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Poetry Unbound
Richard Langston — Hill walk
00:12:18
In Richard Langston’s poem “Hill walk,” he proffers a handful of things that move us over the course of a day — words said or read, notes played, the sight of halting steps taken by a sibling. We marvel at the sound of an unfamiliar bird call, but there’s a startling mystery to the human heart and what it responds to (or doesn’t) and one that we don’t always mark.
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Padre Gautuma
Hi friends. I've got some news for you. I've got two books coming out in early 2025. 44 poems on being with each Other is a poetry unbound collection with 44 poems and 44 essays. There's poems from Jericho Brown and Mary Oliver and Lucille Clifton in there. And I have a collection of my own poems coming out too.
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Chris Heagle
It's called Kitchen Hymns.
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Padre Gautuma
You can pre order these wherever you get your books, online bookshops or even better, your local bookshop. There's more info@poetryunbound.org thanks friends.
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Chris Heagle
My name is Padre Gautuma and those lists that you see on social media or in newspapers or online articles that say how to in five steps draw me in as much as anybody else has drawn in, you know, how to be fitter, how to be healthier, how to be more productive, how to be this, how to be that. And some of them have got really good ideas, but one of the things that they're doing is they're promising a way within which change can happen. But sometimes, often change happens in surprising ways, in a way that you're not prepared for at all. Sometimes beautifully, sometimes brutally. Change just comes and we're there to look at it, to respond, and to try to figure out what to do in the aftermath. And also try to figure out, how did that happen and where did it come from? Hill Walk by Richard Langston. We often wonder what moves us in a day. Was it words in a sequence that surprised us? Or notes played by someone who kept their mouth closed and let the sound leave their broken body? Or maybe after years, it was the sight of your brother nursing his leg down the hill, catching up with you so you could walk on together to discuss what bird that was in the bush making the sound neither of you were certain of. I love the modesty of the beginning of this poem by Richard Langston. We often wonder what moves us in a day. And then the way that he goes through. You know, was it words or notes or a sound or a sight he's going through? The senses, perhaps, or some of them anyway, wondering what is it that sticks with you during the day? What is it that is important? The word move is such an interesting word. We use it all the time. I do anyway. You know, you can say, check out your moves. Is someone showing off their dance moves to you? Or move on, an old boss used to say when we were finishing up a meeting, another friend says, move on when she's about to lose her temper. Move on, move on topic, Move on conversation. Move on physically, you can talk about moving through the body. You can also be used in the court to move the court. And then, of course, also you can talk about it on a formal level with organizations, that an organization moves their position, or they move some idea, or they move emotion. And so, looking at this question, we often wonder, what moves us in a day? There are layers upon layers present to us in the simplicity of that word. What moves us. I like to think about what the emotion of a word is. And obviously it depends as to the context in which you're using it. But. But when you're thinking about what moves you in a day, maybe especially if there's something that's being repaired between people, the word move is a gentle one, starting off with that soft m and then into the elongated oo of move. It's such a gentle poem, this one. But in each of the examples that Richard Langston gives, there is something that has an edge of pain to it, or an edge of surprise, or an edge perhaps of at least being unexpected words in a sequence that surprised us. Notes played by someone who kept their mouth closed and let the sound leave their broken body. Maybe the music isn't particularly from a whistle or a wind instrument. Maybe it's somebody who's been injured, who's dying. The ways within which noise comes from us. And a certain kind of humming, a certain kind of communication of proximity, an indication of being alive, an indication of being in pain or beyond words. And then after years, there's this brother nursing his leg down the hill. And they don't say what the problem is, if there has been a problem. Instead, they look at the bush and wonder what bird it is. And so each of these suggestions about the kind of thing that might move you are things that are slightly to the left of center, slightly off kilter, enough to catch your attention, but also enough to remind you you don't have complete control. And that, I think, is one of the interesting things throughout this whole poem. It's a poem where he's holding human encounter, very light. I've always wondered, what is the specificity of this brother? It was the sight of your brother nursing his leg down the hill, catching up with you so you could walk on together. And they were on the hill together. So clearly it's not like they haven't seen each other, but something seems to have occurred. Why that after years, Is it the injury or the malady of the leg that is, the thing that's lasted for years? Or has there been some lack of language or some Lack of communication over years, I don't know, but I feel the weight of it. I wonder if they've kept some kind of distance or not engaged with each other much despite some kind of proximity. The limping brother reference absolutely brings the story to mind from the Hebrew Bible of these twins, Jacob and Esau, when they were younger. You know, one's smooth and suave and the other's hairy and brawny, and they're pitted against each other. And after years and years and years, I think after the death of their parents, they reconcile, and each at this stage is some kind of patriarch. And just before one of them meets the other, he wrestles with an angel, and the angel touches his hip and he has to limp with a sore leg on his way to meet his brother. And people have tried to interpret that for years as a reminder of, you know, if you wrestle with God, you'll never win, or that we need some reminder of our limitation and that the need to eventually reconcile, perhaps, or the desire to eventually reconcile, might remind us of frailty and to remind us of necessity. What's interesting in the biblical story is that these two brothers don't discuss too much about the source of their original estrangement. And neither do the brothers. In Richard Langston's poem, they talk about the bird. What bird? That was in the bush making the sound neither of you were certain of. I love this like a secular rendition of an old biblical story. Instead of God wrestling with one brother, giving him a limp, it's a bird that they can't classify. Some piece of mystery, but also some piece of music. If Richard Langston had written this poem in the first person, I often wonder what moves me in a day. We would be really particularly focused in, on the specifics of this, perhaps in the life of a poet, or at least the life of a speaker of a poem. And I know nothing about him apart from a couple of broad biographical details. He's from a Lebanese family living in New Zealand. They'd migrated there. I don't know if he's speaking about something in his own circumstances, but what interests me is the kindness, really, in the way that he puts forward the we. We often wonder what moves us in a day. He's asking a general question and he is posing some particular ways in which some catching up happens between people who, for years, there seems to have been some kind of distance between the we maybe allows us to ponder the kind of ways people need to come together, but also to avert the gaze from something that might be quite private. We witness these brothers walking alongside each other, not discussing the years of their distance but instead wondering about the bird that they can't quite classify. I like the way within which a poem that is perhaps referring to something that did occur or might be happening every single day. The broad we of it allows us all to think these things happen. But while these brothers don't know what bird it was that was making that song, we, the readers, don't need to know what it was that happened between these brothers and that we can think well, that brother is me, that brother is you. These siblings are all of us, in the distances we maintain with each other and in the proximities we might find through some mysterious way that land brings us back together Hill Walk by Richard Langston we often wonder what moves us in a day. Was it words in a sequence that surprised us? Or notes played by someone who kept their mouth closed and let the sound leave their broken body? Or maybe after years, it was the sight of your brother nursing his leg down the hill, catching up with you so you could walk on together to discuss what bird that was in the bush making the sound neither of you were certain of. SA.
- [11:48]
Richard Langston
Hill Walk comes from Richard Langston's book Five O'Clock Shadows. Thank you to the Cuba Press who gave us permission to use Richard's poem. Read it on our website@onbeing.org Poetry Unbound.
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Chris Heagle
Is Gautam Srikishan, Eddie Gonzalez, Lucas Johnson.
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Richard Langston
Keila Edwards, Tiffany Champion, CAMERMAN Moussar and me, Chris Heagle. Our music is composed and provided by Gautam Srikishan and Blue Dot Sessions. This podcast is produced by On Being Studios, which is located on Dakota Land. Open your world to poetry with us by subscribing to our substack newsletter. For links and to find out more, visit poetryunbound.org.
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Chris Heagle
This podcast is produced by On Being Studios in Minneapolis, Minnesota.