Last week, Jews all over the world celebrated Yom Kippur, the day of Atonement. I’m divided in myself as to whether it is, as it’s often described, the holiest day of the Jewish year. As someone in recovery, making amends is something I know to do on a regular basis; recognizing wrongs I’ve done right away and acting on it is a daily practice. So every day has has the possibility of some kind of atonement.
(My uncertainty on Yom Kippur being the holiest day of the year comes also because I’m a big fan of the Sabbath, with its idea of a time set aside in the week to unite oneself with what seems sacred. And that’s another part of my daily practice, to take small sabbaths during the day, find a moment in which I take a break from myself and contemplate the world in ways that get me outside of and beyond what Mircea Eliade called the profane, the ordinary).
The part of Yom Kippur that struck me this year, more deeply than it has in past years, was Yizkor, which normally takes place in the afternoon. Yizkor, a memorial prayer, is also the common name for the memorial or remembrance service for the dead. Getting older means there are more people to mourn, more people to think about. For me the remembrance seems less about grief than it is about presence. When I say the names of the people I want to remember—my parents, my grandparents, other close family of mine and Katherine’s, of friends—and I say those names in the context of this particular ceremony, I feel them re-enter my life again. I feel as though they’re standing before me in a way that is both sad—a contemplation of absence—and joyful—an awareness of how I can feel them there.
This double vision echoes some of Día de muertos, when family go to the cemeteries, bring food and drink, clothing, cigars, cigarettes, books, artifacts, all kinds of things that evoke the idea of those who have gone being with us in that particular moment.
This year I’ve been thinking a lot about their absence and presence. Maybe more than usual. Of course some of that is about age. I’m aware of fleeting, fleeing time. At 67, I know how my body is slowing down. My mind. I like to think that in a lot of ways life is getting more interesting, more filled with possibilities. Of course, it isn’t hard to see my limitations; within them, though, I’m gathering different kinds of strength.
Like a lot of people, I’m really concerned—troubled, upset, confused—about the state of the world, the one we live in, the one we are leaving our children, their children. This year, for some reason, it feels harder. It isn’t just the US, the Ukraine, Gaza. It isn’t just climate change, growing economic disparities between rich and poor. It isn’t just the social and political injustice that seems to be taking deeper and deeper root in the world.
It isn’t just because really it’s all those things together. And more. It’s the way they seem to contradict that necessary idea (for me) of positive evolution, of the arc of the universe tending toward the good. And that’s where I (again) feel absence. A kind of emptiness and void that allows for suffering, allows for violence, for madness.
Protesters against Trump and ICE in Chicago—easy for me to pick this photo, with the flags of both my countries prominent.
Yet it’s that absence that also creates for me the presence that counters the despair. Because in a way that occasionally defies logic, the despair and pain bring me to hope. I have these great days in which I feel reassured by my concerns. I look northward at the government of the United States, with all the crazy verging on tyranny. While completely caught up in a kind of disbelief that it’s all actually going on, I’ve become excited by the rising resistance to the authoritarianism of Trump world. Because the administration is so unpopular, because of the pushback, the MAGA party of death is doing exactly what authoritarians do—doubling down on the very things that make it so hideous. The encouragement for me is how that seems to make the resistance even stronger. While the would-be tyrants expect complacency, expect apathy, expect a giving-in to fear, the exact opposite is happening.
Are Americans rediscovering themselves, remembering the meaning of democracy?
That’s where my mind went at Yizkor. In remembering the people I’ve lost, in saying their names and seeing their faces, hearing their voices, I felt a kind of jolt. A presence demanding that I not give in to hopelessness. They sit on my shoulders: Do you know the right thing to do? Get it done.
Here in Mexico, our democracy tests itself daily. For a long time in our history it didn’t do that. The democracy was one on paper and not real life. And even now it still stumbles around. Yet that stumbling is a stumbling in the right direction, on the right path. That stumbling inspires me. It’s part of what went into my becoming a citizen here: making democracy matter.
La presidenta, Claudia Sheinbaum (7th from the right), visited Oaxaca this past weekend, to huge crowds. The popularity of her programs is reflected in her personal popularity, at over 80%.
As with my northern country, a lot of people struggled to get us to this day. The presence of resistance. The presence of hope.
I said names in my Yizkor prayers and I felt alive. That’s the whole idea of remembrance. That we live. We make life meaningful. I hear voices. Get it done. We used to sing how belief was deep in our hearts. I’m saying yes.
Some Poetry
When I was writing with Jordan Davis, whose poetry appears below, about proofing his work before the Wednesday morning posting, Jordan reminded me that he wouldn’t have internet access from Monday evening until Wednesday night. He’d be celebrating the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. Sukkot takes place right after Yom Kippur. It’s a remembering of the Exodus from Egypt, a celebration of the harvest. Many observant Jews will have a sukkah, a special wooden structure, in which they’ll celebrate. Jordan sent me a photo of his.
Jordan’s sukkah.
I’ve known Jordan a long time, forty years or so. He’s a terrific poet, has published three collections of poetry, and his work has appeared in many publications, including APR, The New Yorker, and the TLS. I’ve always admired him as as an editor and a champion of poetry. He was one at the Teachers & Writers Collaborative. He was poetry editor for the Nation and the Poetry Project Newsletter and currently edits The Nu Review. He’s one of the founders of the Subpress Collective, which published the English and Spanish versions of my collection Chicatanas.
Jordan is a more or less recent convert to Judaism and it’s something he and I have talked some about. Not a lot of people convert to Judaism. I know a few and they’ve told me a strikingly similar story. The first question posed to them by the rabbi working with them on the conversion is Why? What’s wrong with your religion? The sense is that Judaism doesn’t necessarily honor other religions over itself. All faiths make sense. So at the heart of conversion and subsequent practice is the depth of connection, commitment, and meaning.
These three qualities—connection, commitment, and meaning—are ones I’ve always seen in Jordan’s work. Buoyed by a New York School sense of the witty, the everyday, the perplexing, and the surprising, Jordan’s work has many layers. The poems have a certain kind of surface clarity and then a different underlying depth that suggests the poem may not be what the poem appears to be. There’s a challenge here: how to take the poem? Or better, how to take myself as reader of the poem? Or better, what is it in the poem that goes beyond poem itself? Sometimes the answer finds itself less in an answer than a series of questioning rereadings.
It’s with pleasure I welcome Jordan Davis to Poet in Mexico.
Six Poems by Jordan Davis HIS HONOR What difference does the mayor make to life in New York City? He gets to choose commissioners (it’s always been a he so far); the hundred billion dollar budget’s his, he lives, should he so choose, in Gracie Mansion. (Does that part matter? No, not really, but don’t you like to say it? Gracie Mansion.) EVERY GOOD REGULATOR OF A SYSTEM MUST BE A MODEL OF THAT SYSTEM In my sadder quietness I can see beyond the city clear out to the ocean where the shark galleries are packed with revelers totally certain nothing better is going on where they aren’t and with zero memory or ability to think ahead. INTERIOR DECORATING He looked at books and saw knowledge he could download. She looked at books and saw people she would have to fight. Theirs was a happy marriage for a couple of years. KAPPAROT You swing a chicken overhead and pray, or maybe use a sawbuck (twenty? ten? there’s no denomination for eighteen) and contemplate the ways you could repair relationships you’ve damaged. Everyone has someone feeling complicated hurt. The violence, the public show of shame I don’t completely understand just yet. But pain demanding recompense? For sure. THREE JEWISH POEMS He walks down Eastern Parkway, tallit katan under his t-shirt The fringe hanging over his Adidas tracksuit makes a fourth stripe It meets the fourth bar of the tefillin shin halfway * I guess I thought belief was like a shelf of books to consult in the middle of an argument at dinner but it’s more like an emergency protocol (everything leads to it) * make pharaohs of the grocery weeds love concrete speeches, make pharaohs of the breeze off the long-turned tide She smiles all at once — daylight skyblue. I trust myself like a dog by the side of the road, I can take the form of imperatives Numbers are not being bombed Feeling comes through in writing; this is it. We stand around in my heart like this, B’H EFFORT After everything that happened why would they go and do it to someone else I overhear and I want to say Law of Conservation of Emotional Momentum but I don’t know them and am making an effort to be less weird * You say the prayer twice — once for you and then aloud with everybody, for everybody
Good Links: Jordan and Mariachis!
Yeah, No
Jordan’s most recent book is Yeah, No (MadHat Press, 2023). You can buy it directly from the publisher. Or from Amazon. Or you can do what I love the most which is go to your local independent bookstore and order it through them. Suggest they get a few extra copies for their poetry section. Support literary presses and independent booksellers ! https://madhat-press.com/pages/jordan-davis
El baile de los mariachis (Que baile ese mariachi)
And for some Muertos fun? ¡Baile!
So nice to see and read Jordan after so many years! Thank you. And for the particularly good photos in this post. How do they get the marigolds to stick to the side of the house?
I enjoyed reading this.