Alice S. Shapiro, "I"

Hi all --

I was digging through my old notebooks and found a poem from 2009 by the Poet Laureate of Douglasville, Georgia: Alice S. Shapiro. It is a beautiful poem with a lot of depth. As I worked through it, I found myself wondering about the moments we believe build our identity. I think Shapiro has put together something that might operate as a blueprint for identifying and using those moments. I should note that the last interview I could find with Ms. Shapiro is here, from 2015.

In "I," Shapiro confronts the mystery of time, but some will say there is no mystery. After all, clocks keep ticking; every minute we discuss poetry, we fail to make money or advance a cause; we must die (unless we are a tech overlord). Time, on this reckoning, is a resource that must be used or else. I can't say I am entirely disconnected from this logic. You're reading a blog with the title "Encouragement," as I'd like to push myself to do more sooner. (And I wouldn't mind if, say, others felt a pressing need to advocate for the vulnerable.)

However, the more you probe time philosophically, the more mysterious it is. To elaborate on one problem, we do not count every moment as foundational to our experience. Not every second we live makes us who we are, which is a strange thing to say when we 1) must have an identity and 2) that identity persists through time. If words are to fully make sense, if there is such a thing as Truth with a capital T, then it would help if our subjective notions of time fit exactly into how our identity is defined and this, in turn, be recognized by an authority not entirely dependent on the whims of others. We would love that authority to have no less than scientific certainty, though it depends on an order which is some combination of what we make and what stands as given.

I know. That sounds convoluted. We can also approach the problem by meditating on Shapiro's powerful first line, "I am the sum of all my parts." This is true, but how? How do the parts we disown still constitute us? What about the parts which take over and fragment us? "I am the sum of all my parts" speaks to a confidence not all of us have had at a given moment, even though it must be true on the most basic level. I certainly would not have said anything like this when I was particularly anxious or worried about failure.

"I am the sum of all my parts" leads to the notion that time, somehow, dissolves in us. Before we engage the lines which detail this, we should read the poem as a whole:

I
Alice S. Shapiro
  
I am the sum of all my parts.
They blow back like dominoes
one after another falling into place
converging time’s bits and pieces
meeting in one breath.
In this way time disappears.
The past is now
the past is how now looks —
not spread out in year-by-year increments
but at once, cannon’s blast on target.
This pieced puzzle, no longer missing
like a great deluge of rain and waves
no more guessing
as I watch the parts lock on the spot
compressed, colliding
like a shuttle docking on the moon.
These/this moment bursts open
as does the bloom.

Shapiro's poem unfolds in four distinct sections. The thesis, "I am the sum of all my parts," is first explored through parts "falling into place," creating a convergence. Then, the poem illustrates how we encounter the present through the past. The third part focuses on the convergence itself. A "pieced puzzle" entails "no more guessing," and this leads to the finale, a "moment" bursting open "as does the bloom."

The many things which constitute us "blow back like dominoes / one after another / falling into place / converging time’s bits and pieces / meeting in one breath." How do dominoes fall into place? On the one hand, I think about people setting up elaborate chains of them in order to put on a miniature show. One need not build those chains as perfectly as the video below; just having lots of things fall can create a spectacle:

On the other, playing dominoes as intended–guessing who has what tile and strategically getting them to do what you need–can also be thought a form of "falling into place." Does a higher order underlie both ideas about dominoes?

I don't know. I feel like asserting "I" leads to the following logic. "I" must be able to confront "everything else;" that confrontation can implicitly anthropomorphize the entire world. You end up treating everything else like it has reasons and purpose beyond you, and that might miss that there are many varied and conflicting actors with no concern for your "I" at all. That logic can generate the higher order perhaps underlying dominoes. However, that logic might also be inevitable to a degree. It can serve as a basis for a deep moral appreciation of everything that is. Witness Buber and "I-Thou" relations.

In Shapiro's poem, the dominoes are falling into place and "converging time’s bits and pieces / meeting in one breath." Whatever the source, our "I" receives unity. Various parts meet "in one breath." What's especially interesting to me is the merger of "time's bits and pieces:" all the different types of fragments of our being are inseparable from time but still need to be put together. We're witnessing a quiet miracle, but what is it exactly? The poem proclaims "[i]n this way time disappears:" I can't help but believe that an incredible confidence must accompany understanding the formation of oneself.

We turn to Shapiro's second section to better examine that confidence, to see how time has transformed. A more typical notion of time treats the present as a locality, a past and future relative to what we want to accomplish. A more distant past and more distant future, for us, stand as "the past" and "the future." I don't know that we really grasp how illusory the present is, how it is continually slipping from us. Years ago I read Heidegger's lecture "The Concept of Time," and I think that relevant to Shapiro's words below. What I took from it was that the past is pretty much the present and the future. We're mining and changing it in different ways, and it helps to be very careful with the rhetoric of claiming complete independence from one's past. The relevant lines from the poem:

The past is now
the past is how now looks —
not spread out in year-by-year increments
but at once, cannon’s blast on target.

What I think Shapiro is giving us is the landscape of acceptance. "[T]he past is how now looks – / not spread out in year-by-year increments." I know I lay things out chronologically so I can disown parts of myself (right now, I pretty much pretend anything before 35 didn't happen). But the acceptance here, the confidence, has an aspect of overwhelm: "cannon's blast on target." It isn't a mere matter of convenience, like my denying I did anything wrong. It is rather the courage that you are going to face up to each moment you lived and chose and accept consequences and responsibility. Martial courage may only hint at what is involved.

I feel energized thinking through this poem, but I must confess there may be a moral ideal here I can only hope to achieve.

Perhaps the trickiest aspect of engaging any moral rhetoric, no matter how contemplative or thoughtful, is that it must promise something. Eudaimonia, the kingdom of heaven, superior rationality, the spread of goodness, integrity in one's own choices, etc. Shapiro's "I" is in dialogue with Heideggerian ideas about time inasmuch as it pushes me to think about the moments we believe we are witnessing ourselves being built. But what are we being offered? The third section implies it is wholeness and success. A puzzle that is "pieced," with "no more guessing." A flood that contains everything and has, somehow, been harnessed: "a great deluge of rain and waves."

Wholeness translates to a particular success, the ability to see how oneself fits together: "I watch the parts lock on the spot / compressed, colliding /
like a shuttle docking on the moon." This is funny, because people who achieve great things often do not know what exactly they have achieved. Plato was most acerbic and most thoughtful in that critique, one wielded against some of the greatest poets who ever lived. The knowledge which enables us to do things well is not self-knowledge. In a way, Plato was accusing someone like Sophocles of not understanding his own Oedipus.

I think in Shapiro's rendering that this is convincing. I don't know if one needs, in the formation of their "I," to lead the team that brings about moon colonization. I do know that some of the things we quietly work at in everyday life require incredible knowledge, courage, and vulnerability. Think about someone actively fighting addiction. The parts for someone in recovery might be locking "on the spot," "compressed, colliding," and transcending what was. The miracle for one making a bit of progress is that you can see, at least briefly, all the elements at work in yourself. A lot of people with record achievements wish for that level of self-knowledge.

"I" ends skillfully. Time dissolved into us, a vision was had, and now it emerges renewed: "These/this moment bursts open / as does the bloom." It's not that time went away, but it has changed. "Bloom" is earned, as hints of an organism, e.g. "breath" and "water," have resolved. What we're left with is one answer to an ancient puzzle. Can you grow if you have no idea what growth is? And the answer on a practical level is, weirdly enough, that a consideration of the metaphysics of time stands to benefit you. You want to know how you've grown, you want to be able to account for all the bits and pieces that are you. You want to confidently assert "I am the sum of all my parts." Shapiro's poem illustrates the beauty and power of a particular kind of self-reflection, one unafraid to ask where our time has been invested.