Succor from Tina
by Mark Chmiel
A year ago I had the pleasure of having Tina Moode in my Social Justice course at SLU. She’d just come back after being in Nicaragua for the summer. I soon found out she’s an exceptional writer, and I have often suggested that she share more of her writing with others. A few days back, she offered me the following succinct, dear encouragement when I was in a doubting mood about The Book of Mev.
Dear Dr. C,
Currently I am rereading the end of Soelle’s Against the Wind. She writes about a friend Erich Fried from whom she would like to “learn to see, hear, taste, and speak this wholly indestructible love for life,” as he did. Not too shabby a compliment.
The following is what she writes as her last engagement with him: “There was one more different encounter that made me very happy. Three months later he telephoned. ‘This is Erich Fried. I am calling from London, and I only wanted to tell you that you absolutely must go on writing poems.’ I had voiced my doubts about the genre of the political poem—about which many of us had learned most from Brecht. I wondered, whom do I reach, and what changes from knowing more? We talked awhile, about cancer—his small one, and the big one of the arms race, about Nicaragua, about what we need poems for.”
You are my Erich Fried. Allow me this chance to be your Erich Fried. You have read this book before, therefore have read this passage, thus comprehending what she writes here. Actually, you know this message like the back of your hand, as much as you dish it out to others. However, hearing it from someone else rarely hurts and sometimes is a good thing. The Book of Mev grabs, wrenches, and lets down gently like no other personal commitment I have made with a book, and I am serious. It is that good. You know this. Okay?
A friend re-re-re-re-reintroduced me to Bob Dylan, and hey, I like it! “When the Ship Comes In” plays as I write to you.
Keep writing.
Peace!
Tina
Dear Erica Fried,
Thank you for yr email in which you write such fortifying lines as
“The Book of Mev grabs, wrenches, and lets down gently like no other personal commitment I have made with a book, and I am serious. It is that good. You know this. Okay?”
I read your words, I let them sink through my thick skull. I am so addicted to echoes, hence, this quotation in said book, from Herr Franz Kafka (the recondite meaning of which is-I want a reader to find my book like Kafka hereby prescribes):
“If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skulls, then why do we read it? Good God, we also would be happy if we had no books and such books that make us happy we could, if need be, write ourselves. What we must have are those books that come on us like ill fortune, like the death of one we love better than ourselves, like suicide. A book must be an ice ax to break the sea frozen inside us.”
“Like the death of one we love better than ourselves.”
And for you, my dear, when it comes to Dylan songs, there are several, but, for now, I will stick to “Brownsville Girl”: “Strange how people who suffer together have stronger connections than people who are most content. I don’t have any regrets, they can talk about me plenty when I’m gone.”
Your admirer,
Eric Fried, aka Mark Chmiel