Thursday Poetry Post: The Crane Wife

Better poems through science! And by science, I mean 'word randomizer websites'

Hi! Today I’ve got an unpublished poem for us to look at. It’s a unique one, because it’s based on principles of computational poetry, which is something I’m fond of and something I’ve talked about in Monday newsletters.

Every word of this poem is stolen borrowed ethically sourced with no additives or parabens from The Crane Wife, a phenomenal essay by the writer CJ Hauser. It’s about the dissolution of Hauser’s engagement, and how a trip to the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge helped her process the end of the relationship. When it initially appeared in The Paris Review, it went viral for lines like this one:

On the gulf, I lost myself in the work. I watched the cranes through binoculars and recorded their behavior patterns and I loved their long necks and splashes of red. The cranes looked elegant and ferocious as they contorted their bodies to preen themselves. From the outside, they did not look like a species fighting to survive.

Good stuff about love, nature, the nature of love, etc. And now she’s got a memoir in essays with the same title, so check that out!

Anyway, I LOVE this essay. I found it profoundly affecting, as it recontextualizes the idea of “need” and the learned sense of shame that often accompanies it. I loved it so much, I sent it to all my friends, and then I used its language to compose this poem: