Contributor’s Marginalia: John A. Nieves on “I’ve Been Busy” by Hailey Leithauser

The first time I read this poem, I was in a public hallway and I had to go outside away from others so I could read it again—this time out loud. It was crisp winter and the poem’s ringing and lilting and rhyming chimed like a ghost song against the frost. The poem’s sonic patterning, its intermittent consonance and gorgeously crumbling meter accentuated the rupture of the voicing of the immediate surroundings in the poem caused by the tripled long-dashes, the aside of longing that crosses the poem’s river with the hope of belonging somewhere (again already). The ominousness of the action of the opening of the poem—the implied violence—brightens while the river darkens, while nature speaks itself into the scene with its soundings and cycles. This increases the alienation of the poem’s voice as it aches across the water to have what those together (whether at a party or in the aftermath of disaster) have: a place at the table. And just as my voice became literally the voice of the poem, as my lips moved with the lines, I imagined the cocktail thrower or the exile yearning to rejoin those who are now irrevocably away. I felt my own mouth shape the last line like a wish, like a coined tossed into the dark river as if it were a fountain. I felt the urge to be forgiven, taken back as the poem closes with that wish unanswered, with its delicate dance of guilt and yearning.

This first experience with the poem moved me to share it. I subsequently read it out loud to three different people over the next week. Each time, I found new nuance in the carefully wrought sound, in the beautiful bends on the page. I am currently teaching Jonathan Culler’s Theory of the Lyric and I can’t help think how this tiny lyric engages in both the ritual patterning and the rich tradition of the lyric. Upon rereading the poem, I heard echoes of Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Hass and Stevie Smith. I heard the swaying of lullaby and the dirge’s undercurrent. I decided I would bring this poem to read to my class after they have finished Culler’s book in its entirety. I am impressed with the simultaneous muchness and minimalism of Leithauser’s skinny verse. It stays with me. I hope each reader will take the time to voice this poem to one other person, to participate in its spell. It has so much to teach us.