Three Poems by Jennifer Michael Hecht

Love Is the Only Way to Be Found

I know what I’m
running from but
not what I’m after.

Lost first is the only
way to be found,
it is still a disaster.

*

Metaphors As Chains

Metaphors and similes
control our thoughts
like a baker shaping
dough into loaves.
They can’t be avoided,
language is metaphor,
so I make sure no single
one is eating my prose
like rust. Mixed metaphors
are the only ones I trust.

*

Against the Memory

I was holding my baby when on television
the water started rushing in. Everyone else
was moving us out, everything in boxes
and on its way to the truck except for
the couch I was holding my baby on
and the television we were watching
and I didn’t understand what I was seeing.
I tried to tell the people who were helping
us move, there’s been a wave, but I
almost didn’t believe what I was seeing.
They didn’t understand. I went back
to watching. I stayed on that couch
forever, long after the move was over,
even now, even today. Me holding the baby
watching people not able to hold on
to anything, even each other, torn away
despite all conceivable intention, it made
a radical impression. The baby is twenty
now, we’ve moved twice since then,
sixteen years in one place and I miss it.
Sometimes you think or dream, the water
rising, the enormous wave, darkness
made visible and then the jolt slam
of it taking you. What’s the strategy?
How do we defend against the memory?
Always, at first, the ocean pulling back far,
leaving fish flopping and crabs scurrying,
always those moments of quiet, time
to run; and then the monster comes.

*

Jennifer Michael Hecht is a poet, historian, and commentator. Her most recent book is The Wonder Paradox: Awe, Poetry, and the Meaningful Life (2023) a guide to using poetry to find meaning, invoke awe, and rest in some clarity of mind. She is the author of the bestseller Doubt: A History, a history of religious and philosophical doubt all over the world, throughout history. In Stay: A History of Suicide and the Arguments Against It (Yale University Press, 2013) she scrutinizes the moral status of suicide. Her book The Happiness Myth (HarperOne, 2007), brings a historical eye to modern wisdom about how to lead a good life. Hecht’s The End of the Soul: Scientific Modernity, Atheism, and Anthropology won Phi Beta Kappa’s 2004 Ralph Waldo Emerson Award “For scholarly studies that contribute significantly to interpretations of the intellectual and cultural condition of humanity.” Her books have been translated into many languages.

Publisher’s Weekly called her poetry book, Funny, “One of the most original and entertaining books of the year.” Her first book of poetry, The Next Ancient World, won three national awards, including the Poetry Society of America’s First Book award for 2001. Her most recent poetry book is Who Said (Copper Canyon, 2013). Hecht has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Politico, Vox, Poetry, and The New Yorker. She holds a Ph.D. in the history of science/European cultural history from Columbia University (1995) and has taught in the MFA program at Columbia University and the New School in New York City.

Hecht has also published in peer-reviewed journals, including: The Journal of the History of Ideas, Isis: Journal of the History of Science Society, French Historical Studies, The Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, and has delivered lectures at Harvard, Yale, MIT, Cal Tech, Columbia University as well as The Zen Mountain Monastery, Temple Israel, Saint Bart’s Episcopal Church, and other institutions of learning and introspection. Hecht has been featured on many radio programs, including On Being with Krista Tippett, Leonard Lopate Show, the BBC, Speaking of Faith, Talk of the Nation, and Brian Lehrer. She has appeared on Hardball on MSNBC, the Discovery Channel, and The Morning Show. She lectures widely.