Proof of Life
NarrativeRx Virtual Workshop, Saturday July 18, 2020
When teaching close reading, I often tell students that the questions are more important than the answers: why did the poet choose this word and not another? Why are certain words used more than once, and how do their meanings change? What does punctuation (or lack thereof) reveal about the speaker’s lived experience of time?
Often we find that, the better we get at asking questions, the further we get from any singular answers. Great artwork is always big enough to contain multiple (and even conflicting) interpretations, so when it comes to close reading, commitment to accuracy is always less useful than commitment to curiosity.
Behind all these interesting questions about diction, syntax, and tone lurk even deeper, more meaningful questions, like “What does it mean to be alive?” Perhaps all poetry is a response to this single query, though I can think of no poet who responds with more wry wit and subtle grace than Tony Hoagland.
In this weekend’s Narrative Medicine workshop, we studied Hoagland’s “Proof of Life,” a poem from the collection Priest Turned Therapist Treats Fear of God written during his last months with a terminal illness. (Tony always had a way with titles: What Narcissism Means to Me, Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty, Application for Release from the Dream, etc. He’s fantastic.)
You might think a deathbed book of poems is bound to be a melancholy read, but Hoagland never fails to find the humor in the human. You can’t help but smile as he conducts a poetic autopsy of a Fox News fan, or as he finds his fortune in the warm breast of the dental hygienist when she leans too close to his cheek. I used to think that everything true is also a little sad, but Hoagland taught me that everything true is also a little funny.
Like many of his poems, “Proof of Life” functions like a list, each couplet illustrating something that proves he is still alive: the cuts on his hands from working outside, the “maddening peculiar purgatory” of getting Bob Seger’s “Against The Wind” stuck in his head, the sound of the clothes dryer spinning incessantly down the hall.
Midway through the poem, however, workshop participants noticed that Hoagland’s examples turn from daily life to past desires and vague regrets. Students honed in on one couplet in particular: “Leaving people, and being left by them. / This catch-and-release version of life.” Some felt these lines were liberating: like a fish released without harm, they considered “catch and release” relationships to signify mutual respect and healthy un-attachment. Others detected a tone of regret at “leaving people” and resentment at “being left by them,” as if something important was left unfinished.
Presence became another conundrum as we probed further. While some saw the speaker attempting greater presence (noticing the marks on his hands and the rhythms of his mind), others pointed out that these trivial examples of life also gave the speaker a certain distance from more painful examples — a pain that seeps through toward the poem’s end with images of a grimacing hostage and a bird with red chest feathers. Rather than deciding between the two interpretations, we wondered if absolute presence requires a certain amount of repression, and if pain management requires a delicate balance between the two.
Despite our differences, we could all agree that “Proof of Life” is a deeply embodied poem. From the speaker’s hands in the first line to the bird’s red chest feathers in the last, proof of life begins and ends in the body — in its skin, senses, memories, and desires. The last line, “Something he has eaten has made his chest feathers red,” suggests that life accumulates in the body, all our experiences “a full and natural becoming” (to borrow a student’s phrase) visible even in our self-conscious attempts to remain, like the bird, “half-hidden in the shrub outside.”
Inspired by Hoagland’s poem, we responded to the prompt “What proves you are alive?” One student wrote in the shadow of Hoagland, examining his own hands and their importance to him as a manual therapist. Another student wrote in defiance of Hoagland’s passive, fragmented examples, using full sentences and active verbs to show us a vibrant world where ocean and earth retain their own joyful mysteries. I think Hoagland would have been impressed.
We finished our class with a meditation on all the undefinable moments that make up a life, brought to us Tony Hoagland himself in the very last lines of the very last poem he graced us with:
Now you sit on the brick wall in the cloudy afternoon and swing your legs,
happy because there never has been a word for this,
as you continue moving through these days and years
where more and more the message is
not to measure anything.
If you participated in the workshop, please feel free to share your reflective writing in the comments below! (Remember this is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.) If you didn’t participate in the workshop, but you enjoyed “Proof of Life” and you’d like to reply to the writing prompt, we welcome your writing in the comments as well! Just set a timer for 5 minutes of free writing and post your exercise below without editing. We’d love to see where this poem took you!
If you enjoyed this class and you’re ready for more, please join us for an 8-week Narrative Medicine Program designed for healthcare professionals starting on Monday August 3rd 2020. Unlike this live ZOOM call, our program takes place asynchronously, so you can complete assignments at your own pace with weekly “due dates” and discussion boards that keep our classroom collaborative and co-creative.
Each week, we’ll be studying one artwork with corresponding philosophy, discussion, and reflective writing activities that will refine your ability to listen and engage with stories in a clinical setting. Find out more at NarrativeRx.com, and join our Facebook Group for an invitation to our next ZOOM workshop!
Proof of Life
Those small cuts and infections on my hands
from splinters and thorns
that show I have been working out of doors this week.
The maddening peculiar purgatory
of Bob Seeger and the Silver Bullet Band
playing “Against the Wind”
continuously for three days inside my head
until on the fourth day it finally stops.
The sound of clothes going around in the dryer
at the other end of the house.
Wanting from a very young age
not to be a zombie sleepwalking through time.
Leaving people, and being left by them.
This catch-and-release version of life.
The kidnappers send out a photograph of the
hostage, grimacing,
holding up a newspaper from yesterday.
They call this “proof of life.”
It means the captive is still alive.
The day is blue with one high white cloud
like a pilgrim going to Canterbury.
There is a bird half-hidden in the shrub outside.
Something he has eaten has made his
chest feathers red.
—Tony Hoagland
