The Center of Gravity
by Ron Padgett

The military Jeep was said
to have had a high center
of gravity, therefore
subject to tipping:
if you took a curve too fast
you might turn over.
A person with very short legs
has a low center of gravity
and will not tip over easily.
The ottoman likewise.
When a person is lying flat
he or she has the lowest center
of gravity possible, as does
a sheet of paper on a table.
People floating around
in outer space have little
or no center of gravity
because there's not enough gravity
to have a center.
Gravidanza is the Italian word
for pregnancy, which sounds
more serious than the English word
and may remind us of sentences such as
"The situation is very grave."
Every situation has gravity,
it's a question of how much.
People too have gravity—
of manner, of morals, and of body.
It is good to have gravity
but not too much of it:
like a bag of cement,
you might not be able to move
around or make ethical distinctions.
But with too little of it
you are flighty, your feet
hardly touch the ground.
Though cement and flightiness
have their charms,
it's better to find
your center of gravity
and have it be the place
you radiate out from.

Once I lay in bed ill, unable to move,
but in my head
I was flying and bouncing around.
But illness has no charm
and when it becomes very grave
your gravity edges toward
the most perfect center of gravity ever.

Ron Padgett, “The Center of Gravity” from Collected Poems. Copyright © 2011 by Ron Padgett. Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Coffee House Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota, www.coffeehousepress.org. (buy now)

On this day in 1631, Mumtaz Mahal died. Her husband, Mughal emperor Shah Jahan, felt so much grief that he spent the next 22 years building her mausoleum, the Taj Mahal, in Agra. The two had married in 1612, and she was his favorite of his three wives; her name means "Chosen One of the Palace." She died giving birth to their 14th child.

More than 20,000 workers from India, Persia, the Ottoman Empire, and Europe were employed in building the mausoleum and its surrounding complex. The outlying buildings, including the mosque, are made of red sandstone; the tomb, built of white marble inlaid with semi-precious stones, is the most recognizable feature, and it's suffered greatly in recent years from the pollution of nearby foundries and automobile traffic.

On this date in 1885, the Statue of Liberty arrived in New York Harbor. Formally known as “Liberty Enlightening the World,” she was a gift from France, and was funded by the French people. Sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi first had the idea for a monument to commemorate the friendship between the United States and France in 1865, but he didn’t begin actual construction until the early 1870s; he chose Bedloe’s Island — now called Liberty Island — because the statue could welcome the boats full of immigrants, who would pass by the statue on the way to Ellis Island. He was delighted to learn that the island was the property of the United States government, which meant all the states — not just New York — could claim equal ownership in the statue.

Lady Liberty is made of sheets of copper over a framework of steel supports; Alexandre Gustave Eiffel, of Eiffel Tower fame, designed the framework. She was constructed in France and then was disassembled to make her journey to New York, where she was reassembled to her full height of 151 feet, 1 inch. Mounted on her pedestal, she stands 305 feet tall. Her torch was wired for electrical power in 1916. The seven rays of her crown represent the seven seas and the seven continents; the broken shackles at her feet evoke freedom from slavery and oppression; and the tablet in her left hand represents the law. Liberty’s face was modeled after Bartholdi’s mother.

It’s the birthday of preacher and religious leader John Wesley, born in Epworth, England (1703), who is considered to be the founder of Methodism. Wesley attended Oxford where he was one of the founders of the “Holy Club,” a religious study group that was derisively called the “Methodists” because of their emphasis on methodical study.

By 1850, the United Methodist Church held more members than any other Christian denomination in the United States. A convert needed only to believe that Jesus Christ was the Son of God and everyone’s personal savior. Methodists believed that all other questions about Christianity were up for discussion.

Methodists have established more colleges, hospitals, child-care facilities, and retirement homes than any other denomination. A 19th-century Methodist preacher named William Booth noticed that his lower-class converts were often turned away from respectable churches, so he founded the Salvation Army to reach the poor and needy. Methodists also started Goodwill Industries in 1902.

Today is the birthday of avant-garde American poet, essayist, and translator Ron Padgett (1942) (books by this author), who once said: “If you match yourself up against Shakespeare, guess what? You lose. It’s not productive. Better to focus on the poem you’re writing, do your work, and leave it at that.”

Padgett went to New York to attend Columbia University (1960), where he fell in with a group of poets who favored stream-of-consciousness writing, vivid imagery, and spontaneity. It was the 1960s, and Padgett, Kenneth Koch, Frank O’Hara, and Ted Berrigan drew inspiration from the art galleries, museums, dancers, and artists that surrounded them.

Padgett’s collections of poetry include Bean Spasms: Poems and Prose (1967, with Ted Berrigan); How to Be Perfect (2007); Alone and Not Alone (2015), and Big Cabin (2019). His collection How Long (2011) was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.^®

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