In a culture predicated on the perpetual pursuit of happiness, as if it were a fugitive on the loose, it can be hard to discern what having happiness actually feels like, how it actually lives in us. Willa Cather came consummately close in her definition of happiness as the feeling of being โdissolved into something complete and greatโ โ a definition consonant with Iris Murdochโs lovely notion of unselfing. And yet happiness is as much a matter of how we inhabit the self โ how we make ourselves at home in our own singular lives, in the dwelling-places of our own experience.
That is what May Sarton (May 3, 1912โJuly 16, 1995), who has written so movingly about unhappiness and its cure, explores in her poem โThe Work of Happiness,โ included in her indispensable Collected Poems: 1930โ1993 (public library).
THE WORK OF HAPPINESS
by May SartonI thought of happiness, how it is woven
Out of the silence in the empty house each day
And how it is not sudden and it is not given
But is creation itself like the growth of a tree.
No one has seen it happen, but inside the bark
Another circle is growing in the expanding ring.
No one has heard the root go deeper in the dark,
But the tree is lifted by this inward work
And its plumes shine, and its leaves are glittering.So happiness is woven out of the peace of hours
And strikes its roots deep in the house alone:
The old chest in the corner, cool waxed floors,
White curtains softly and continually blown
As the free air moves quietly about the room;
A shelf of books, a table, and the white-washed wall โ
These are the dear familiar gods of home,
And here the work of faith can best be done,
The growing tree is green and musical.For what is happiness but growth in peace,
The timeless sense of time when furniture
Has stood a lifeโs span in a single place,
And as the air moves, so the old dreams stir
The shining leaves of present happiness?
No one has heard thought or listened to a mind,
But where people have lived in inwardness
The air is charged with blessing and does bless;
ย ย ย ย ย ย Windows look out on mountains and the walls are kind.
Complement with Bertrand Russell on the secret of happiness and Kurt Vonnegut on the one word it comes down to, then revisit Sartonโs poem โMeditation in Sunlightโ and her magnificent ode to solitude.
For a decade and half, I have been spending hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars each month composing The Marginalian (which bore the unbearable name Brain Pickings for its first fifteen years). It has remained free and ad-free and alive thanks to patronage from readers. I have no staff, no interns, no assistant โ a thoroughly one-woman labor of love that is also my life and my livelihood. If this labor makes your own life more livable in any way, please consider lending a helping hand with a donation. Your support makes all the difference.
The Marginalian has a free weekly newsletter. It comes out on Sundays and offers the weekโs most inspiring reading. Hereโs what to expect. Like? Sign up.
There is a nonspecific gladness that envelops humanity in the first days of spring, as if kindness itself were coming abloom in the cracks of crowded sidewalks, quelling our fears, swallowing our sorrows, salving the savage loneliness. We are reminded then that spring โ this insentient byproduct of the shape of our planetโs orbit and the tilt of its axis โ may just be Earthโs existential superpower, the supreme affirmation of life in the face of every assault on it.
That superpower comes alive with dazzling might in a century-old poem by E.E. Cummings (October 14, 1894โSeptember 3, 1962), originally published in his 1923 collection Tulips & Chimneys (public library) โ that epochal gauntlet at the conventions of poetry, which went on to influence generations of writers, readers, and daring makers of the unexampled across the spectrum of creative work โ and read at the fifth annual Universe in Verse by the polymathic creative force that is Debbie Millman, with a side of Bach.
[O SWEET SPONTANEOUS]
by e.e. cummingsO sweet spontaneous
earth how often have
the
dotingย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย fingers of
prurient philosophers pinched
and
pokedthee
,has the naughty thumb
of science prodded
thyย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย beautyย ย ย ย how
often have religions taken
thee upon their scraggy knees
squeezing andbuffeting thee that thou mightest conceive
gods
ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย (but
trueto the incomparable
couch of death thy
rhythmic
loverย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย thou answerest
them only with
ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย spring)
Couple with spring with Emily Dickinson, then revisit E.E. Cummings (who, contrary to popular myth, signed his name both lowercase and capitalized) on the courage to be yourself.
For other highlights from The Universe in Verse, savor Roxane Gay reading Gwendolyn Brooksโs โTo the Young Who Want to Die,โ Zoรซ Keating reading Sylvia Plathโs โMushrooms,โ Rebecca Solnit reading Helene Johnsonโs โTrees at Night,โ and a series of animated poems celebrating nature.
For a decade and half, I have been spending hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars each month composing The Marginalian (which bore the unbearable name Brain Pickings for its first fifteen years). It has remained free and ad-free and alive thanks to patronage from readers. I have no staff, no interns, no assistant โ a thoroughly one-woman labor of love that is also my life and my livelihood. If this labor makes your own life more livable in any way, please consider lending a helping hand with a donation. Your support makes all the difference.
The Marginalian has a free weekly newsletter. It comes out on Sundays and offers the weekโs most inspiring reading. Hereโs what to expect. Like? Sign up.
May Sarton (May 3, 1912โJuly 16, 1995) was thirty-three when she left Cambridge for Santa Fe. She had just lived through a World War and a long period of personal turmoil that had syphoned her creative vitality โ a kind of deadening she had not experienced before. Under the immense blue skies that had so enchanted the young Georgia OโKeeffe a generation earlier, she started coming back to life. Her white-washed room at the boarding house had mountain views, a rush of sunlight, and a police dog and โa very nice English teacherโ for neighbors. As the sun rose over the mountains, she woke up each morning โsimply on fireโ with poetry โ new poems she read to the English teacher, not yet knowing she was falling in love with her. Judy would become her great love, then her lifelong friend and the closest she ever had to family.
Among the constellation of Santa Fe poems composed during this creative renaissance is an especially beguiling reflection on the relationship between presence, solitude, and love, soon published in Sartonโs 1948 poetry collection The Lion and the Rose (public library) โ her first in a decade โ and read here for us by my longtime poetry co-invocator Amanda Palmer in her lovely oceanic voice:
MEDITATION IN SUNLIGHT
by May SartonIn space in time I sit
Thousands of feet above
The sea and meditate
On solitude on loveNear all is brown and poor
Houses are made of earth
Sun opens every door
The city is a hearthFar all is blue and strange
The sky looks down on snow
And meets the mountain-range
Where time is light not shadowTime in the heart held still
Space as the household god
And joy instead of will
Knows love as solitudeKnows solitude as love
Knows time as light not shadow
Thousands of feet above
The sea where I am now
Complement with Sarton on the cure for despair, how to live openheartedly in a harsh world, and her stunning ode to solitude, then revisit Amandaโs soulful readings of Jane Kenyonโs meditation on life with and after depression, Elizabeth Bishopโs timeless consolation for loss, Ellen Bassโs immense and intimate poem of perspective and possibility, and Mary Oliverโs โWhen I Am Among the Trees.โ
For a decade and half, I have been spending hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars each month composing The Marginalian (which bore the unbearable name Brain Pickings for its first fifteen years). It has remained free and ad-free and alive thanks to patronage from readers. I have no staff, no interns, no assistant โ a thoroughly one-woman labor of love that is also my life and my livelihood. If this labor makes your own life more livable in any way, please consider lending a helping hand with a donation. Your support makes all the difference.
The Marginalian has a free weekly newsletter. It comes out on Sundays and offers the weekโs most inspiring reading. Hereโs what to expect. Like? Sign up.