Mentor and Muse: Essays from Poets to Poets

Hiding Your Heart’s Desire

207 Hiding Your Heart’s Desire David Keplinger One night last summer in the Umbrian city of Assisi, it came to me. What lends Italy its compelling energy, why I return year after year, is exactly what the country hides from me. The sun had begun to set. At one of those hairpin curves where small trucks (nun-driven) ride so closely the shoulder, I stopped and waited for traffic to clear. Within a grayish alcove I saw a small painting: Mary holding an infant-sized Christ. It had been painted directly onto the facade of the apartment house. There was a tarnished bronze placard the size of my hand. This painting, the plaque indicated, was completed with gratitude when prayers were answered. The fresco was dated to the seventeenth century. The bottom half was blackened from the smoke of votive candles. Were I in Philadelphia or New York or Boston—which claim long histories —this fresco on a busy corner might be preserved under glass or removed to a museum. In Assisi, art and daily life seem not to be divided. In the first in the Giotto series at the cathedral (twenty-seven frescos depicting the life and miracles of Francis), the saint stands before a Roman facade in the square at Piazza del Commune. A poor man spreads his cloak for the twenty-four-year-old nobleman to step upon. Francis wears the fine clothes of his birthright, as yet enjoying a life of privilege. Those nights in Assisi, I’d sit and eat or read on the steps of that facade where Francis once accepted (albeit with a baffled look) the poor man’s gesture . Little has changed in the piazza since Giotto recorded the encounter, seven hundred years ago. The Augustan, classical facade has remained there two millennia. In the Italian cities, one can’t go a day without encountering some relic, a stone or a tapestry or a stage, set in the background of the everyday: bus stations, restaurants, barber shops. It always startles me. Perhaps I return to Italy because I am reminded of some vital thing all artists and performers have to learn. That which I hide from the reader inevitably strengthens our bond. In The Cloud of Unknowing, the anonymous )DOFRQHU&KLQGG $0 david keplinger 208 fourteenth-century author calls it “hiding your heart’s desire from God” during prayerful contemplation. He’s using religious language, but essentially the reasoning is the same: “One reason I have for advising you to hide your heart’s desire from God is because when you hide it I think he actually sees it more clearly. By hiding it you will actually achieve your purpose and seeyourdesirefulfilledsoonerthanbyanymeansyoucoulddevisetoattract God’s attention. . . . God is all-knowing and nothing material or spiritual can actually be concealed from him, but since he is spirit, something thrust deep into the spirit is more clearly evident to him than something alloyed with emotions.”1 What is the difference between thrusting the poem “deep into the spirit” and alloying your poems with emotions? Two things happen when we’re starting out. We try to tell our biggest stories in one poem. And we feel required to articulate significance. Micromanagement of poems, our longing to imperiously control the outcome in the reader’s head, is a counterproductive activity. I have found that otherwise remarkable student poems lie muffled in what actors might call “indicating” gestures. To indicate is a failure of trust. You underestimate your audience. While referencing someone behind him, an indicating actor will conspicuously point with his thumb to the person behind him. The indicating actor wraps his arms around himself and gives a little shiver while delivering the line, “I’m cold.” My acting coach, Tom Foral, said this: “The last thing a drunk wants to reveal is his drunkenness. To act drunk, act like a man trying not to be drunk.” W R I T I N G P R O M P T What wisdom that still holds. I apply it in the following exercise. Give your draft to two trusted readers. These readers are to meet and decide which two lines are the best and second best in the piece. When they arrive at a decision (and it’s best to find two readers with at least a little similarity in taste), they return the poem to you. Now I would like you to take the best line (as your readers ranked...