There is something about Sarah Sarai’s newest poetry collection Bright-Eyed that reveals that what we see as normal, family, travel, being alive in this world, has a spiritual and even mystical significance. It is also true that the best poets often allow us to understand what should be obvious, but we miss. Sarai shows us the importance of the moment in a number of ways. What struck me most is the poems that dealt with the importance of her family. She writes about those moments with nieces, nephews, brothers, sisters, and her mother as powerfully emotional, and I contrasted them with the bad romantic relationships she describes. She also describes the relationships that work, same sex relationships based on mutual respect and tenderness. This idea of love and tenderness works throughout the collection.
Sarai is able to delve into the everyday meaning of existence, highlighting that it matters that we are not only alive but awake to the moment and ourselves. In ‘Hummingbird Feeder’ she writes:
The self? Destroy it.
Step outside.
Top off the hummingbird feeder.
Less time to be terrible.
Less time to judge.
Them, us, yourself (36).
The present moment matters, she tells us. Living in that moment kills the kind of rumination that can destroy a person, and it is the focus on the ego rather than the moment that tends to create moments of pain. Even a little chore can break that cycle. Being aware of any moment can do that, especially sex when done with respect and tenderness.
Sex with women, floral
in the night and leathery.
The moral here:
Our bodies are soft foothills
in spring. The sun sends
its warmth to grass greening
on soft foothills in spring (23).
She is giving us directions for joy, and I do not think that she would tell us that it’s important to have only same-sex relationships, only that we should act in a certain way and be aware of our own moments. When we make those connections that matter, being awake to the moment and not stuck in our minds helps us to feel their significance.
As important or possibly more important are the connections that we make with family. These moments are seen throughout the collection, and to me are the most important parts of the collection. She comes back again and again to her niece and nephew as in “O You of the Cotton Pajamas.” The title itself with the more classic use of “O” as opposed to “Oh” brings us to a sense of her relationship as being timeless. The celebration of that relationship feels mythic to me.
O you of the cotton pajamas
and frayed bits of life
in your hair every AM!
O niece and nephew,
digging black plastic
picks from Thrifty’s
in your do’s.
A meteor caromed into
my nephew’s sleep.
. . .
I settled us one in each bed to
thrash out theology,
creator’s peculiar affections
for us all (7)
There is the sense of something being more than just profoundly right about this relationship but actually created in rhythm with the gods. It is not just that they are in the right place in their world, but in line with the meteors in outer space and with whatever creator there is. Her nephew might have bought his hair pick at Thrifty’s (a discount pharmacy chain in the United States), but that doesn’t mean he is not extraordinary. What she is showing us is the way that we should regard other people in our lives, especially those that are related to us. It is easy to understand these relationships as commonplace, but they are not. Through her eyes, we see them for what they are. This sense is strengthened by the fact that they are of a mixed-race family. The family represents both what the United States is and what it should be.
Bright-Eyed represents a departure and growth in Sarai’s work. She is reminding me of the way that I should be aware of the world, what I should see and how I should see it. This is not to suggest that she is being preachy or pedantic in any way. She is just opening a new view of the universe and I am fortunate enough to see it.
John Brantingham 26th May 2024
Tears in the Fence 