A Dead Poet’s Advice

A Dead Poet’s Advice

By

Leonard Zwelling

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/20/opinion/andrea-gibson-poetry.html

I don’t usually read poetry any longer. I did once when I was younger. Usually, I read verse when it was assigned to me in English class. I have tried to reconnect to verse several times since when I have read about a particularly highly regarded poet or heard about someone talented on NPR. It never works. I just don’t seem to be able to get in sync with poetry unless it is set to music—usually with a beat.

Thus, it is strange that I find myself writing about Andrea Gibson, a non-binary poet who recently died of cancer and whose work and life were lauded by actress Amber Tamblyn in The New York Times on July 21. It was this quote attributed to the poet that caught my eye. The “they” in the quote from the article is used because that was Ms. Gibson’s chosen pronoun.

“I picked my head up and I loved the world that I knew wouldn’t always be mine.” They went on, “I think many of us are doing it almost all the time; we are not allowing ourselves joy or love or peace because we are afraid to lose it. Don’t be so afraid of losing life that you forget to live it.”

I wholly agree with that sentiment.

Almost every day I find myself concentrating on some menial task that seems important at the time. It may even be important, like paying bills. It’s important, but not urgent and surely not an emergency. Yet, I can get that pit in my stomach feeling like I did before any meeting with Dr. Mendelsohn or while awaiting the results of my latest PSA blood test. My work and my latest test results seemed like my life was on the line. How many hours of anxiety have I made myself endure as a willful substitute for the joy of living? Too many.

I have not yet come to terms with my inevitable demise. Perhaps that is because I am still well enough to do things that I associated with fun while I was working. As I have written recently, I wonder about the results of my working life and my relationships life. But in those past lives I was doing other things, other things that John Lennon might have suggested were interfering with my life that was actually happening. Now, a lot of those things I did then without thinking, I try to do mindfully.

I always insert my hearing aids before dinner. I owe my wife that much to make sure I hear every word of every story she tells me.

At least once during every round of golf, I stop on the green while someone else is putting and look to the sky just to remind myself where I am.  Outside. On the grass. In the sun.

Even eating has become an exercise in active meditation. I try to think about what I am eating like I try to think about what I am doing and diminish automatic, mindless actions.

For someone like me these are all hard things. I was always action-oriented, even as a kid. It was only very much later as an adult that I came across the concept of “flow” and being truly in the moment of what I was doing.

Here’s a good definition of “flow” from Wikipedia:

Flow in positive psychology, also known colloquially as being in the zone or locked in, is the mental state in which a person performing some activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow is characterized by the complete absorption in what one does, and a resulting transformation in one’s sense of time.^[1] Flow is the melting together of action and consciousness; the state of finding a balance between a skill and how challenging that task is. It requires a high level of concentration. Flow is used as a coping skill for stress and anxiety when productively pursuing a form of leisure that matches one’s skill set.^[2]

First presented in the 1975 book Beyond Boredom and Anxiety by the Hungarian-American psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi,^[

Flow is really fun and fun, as my former therapist Michael Klaybor taught me, is pleasure, engagement, and meaning.

So, the sermon for today, stimulated by an actor’s tribute to a non-binary poet who died way to soon is, yes, as Olympia Dukakis said in Moonstruck, “Cosmo, you’re gonna die just like everybody else.” But while you’re here, don’t let that fact interfere with your living.

I’m not sure if this will get me to read Andrea Gibson’s poetry, but I will sure try to heed her advice.