Child Prodigies Bother Me

It's time for another list poem, but this one feels different, somehow.

In Fact

Susan Hutton

The first time I see my daughter. Yes. The moment later, 
when I first see my son. Precisely. The two weeks they are apart 
in the hospital. The day they both come home. Of course. 
Mason jars of peaches on the cellar shelf. The late February 
       rainstorm 
and then the smell. Undoubtedly. The first mornings we hear the 
      birds come back. 
The time between the touch and its arrival in the brain. Certainly. 
The years when Norgay and Hillary refused to say which of them 
had reached the summit first. Yes. The distracted way the girl 
smooths her skirt. Exactly. That 
mathematically there are no 
     beginnings or endings.
That is just it. The way water clouds when it cools.
After ten years, Michael lowers himself tenderly over my body 
and says we have so many years left. Visiting Michelle that winter, 
Paul teasing me about my canned tomato soup.
You only get to eat so many meals.
Remembering that afternoon fifteen years later.
Wondering if he was thinking of killing himself even then.




The connections and entanglements, neurons firing wildly. Everything is connected, you just have to walk out far enough to see it.


It's nice, too, that poems can be dark without being gothic. The sense of nostalgia slowly seeps into a mild dread, especially after several rereadings.


And then there's the disembodied voice of the speaker saying words of affirmation - it comes across a little like HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey, or the soothing voice of a nurse who knows you don't have much longer.


I did a little biographical search, but there's not much I can find about Ms. Hutton that's readily available, except that she lives in Michigan, has an MFA and had her first book published in 2007, when she was nearly 40. I don't know why that satisfies me, really - plenty of poets did their best work before they hit 27, that magical dying age for artsy types. 


But I like the idea that prodigies and wünderkinder aren't inherently better than someone who's bided their time, honed their craft and then released it. So somebody can play Bach at 8 - terrific. Is it any better than if they're 78? Frankly, I like to know my art has been marinated in some hard-earned wisdom before I've got to bite through the gristle and fat to get at the good stuff. It makes me feel more assured that it's all going to be worth it, both the reading and the writing.