What the Soul Misses: Andrea Gibson’s “For the Days I Stop Wanting a Body”

If you’ve ever been grievously ill or incapacitated and cursed your fate and your body, this poem is for you.

If you’ve ever suffered from a chronic disease, this poem is for you.

If you’ve ever been near death, or been with a beloved who is, and bounced back, this poem is for you.

If you’ve ever waited in vigil and beheld a loved one’s last days and breaths, this poem is for you.

If you’ve ever wondered and remained mystified by questions of mind and body, mortality and immortality, earth and the heavens, this poem is for you.

And if you’ve ever looked slightly askance or never even heard of “spoken word poetry,” this poem is for you, too.

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I’ve never gone deeply into spoken word poetry, which puts much more emphasis on the performative, in-the-moment oral transmission of poetic works in a public setting rather than poems written to be read mostly by individual persons in a quiet encounter with the printed page.

Not that spoken word doesn’t have a place in the poetic world.

Nor would I say a certain amount of performative mojo isn’t a big plus in all poets’ arsenals if they are inclined toward the touch of showmanship it requires.

I wrote here last year about William Everson, probably the most powerful practitioner of poetry-as-stagecraft that I have ever come across. So I am not immune to its power and potential to spread poetry, long the poor stepchild of the literary arts, to a wider, generally more youthful public beyond the academic circles where poetry most abides.

But I am at heart and brain more a reader than listener, particularly to poetry, given the profusion of imagery it tends to pour forth and which my brain struggles mightily to process via listening without the benefit of reading along.

The annoyances of a stubbed toe and loose tooth, the mystery of the funny bone…what would the soul have been without them?

That is why I much prefer to be familiar with poets’ work and even the particular poems they might read in a public appearance, rather than go stone-cold to a reading in which I don’t know the work to be read nor even, for that matter, the poet him-her-their self.

I’m reminded of musical performances, where longtime fans might clap warmly and sing along with many songs but emit an ocean-like roar at the first note or two of a particular, dear-to-their-heart favorite.

The difference with music is that we almost always hear it sung by the artist before we see, if ever, the lyrics printed on a page.

The reverse is usually true with poetry, unless our consumption is limited to spoken word performances.

That explains the experience poetry readers sometimes have of finally hearing a poet live or via You Tube audio and responding, “Wait, that’s not how that poem sounds!” Turns out our own reading most always differs from the poet’s, locked into our nervous system with its own cadences, emphases and tonality that may be substantially different—and even superior—to the poet’s own.

Perhaps the poet is simply introverted—which is a good bet, in general—and thus reads in a monotone, lacking the kind of theatrical flair that makes their soaring lyricism on a page shine equally bright from a stage.

This is rarely a problem with music—nor its close cousin of spoken word poetry.

It’s even less of a problem with the spoken word poetry of Andrea Gibson, who pulls off the trick of authoring poems that soar right off the printed page, but which probably achieve an even more passionate, heart-splayed-out-for-all-to-see power on stage, where the poet probes and excavates deep emotion and ultimate reconciliation with the strange beauty of the world through its every toss and turn.

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Andrea Gibson, born in Maine, a Boulder, CO resident since 1999

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It seems almost ridiculous—half dark cosmic joke and the other half cosmic gift—that a poet with the ravenous appetite for life that Gibson tries to feed with their every word would be handed two grave illnesses back to back. First came chronic Lyme disease, diagnosed in 2012 but suffered from—and largely disbelieved about—for many years before.

Then came ovarian cancer in 2021, with dark prognoses that grew brighter for a while and darker again early last month with news of a recurrence. Turning 48 in a few weeks, Gibson, who identifies as non-binary they/ them/theirs (and also goes by Andrew, among other monikers), may live on a knife’s edge with respect to their diseases, but to listen and read their poetry pre-mortal illness is to know that both sides of that edge have always undergirded their work.

The poem featured here—“For the Days I Stop Wanting a Body”—preceded Gibson’s ovarian cancer diagnosis, having seen print in the 2018 volume, “Lord of the Butterflies.” But it was no doubt informed by the poet’s emotionally and physically exhausting battle with Lyme, along with a hard-won poetic inclination (made all the more urgent since their cancer diagnosis) to plunge into places of darkness, confusion and fear.

But rather than jump on a crowded bandwagon citing the body’s betrayal and clinging to the immortality of the soul, Gibson turns that conventional duality upside down with an image of the soul lost and grieving without the body that has served it so nobly (though not without its sufferings).

How has the body done this?

Gibson warms to the idea by the second line, and from there on we get a stirring collection of images from a body’s life.

Tiny odes to the simple preciousness of hands, the throat-closing terrors of reading aloud in a classroom, the annoyances of a stubbed toe and loose tooth, the mystery of the funny bone, which truly is “funny” in the sense of its surpassing strangeness, no matter how many times we whack it throughout life.

A lisp, a stutter, a limp, even the weightlessness of a falling eyelash—what would the soul have been without them? How could it not miss these minutiae of a life lived here, on terra firma, suffused in blood, heat, joy and grief, along with the wrinkles that form “the smile’s autograph.”

Sex, hunger, emptiness and rage are here too, along with fevers, wheelchairs and “legs creaking up the stairs.”

All of it noted, honored, even as the body departs and decays, the soul mourning its loss.

While it’s here, though, the body—Gibson’s body—commands: “Erase every scripture that doesn’t have a pulse.”

Is there a more urgent appeal anywhere to pay attention—the closest possible attention—to this mortal, actionable sphere, home to bodies of nearly every imaginable size and hue, consciousness and color, function and purpose, human bodies perhaps most mysterious and wide-ranging of all?

The poem text down below runs 79 lines, and requires 4 minutes and 9 seconds for Gibson to read. (Maybe less for you, though Gibson isn’t exactly poking along here…) So listen or read in either order, but if you’re pressed for time, go with one or the other and then give a listen to “Maga Hat in the Chemo Room” down below. It may blow whatever hat you decided to wear today right off the top of your head.

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Big thanks to poet Alison Jarvis, whose poem, “Sky, River” was discussed here, for alerting me to Andrea Gibson. 

Check out this blog’s public page on Facebook for occasional 1-minute snippets of wisdom and other musings from the world’s great thinkers and artists, accompanied by lovely photography.
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Deep appreciation to the photographers! Unless otherwise stated, some rights reserved under Creative Commons licensing.

Elizabeth Haslam, whose photos (except for the books) grace the rotating banner at top of page.
 https://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhaslam/

Library books photo by Larry Rose, all rights reserved, contact: larry@rosefoto.com

Poetic rose artwork by Eddi van W., Germany  https://www.flickr.com/photos/spiritual_marketplace/

Gibson portrait from the poet’s Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/AndreaGibsonPoetry