Poetry, Onions, and Me
I entered the world of social media in January 2022 via Instagram (IG). A little late to the party, but I’m there now.
I put great consideration into what I post for images, captions, quotations. I want my IG feed to be an expression of me and my editing brand: Professional. Candid. Sometimes a little unexpected.
Take, for example, my Valentine’s Day post. I wanted to share a sexy, provocative poem, but I wanted to avoid cliché and include an unexpected twist. I chose Lorna Crozier’s poem “Onions” from her collection The Sex Lives of Vegetables.
Onions
by Lorna Crozier
The onion loves the onion.
It hugs its many layers,
saying O, O, O,
each vowel smaller
than the last.
Some say it has no heart.
It doesn’t need one.
It surrounds itself,
feels whole. Primordial.
First among vegetables.
If Eve had bitten it
instead of the apple
how different
Paradise.
Is there anything sexier than feeling whole? Of feeling earthy in the most primordial of ways?
Fast forward. April: National Poetry Month. How to choose a quotation to post? Whose poetry? Which lines? Why? What will my choice say about me?
My favourite poem is bookmarked in Safari on my iPhone: “Indigo” by Ellen Bass, first published in The New Yorker, October 9, 2017. Perfect, I thought. I’ll just pull lines from that. But, after rereading “Indigo,” I was reminded why it lives on my phone, in the palm of my hand, accessible anytime I want, day or night. A poem so private, I could never post lines from it in such a public space.
So instead, I chose a stanza from “Reading Neruda’s ‘Ode to the Onion’” also by Ellen Bass.
Hmmm. Onions again. Okay. Maybe onions are my thing.
Maybe.
But after reading the Ellen Bass onion poem multiple times, as well as Neruda’s original ode, I can tell you, these poems are not about onions. They are about the revelation that comes from meditating on the deepest essence of something. Anything. Could be an onion. Revelation: Be present. Be in the moment. Focus on the “onion-ness” of the onion. Nothing else.
The quotation I chose to post is the concluding stanza of Bass’s poem. In these lines, the speaker moves away from the onion and toward the revelation.
Ellen Bass uses the onion to leap to a larger realm, to a space where her poetry joins Pablo Neruda. In this moment.
Lorna Crozier uses the onion to talk about love, about how feeling whole in and of ourselves is sexy. Provocative.
Onions. Okay. Yes. Maybe they are my thing. O. O. O. Yes.