Poems to Live By

By Robert DiYanni, New York University

Preface
I came late to writing poetry. I began composing poems in earnest about six months into the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. I wrote a few poems inspired by and referencing the pandemic, but my initial inspiration was three villanelles I have always admired: Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art,” Theodore Roethke’s “The Waking,” and Wendy Cope’s “Ted Williams Villanelle.”

One morning in the pre-dawn dark, lines from these poems began echoing in my mind: Bishop’s “The art of losing isn’t hard to master,” Roethke’s “I learn by going where I have to go,” and Cope’s “Don’t let anybody mess with your swing.” These lines would not let me go until I began writing villanelles of my own inspired by these artful examples of the form. And once I started, I felt impelled to continue. I found the rhymes and repeating lines of the villanelle form congenial. I have written close to a hundred villanelles now.

Although a few of these follow the form carefully and strictly, I take small liberties in most of them, primarily by omitting the rhyme on the second line of each of the poem’s three-line stanzas. So most of my villanelle-inspired poems included in this volume are what I call “near-villanelles.”

About two dozen of these were written in response to a request by then New York University Provost, Katy Fleming, for a weekly zoom meeting she held for staff during the pandemic. The first of those meetings, “The Art of the Mustache,” I wrote as a substitute for wearing a funny mustache to the meeting. I have included this poem in the book’s first part rather than with the others inspired by the Provost, which are gathered in Part V: Poems for Provost Meetings.

While writing my villanelles, I occasionally needed more room than the form’s 19 lines provide, and so I wrote some villanelle-like poems with an extra stanza or two. Occasionally I needed to write even longer poems, some of which retained the villanelle’s three-line stanzas, but which went on considerably beyond the form’s five-tercets, poems that only occasionally ended the way villanelles do—with a quatrain that brings together the first and third rhyming lines as a concluding couplet.

Although I continued to add to my villanelle collection, I began writing poems in other forms as well, initially about books and writers, sometimes imitating the writer’s styles and poetic structures, sometimes incorporating their subjects and thematic preoccupations. I also began writing double-dactyl poems, which I learned about in college, and which follow a set of formal rules, beginning with the words “higgledy-piggledy,” and include a person’s name in the same double-dactyl meter: an accented syllable followed by two unstressed syllables—for example, EM i ly DICK in son and PAM e la AND er son. As with the villanelles I wrote, my double-dactyl poems often approximate but don’t adhere strictly to the rules for this playful form.

And so, you will find here villanelles and near-villanelles, double-dactyl poems and their close approximations, along with others that conspire with these forms and still others that don’t. You will encounter serious poems and humorous ones, brief snapshots and longer considerations. What’s absent are familiar forms, such as the sonnet, for example, as well as the ballad and the haiku.

I have grouped the poems in part by their forms and in part by their subjects or topics. I had fun writing them, and I hope you enjoy reading them.

Contents
Part I “The Art of”… Poems
Part II Poems About Teaching and Learning
Part III Poems About Reading and Writing
Part IV Poems About Writers and Books
Part V Poems for Provost Meetings
Part VI Pandemic Poems
Part VII Poems About Music and People
Part VIII Family Remembrance Poems
Part IX Poems Celebrating Businesses and Services
Part X Double Dactyl Poems
Part XI Miscellaneous Poems
Part I “The Art of” Poems
1. The Art of Going
“I learn by going where I have to go,”
writes Theodore Roethke in “The Waking.”
“The art of losing isn’t hard to master,”

avers Liz Bishop’s speaker in “One Art.”
These lessons in living we aim to master
as we try to learn where we need to go—

and whether we can measure up to
the wisdom reflected in these words.
(If, indeed, losing is an art to master.)

How can we know what we need to do,
and if we can master what needs mastering?
We learn by going where we need to go.

“Don’t let anybody mess with your swing,”
Wendy Cope writes in her “Ted Williams Villanelle.”
The key to the art of hitting—from a master.

Don’t let anybody mess with your swing.
Learn by going where you have to go.
Learn by doing what you have to do—
and hope losing is an art you can master.

2. The Art of Doing
We learn by doing what we have to do.
This much we know with solid certainty—
And that the art of losing isn’t hard to master.

We mustn’t let anybody mess with our swing,
but do our work our way—that’s the thing.
We learn by doing what we need to do.

Just make a plan and do your thing—and keep
on trying, however hard to learn
the art of losing. Become a master.

Roethke wakes us to the blessings nature brings.
Bishop grasps the losing art as master.
Cope knows we learn by doing what we do.

The trick? Know where to look, how to find
teachers and mentors skilled in the knowledge
that losing need not be a disaster.

Learn by going where you have to go,
And don’t let anyone mess with your swing.
Learn by doing what you need to do and
believe that losing is an art to master.

3. The Art of Loving
The art of loving we should learn always.
Love’s old sweet song in reciprocity.
We learn by loving what real love conveys.

We learn by loving to embrace each
other’s distinctive personality.
The art of loving we must learn all ways.

How to grow through love—we’ll find a way.
By chance and luck and special gift of grace
we’ll learn the varied roles that true love plays.

We learn by going where we need to go
to find the way to love’s deep mystery—
through loving others in many ways.

Not loving is no option for those who care.
Lives bereft of love are hollow, barren, bare.
We glimpse the facets that love surveys

in those who respond to its demands.
The love we give returns a hundredfold.
The art of loving we should seek always.
We learn by loving what real love conveys.

4. The Art of Hating
The art of hating is a terrible delight.
Hating stirs the passions—kerosene on a fire.
Hating turns bright day to endless night.

Those we hate, we hate for reasons dire.
Those who hate us conceal their reasons why.
The art of hating is a terrible delight.

The pleasure of hating eats into the heart.
Those we hate we cannot flout outright.
Hating turns bright day to endless night.

Hatred destroys those who hate far more
than the loathéd object of irate rage.
The art of hating is a terrible delight.

Hatred devours the haters, destroys their souls,
begets in them unending misery.
Hatred turns bright day to endless night.

Those whom we hate we likely once have loved.
Through hate our spite augments their hold on us.
The art of hating is a terrible delight.
Hatred turns bright day to endless night.

5. The Art of Failing
The art of failing isn’t hard to master.
Just draft your project with the aim to fail.
Then fail better and fail faster. Skirt disaster.

Success is fine, but no match for failing well.
Fail better, fail faster, and be smart.
The art of failing isn’t hard to master.

So Samuel Beckett says about his art.
Perfection eludes us at every turn.
So fail better and smarter to forestall disaster.

You won’t get anything right from the start.
Don’t try. Forgive yourself; make a mess.
Avoid duress. Fail smarter to prevent disaster.

Failure, not success, is what you’re after.
That’s where the surprises lurk—the discoveries.
The art of failing isn’t hard to master.

Court failure. Don’t fear its painful pleasure.
Follow missteps—embrace them, take their measure.
The art of failing you can learn to master.
Fail better, smarter, faster. Avert disaster.

6. The Art of Thinking
The art of thinking isn’t easy to master.
To think well is hard and takes humility.
Thinking is a skill we all should master.

Many claim they know how to think; they need
not study fallacies. Not for them this work,
yet the art of thinking is no easy matter.

Some are confident that they know everything
and needn’t bother with thinking strategies.
Yet thinking is a skill they’ve yet to master.

Others suppose they are profound thinkers,
yet care not a whit for arduous thought.
The art of thinking is not so easy to master.

The worst are the presumptive arrogant
who think all people dolts except themselves.
Thinking is a skill they’ll never master.

Think critically and creatively,
fast and slow, into and out of the box.
The art of thinking is pretty hard to master.
Thinking well helps forestall disaster.

7. The Art of Lying
The art of lying isn’t hard to master.
That’s the problem; everybody does it.
Lying breaches trust and leads to disaster.

To lie is easy; to speak truth much harder.
We lie to save face, avoid admitting guilt.
The art of lying isn’t hard to master.

True ease in lying comes from art, not chance.
As those move easiest who have learned to dance.
Lying, though, breaches trust and courts disaster.

The web abets lies with anonymity.
Liars spread falsehoods there all too easily.
The art of lying is easy to master.

Trolls and bots abound with fakes and frauds—
False news, lies about Jews and other hated groups.
Lying razes trust and faith, breeds disaster.

Can we separate the false from the true?
Can we catch the liar in the lie?
Liars breach trust, sow discord, incite disaster.
The art of lying is far too easy to master.