Source: Poetry Everywhere
This video segment from Poetry Everywhere features the poet Matthew Dickman reading his poem “Slow Dance” at the Dodge Poetry Festival. “Human beings are meaning-making creatures. We cannot help it. We cannot stop doing it.” This quote from Matthew Dickman could be the motto of everyone who reads poetry: even when you are not quite sure you understand it, you want to find meaning in it, and you do.
“Slow Dance” reads almost like the meandering thoughts of someone up late at night, thinking about very important things—love, family, death, and what keeps people going through it all. At first, the narrator’s conclusions don’t seem clear. Why do we need “the opportunity to dance/with really exquisite strangers?” Why would dancing like that make you “begin to think about how all the stars in the sky are dead?”
It is the intimacy of the moment of dancing that matters. The person you dance with is not as important. The physical closeness unlocks all of the narrator’s emotions, his worries and fears, his happy memories, his love for his brother. All of life, in its complications, its promise of love and death and mundane routine, is made bearable by a brief, highly charged moment of dancing. It is a moment out of routine that brings joy, “haiku and honey.” We all need these stolen or surprise moments when we can become someone else, just briefly, live a different reality, feel close to someone new, and allow our emotions to overflow and our minds to wander, looking for joy.
For more information and teaching resources about poetry please visit the Poetry Foundation Web site.
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