A question that’s guided me ... - by Pádraig Ó Tuama

Poetry Unbound

A question that’s guided me ...

... for 30 years

Pádraig Ó Tuama
Apr 26, 2026

Dear friends,

Your musical memories were so moving last week — thank you. Someone said to me the other day that this Substack is the kind of newsletter where they come for the poetry, but stay for the comments. Biased as I am, I am inclined to agree.

This week, I will start with the question, one that has guided me for years.

When do you feel most alive?

Years ago, my job involved running dialogue groups for a bunch of men. This was the 1990s, and ice-breaking games were all the rage. I hated them: I disliked the metaphor that implied groups commence with ice. My experience was that many people wanted to find avenues to talk to each other; they just needed a good question. So, before every group — there were three, maybe four a week — I’d think of a question. There was a graveyard near my work, so I’d walk there for the group prep, and try to come up with something that might help us get to know each other more.

I’m sure I heard it from someone else — it’s too good a question for it to have come to my then-19-year-old mind — but the question of aliveness came to me one day, and the group had such an enlivening time that I’ve stayed with it since. That day, someone spoke about music, someone spoke about meals with friends, someone spoke about reading. In the years since, I’ve heard people talk about sex, surfing, learning, baths, court-case victories, achieving resolution in a violent conflict, ER nursing duties, walks alone, staying up all night, and sleeping with fresh sheets on the bed.

Graffiti by Friz
Photo by Pádraig Ó Tuama

Often, I think of a gorgeous line from Tony Hoagland’s poem “Grammar”. In it, he describes a character, Maxine, who is fully alive with herself. “Some kind of light is coming from her head,” he says, and then, in the final stanza of the poem he concludes:

we've all tried to start a fire,
and one day maybe it will blaze up on its own.
In the meantime, she is the one today among us
most able to bear the idea of her own beauty,
and when we see it, what we do is natural:
we take our burned hands
out of our pockets,
and clap.
“Grammar”, from Tony Hoagland’s Donkey Gospel(Graywolf Press, 1998);
the good people of the Library of Congress have the full poem on their website

I love this poem: I can see Maxine, I can see the joy, I can see the attraction of seeing someone fully alive. The call to see this fully-aliveness in life is not just a private pursuit. It’s something I think can guide a civic life — how can education lead us to being fully alive, a foreign policy, a healthcare system, a job. I’m not looking for an easy life, and I know you’re not either, but I think the imagination of what fully-aliveness can look like can guide our lives together. Many of you already do it, and may more of you do it too.

So, how about you? When do you feel fully alive?

Poetry in the World

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