"The journey with you into pain is what I long for"*

For some time now, I have been working on a longish poem, in the form of Letters to Antigone from her sister Ismene. Frankly, it's not going well. This has led me to wonder, yet again, if great topics -- ones with complex emotions, deep backstory, and over-the-top drama -- can often be a liability. Somehow, it's easier to write a really good poem about, say, a paper clip, or eating a sandwich on the Midway. Maybe it's because focusing on the ordinary forces us to root out the details, whereas great topics can mire us in abstractions.

I had a colleague who was doing her dissertation on memory and public history in India. Her field site was a village displaced by one of the country's infamous dam projects. For most of the year, the buildings and landmarks of the village were completely underwater; for a short time each year, the water would recede, and the buildings and roads would reappear. "Wow," I remember saying; "what a great topic!" "Yes," she said, "and therein lies the problem."

*Ismene, to Antigone