Who wouldn’t want to own a book called Moments of Happiness? Well, me, or one version of myself, the one who is skeptical of too much optimism and pep. But in dealing with the physical and emotional aftermath of travel, it was the only book on myself that offered to restore some of that late-30s vigor I desperately needed.
Part of my exhaustion is from the leap between the rural landscape of Vermont and close-knit family, and the return to city lights and my beautiful island of a neighborhood. A perennial question answered in part: would it be better to live somewhere remote and beautiful, or to live in the city bustle? For me, right now, I am firm in my belief that the right place for us is where we use our legs more than we use the car.
Moments of Happiness is a collection by Danish poet Niels Hav, who brought his rural sensibility to Copenhagen, where he had moved to pursue his art. In the afterward, he describes himself as a city dove, one who feels at home in the urban environment but also stands as “a kind of outsider who also has other relationships and belongs in other contexts”. I think of my seemingly contradictory love for wild spaces and ease in the city and feel too like a city dove.
The book is packed with life-affirming poems like “A Happiness Flows Through the Universe” and “Whose Side Am I On”, where he tells us who he’s for: ”people who have joie de vivre—” and “common decency”. He reaches further, also supporting “People who cry in their sleep at night for lack / of vitamins found only in love” and “for him who hides his poems / in the tool drawer in the garage.” The lines encourage in internal discussion as I ask myself, who am I for?
“Whose Side Am I On” reminds me of “Possibilities” by Polish poet Wisława Szymborska, in which she offers a series of observations about the self, presumably her self: “I prefer the oaks along the Warta. / I prefer Dickens to Dostoyevsky. / I prefer myself liking people / to myself loving mankind.” The light-hearted lines are anchored by deeper reflections as each poet tells us quite sincerely who they are and how they feel about the world.
When I first read “Possibilities”, I was inspired to write my own version, hoping the exercise would reveal some deep truth about myself. Looking back at the lines, I see that I’ve simply created a personal snapshot on one specific day, July 15, 2019: “I prefer bookstores with contemporary poetry / I prefer to eat well rather than pay down my credit card debt / I prefer to walk barefoot on granite.” Perhaps that’s what makes Hav and Szymborska so pleasant to spend time with, the way they pay attention to singular moments—one thought, one note.
My therapist pointed out recently that I am a serious person. Pleasant, but serious. The statement completely caught me off guard. I begin to look for evidence, like when my partner refuses to believe that I watched the film Anchorman enough times that I could recite the lines, or when I think of all the books I gave up on because they didn’t go deep enough, whatever that means.
Sometimes, reading Hav’s work, I find myself judging him for not taking life more seriously. Here’s the final stanza of his poem, “With Charlie Chaplin in Yulin”:
Today Genghis Khan is a Mongolian barbecue and Charlie Chaplin is dead. God created this world with a good sense of humor; most of our glorious history is but a big joke, so let’s not forget to laugh.
Then I remember why I chose this book, that I wanted something to bring me back to the present, where I might sit and enjoy a few moments of happiness. Hav is not avoiding pain; subjects of his poems include loneliness, grief, racism, and shame. Instead of adding his own ounce of anxiety to the soup however, he sprinkles in playfulness and levity.
His moments of happiness, I imagine, are the moments he spends writing his poems, completing each one with a smile as he sets down his pen (even this one, “Women of Copenhagen”, one of the few I found published online). He writes them, I want to believe, to remind serious people like me, who think truth only resides in the depths, to enjoy the glimmers of brightness too.
And of course, I have my own maker of moments of happiness, who keeps me eternally in the present and generously shares her joy as she learns not only to toddle around on two feet, but also how to remove her diaper(!) so she can move with full freedom and ease.