Wanda Praamsma : Propositions & Prayers, by Lise Downe

Propositions & Prayers, Lise Downe
Book*hug, 2020

 

 

Amidst the rational milieu of pandemic living – living by the facts, figures, rules – my mind at first resisted immersing itself in Lise Downe’s most recent book of poems, Propositions & Prayers. Perhaps this is the difficulty so many readers and literature-lovers have faced this past year: we are struggling so hard to keep rooted, to understand and to process what we are living through, it is almost impossible to let ourselves let go enough to revel in more expansive thinking, the obscure and the abstruse, and to dance amidst nonduality and not-knowing.

Almost is the key word, though. Because when you break down all the bracing, all the holding, there is entrance into what is beyond our day-to-day machinations, a movement toward an “essential quiet / ness or quiet / ude” (74), not unlike the settling of the mind during yoga and meditation, the cessation of the fluctuations of the mind-stuff. This is also what happens when you allow yourself entry into Downe’s latest work.

I interspersed my reading of Propositions & Prayers with books on Zen Buddhism and koans, those little stories that tweak your thinking and nudge you to approach a problem, or life in general, with a more open-minded, open-ended perspective. The little healing stories keep you on your toes, urging you not to become too attached; they offer choices, no set answers. It’s up to you.

The same applies to Downe’s work. In brief snippets, her propositions, which make up most of the book, exude this willingness to explore and to question what we know, what can we know, is there a point to knowing? Or can we simply wander, observe, wander, observe.

what of charms and rattles, absorbing facts
pooled together, I mean
I’m not trying to indict anyone
but what do we know
other than quotes skirting
every margin of truth 

And then later in the same proposition, this assurance of change:

any thorny patch or song, and the rest
shadowing all we saw anyway
the way the light switches
anyway    (48)

Like a koan, each little poem is a portal into understanding through misunderstanding. Quirky daily observations mix with higher-plane philosophical and metaphysical statements that lure me into big mind, the mind that is everything, according to Zen. Downe sends me this message: we are not constant, our knowledge is not constant, we are ever-shifting. Through these propositions and longer prayers, and with a rhythm that clips and hops with alliteration and inquisitive enjambment, Downe is a gracious and curious leader, guiding us as we guide ourselves.

On these winding paths or portals she creates, we are led to some absurd ends and also to blissful ends, where we can clearly linger in the perfection of the view right in front of our eyes:

if one needs cheering up
take a detour round the back
and see what’s surfacing
grassland, drumlins, ocean  (67)

Downe reminds us that we need not be so bound – to anything. And I love how in one of her final propositions of the book, she urges – proposes – the need to release the questions, and like an artist inspired and fearless (Downe is also a visual artist), just keep going:

don’t even ask who is driving
or Why am I doing this?
both hands on the wheel
and so it goes, like so
on and on and soon
it is   (69)

We can release the clinging, the desire to know everything and all possible outcomes. We can go exploring and linger in unknowing.

Sure, this is harder to do in a pandemic, but we can try. And reading Downe’s work helps.

 

 

 

Wanda Praamsma is a poet and writer based in Kingston, Ontario. Her first book of poetry, a thin line between, was published by Book*hug in 2014, and poems have appeared in periodicities, ottawater, eleven eleven, Lemon Hound, and The Feathertale Review.