A Poem I Love

"You Can't Have It All" by Barbara Ras

I think I’ve shared this poem before, maybe buried somewhere in a charcuterie, but I recently read it again after buying Baraba Ras’s 1998 collection, Bite Every Sorrow in which it appears. “You Can’t Have It All” is a perfect encapsulation of the way that universality can be most powerfully found in the hyper-specific.

Ras’s images are so clearly particular to her life—the best example might even appear in the second line—being woken up by a child in the middle of the night when the hamster is back. What does that even mean?! Why is the hamster back in the middle of the night, where was the hamster in the first place? But the midnight waking is a familiar memory, either from the child’s or the parent’s perspective.

Ras vacillates between these specific and literal remembrances, to broader categories of things—August (abundantly), makeup, clouds and letters—to even more figurative possessions like the life of the mind, or dreams of Egypt, and eventually the memory of a voice.

I love this poem so, so much, and I hope you enjoy it too. If you want to write poetry, this is also a fantastic poem to imitate. Steal Barbara’s title, slap an “after Barbara Ras” underneath and see what you can come up with—all the things you have that make up for not having it all.

Sorry for the bad pictures (I’m lazy) <3 you can also find the poem here.

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