Review: 'Self-Portrait' by Edward Hirsch

 by Daisy Watson-Rumbold

(image by Isi Parente)

I lived between my heart and my head,

like a married couple who can’t get along.

 

I lived between my left arm, which is swift

and sinister, and my right, which is righteous.

 

I lived between a laugh and a scowl,

and voted against myself, a two-party system.

 

My left leg dawdled or danced along,

my right cleaved to the straight and narrow.

 

My left shoulder was like a stripper on vacation,

my right stood upright as a Roman soldier.

 

Let’s just say that my left side was the organ

donor and leave my private parts alone,

 

but as for my eyes, which are two shades

of brown, well, Dionysus, meet Apollo.

 

Look at Eve raising her left eyebrow

while Adam puts his right foot down.

 

No one expected it to survive,

but divorce seemed out of the question.

 

I suppose my left hand and my right hand

will be clasped over my chest in the coffin

 

and I’ll be reconciled at last,

I’ll be whole again.

— Edward Hirsch

It is not rare for humans to mistake their own identities. We search for innumerable means of comfort - an agenda, a relationship, an external source of validation. It’s so often we do this that we fail ourselves. We fall into the trap of speaking, never listening, of thinking without analysing and taking without ever even considering what could be given. 

Edward Hirsch’s poem presents exactly that, a mistaken identity caught in a conflict of the self. It’s never going to be easy to identify a coherent sense of self; it’s valuing art without appreciating the beauty of it. However, somewhere within everyone, there is an inner longing to find something in everything, a resolution to the conflict we suffer through. 

There’s no sympathy for this. It’s our own doing; we’ve labelled, divided and conquered. So much so that the world is on its knees with us. A liberal agenda must contradict that of a conservative one, a science must contradict a humanity, and success from another is a threat to ourselves. I wonder when we started considering the air at the top to be the best to breathe - so that we no longer aim to pop our head out of the parapet, but that we use those below us as a stairwell upwards and onwards. 

I think we spend so much hating on ourselves, pushing ourselves to do better, speak better, know more, say more, feel more, think more, that we forget that our intrinsic abilities lie in all of those things. Maybe it’s capitalism, maybe it’s productivity that has arisen as a result of capitalism, or maybe it’s simply self-destruction—distracting ourselves from our own intuition by utilising the weight of the cultures we created. 

A culture of safety or aliveness, a distinction of like or dislike, linearity that seeps toxicity into the world at such a pace that we never stop to listen. The news reports for thirty seconds at a time, politicians represent a lie, and we scroll, and scroll, and scroll, until we hit a wall. 

One day, we may acknowledge the inner collection of sub-personalities we have, pulling us in every direction possible. Naturally formed and nurture-induced, we are not linear beings. The world often trims your edges, your sails and your wings if you let it; it makes you believe you must achieve a singular, successful objective when all you really need to be doing is turning down the volume of the excessively loud world and listening to yourself.

Your heart and head will bicker like an old married couple, your left and right arm will pull in sinister and righteous directions, you will never be able to choose between a laugh and a scowl or a dawdle or a dance. But you can vote for yourself, embrace the stripper and soldier, converse with both Apollo’s logical nature and Dionysus’ chaotic instincts. 

No one ever expects to survive because we don’t, nor will we ever be whole or reconciled. Although, we can always endeavour to find something in everything, in each other, in ourselves, in all directions.