Saturday, July 28, 2012

Let's Try This Again

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I haven't written anything in almost 3 months.

Well, unless you count a few journal entries, the occasional email, three and a half pages of the first chapter of a Young Adult novel, and a short essay I had to submit as part of applying to the Independent Publishing Resource Center. (Those things don't count, but I still seem to be counting them, don't I?)

What I have been doing is reading a lot.

One of several books I've read during my writing hiatus -- Cheryl Strayed's Wild, which is the author's account of hiking 1,100 miles along the Pacific Crest Trail (what a coinkydink: I hiked 1,100 miles of the PCT, too!) -- led me back into my old journals.

What's striking to me is how many freakin' times I've come to the same conclusions about myself, and how, each time, as I'm recording the latest epiphany, it seems like new news to me.

Here's something from an undated entry (January 2010?) in a little red book:

"I want to say it, and have it feel right. That's what it is about writing: righting. Not wrongs or injustices. Just finding the balance, not capsizing in the waves of circumstance."

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Random


This afternoon, the best I could manage was, “I guess I'll take a (literal) walk and see if I end up in a different (metaphorical) place.”

I ended up at The Ugly Mug, a coffeeshop I've visited on only one other occasion, sipping a chai and flipping through the pages of the identity issue of Orlo: Exploring Environmental Issues through the Creative Arts.

I'd never seen or heard of this publication before. But it's been around for at least ten years, and it's staffed by at least a dozen people, and, like, it has art and essays and poems and advertisements and everything in it. In other words, it is a project that's being taken at least semi-seriously by at least several somebodies.

One of those somebodies framed his thoughts about the meaning of identity thusly: You are as good as the best thing you ever wrote.

I'm pretty sure that's an exact quote.

I'm also pretty sure that the best thing I ever wrote – not that I could tell you what that was, because I don't have a clue – wasn't all that good.

Which means, I guess, that there's room for improvement.

Saturday, April 7, 2012

Beauty is Truth (but the Truth ain't Pretty)


As Keats famously said, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty: that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”

But Keats was a guy, and he was only 26 when he died. If he'd been like me, a woman in her late 30's (I turn 38 this month! Ack!), I'm not sure he would have phrased the sum of all human knowledge in quite that way.

I'm not sure how I would phrase it, but I bet my version would be a little less poetic.

I'm on poem number 8 (out of a thousand), and there's not a beauty in the bunch. I seem to be in an ugly mood most of the time.

I keep feeling like I should write something pretty – like, for instance, an ode to spring's blossoming trees, whose flower petals fall and cover the sidewalks like exotic scented snowdrifts – but that's not where the juice is right now.

What I actually want to write, what I find myself actually writing, is self-indulgent crap about aging and anxiety, or pain and purposelessness. For example, here are the last few lines of poem #7: I inhabit / contingency, as if I were an old hotel / in a city sinking into the sea, / with all the guests making love / in derelict rooms / beneath my mossy chandeliers.

And that's as pretty as it gets, folks. I am seriously considering writing a poem about the dead raccoon I saw a few months ago, the one with the swarming face.

Maggots are the antithesis of poetry, right?

Hmmmm.

I'm reminded of a Japanese “death poem” by Kyoriku:

'Til now I thought
that death befell
the untalented alone.
If those with talent, too
must die
surely they make
a better manure?

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Not to Scale

Since my "I'm gonna write 1,000 poems" decision, I've written 5 poems. Not bad, I guess. I've got a 3-day car trip ahead of me, so I hope to write a few more -- hopefully, they won't all be about the existential loneliness of the open highway.

Actually, I do have a poem in mind: the past few days, I've been thinking about how we human beings actually have a very poor perception of scale. How big is the universe? How small is an atom? How big is that problem that's getting all of my attention, and how small is it in comparison to what's really important to me?

What's a big deal, and what is not? Sometimes there's a lot of meaning in a seemingly small gesture.

The poem, if I write it, will be called "Not to Scale."

Meanwhile, I leave you with a quote by Shigenori Kameoka (whoever s/he might be), which was shared with my by a dear friend of mine: "Find the seed at the bottom of your heart and bring forth a flower."




Tuesday, March 13, 2012

A Thousand Poems


Yesterday, I decided to write a thousand poems. Yes, I know: it's going to take me three or four years, at least. And it's highly likely that not a single poem turns out to be really good. No matter. I'm going to do it anyway, because I believe that doing it a thousand times anyway will end up counting for something.

It turns out that, not counting activities related to my immediate survival (e.g., taking a breath) or my personal hygiene (e.g., taking a shower), there are actually very few things I've done a thousand times.

Here's the list I've come up with:

*cooked dinner
*done a load of laundry
*gone grocery shopping
*nursed each of my children
*read a bedtime story aloud
*hiked a mile
*had sex
*sung a song
*sent an email
*phoned a friend
*written a journal entry
*graded a student's paper

I don't know how long a person has to do something before it becomes part of her identity – “I am” rather than “I do” – but I've always wanted to be a poet, and writing a thousand poems seems as good a way as any to get started on becoming one.

No, I'm not going to post every poem I write. But since today's is the first of the thousand (not to be confused with one-in-a-thousand), it marks something of an occasion. So here it is, such as it is:

#1

Called to account, I'm counting
everything this morning,
making chalk marks on my wall,
leaving traces: two pieces of toast,
two kumquats, a single
porcelain cup full of black tea,
and all those words I worry
I won't have said.

Not just what my daughter,
four years and three months,
brought home in a plastic bag
(three red camellias, three wet stones,
two silver slippers, six brown buds,
and a slug) but also
all those wishes in the rushes,
unnamed, and thus uncounted.

Hurry, quick: slalom and zipper,
halcyon and cyan (five lemons
on a blue plate – can you see it?)
yes and chit and chop, and choreograph,
lined up alongside blister, bluster, blather,
and also blah blah blah, which is to say:
I was here, and here, and here.

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Dream Poems


A few nights ago, I dreamed I was with my husband in a concrete house that was suspended, foundation and all, in the air. We seemed to be moving slowly over a body of water. Rather suddenly, the whole thing tipped, like the Tower of Pisa, and angled into the water; soon, we were submerged. My husband said to me, “Watch out!” – and I realized that I was in danger of being pinned under the weight of the sinking house. I managed to follow him out from under the house, and we swam to shore. In my hand was a key, but it was just an outside key, not an inside key. All my writing – journals, poems, essays, everything – was in a sealed box inside the house at the bottom of the ocean. I no longer had access to any of it. I was really upset by this: why hadn't I found other places to house my thoughts?

I was reminded of a series of thematically related dreams I had several years ago.

In the spring of 2007, my writing practice was to record my dreams immediately upon waking and then, later that morning, to turn at least one dream into a poem. After a couple of weeks of this, I started to notice that my dreams were changing: more and more, they were about the creative process.

Here are two dream poems from that time:

Verisimilitude

The author has his wares displayed
at Page 101, a little art gallery downtown
that's set up like an illustrated encyclopedia.
Most of his characters are life-sized men
of monochrome maché doing chest presses
with cardboard dumbbells painted to match,
too big for my house, but I could consider
the smaller, craftier things for sale in the back,
like ceramic toothbrushes and a flower vase
sculpted to look like a train engine, very pink.
What really captivates me is a plate
decorated with red and yellow pear tomatoes
and pea pods so green I want to eat them
even though they're fake -- and look,
see that pile of peas and unshelled peanuts
on the shelf, scattered, come unglued?
The author must have intended this mess
to be a mirror for entropy in the world.
Because I have always longed to own
my very own metaphor, I check its price
and discover that what I have picked up
is an actual peanut, actually just half
an empty husk, those familiar ridges
on the brown outside, and on the flipside,
formerly an inside, those scooped hollows,
each the right size for the tip of my tongue,
and each equally worthless to me
because there is no round-trip ticket
from what's imagined to what's real.


The Critique
Whenever other people's psyches are up for sale
I love to take the tour, trying on every room
for size, savoring the delicious pretense
that I could afford their marble, gilt, and plush.

Your place is lower-budget than most,
all low-ceilinged hallways and musty closets.
I don't want to spend even one night here,
but I follow along as you push open each door
and flip light switches on and off, to no avail.

And then you're gone, and whatever sleeps
under your washing machine comes slithering out.
I'm looking right at it, but all I can see for sure
are the stripes, black and white, writhing:
no snake skin or rat tail or tarantula leg
could match this clown kachina black and white,
this cheap costume stocking stripe, unwinding
on the floor in front of me while I stand
paralyzed, backed up against your flimsy wall.

I can only breathe in, and in, and in again.
I'm choking on my own voice, swallowing
each forsaken thought as if it were a balloon
I could only inflate by speaking it aloud --

And when I escape from here, the sentence
I pull out of my mouth will be a perfect copy
of the unknown creature coiled in your hallway,
each word a stripe, each space a stripe,
this pattern that means precisely nothing
until you tell me how it strikes you.


Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Hallmark Guerrilla: A Writing Exercise


This morning, someone in my household (hint: his name rhymes with Schmyler) came up with the brilliant idea of going through a bunch of document boxes to see if there was anything in them that could be tossed. So I spent a couple of hours going through old correspondence (yeah, I grew up in the days when the USPS occasionally delivered something other than the Tuesday Penny Saver), and then, in a sudden frenzy of “I need to throw something away NOW, or I will have wasted my entire morning!” decided to chuck several folders full of teaching materials.

There's one writing exercise I decided I needed to save in electronic form. It's something I used in the poetry writing class I taught back in – what, 2005? I'd totally forgotten about it, so it was kind of fun to encounter it again.

Here's how it works:

  1. Each person brings to class the schmaltziest Hallmark love poem they can find. (It isn't necessary to actually buy the card – it's fine to simply copy the text. Yes, anyone who wanders down the greeting card aisle will look at you askance, but at least you won't be “voting” for bad poetry with your hard-earned dollars.)
  2. Each person reads his/her candidate aloud to the rest of the class, followed by a brief explanation of what made the poem schmaltzy.
  3. Mock writing workshop: identify what's not working in the poems, and come up with suggestions for improvement. (Sorry, all you Hallmark poets out there: I know this is like being tried in absentia....)
  4. Class discussion: What common problems did we observe? How do we avoid making those kinds of mistakes in our own poetry?

I'll copy two examples here:

I. Sometimes I wish
you and I had just met
And we had a whole lifetime
ahead of us yet
It's fun to imagine us
starting brand-new
with so many wonderful
things we could do.
And maybe this time
we'd avoid some mistakes
Or manage to catch
a few luckier breaks
But you know, I just can't
imagine a way
We'd be happier, ever,
than we are today.

II. I love you
I love your eyes
I love your smile
I love the way you eat spaghetti
I love the way you kiss
I love the way you look at me
I love the way you spoil me
I love your walk
I love it when you act silly
I love the way you look when you wake up
I love the way you love me...
And that's just the beginning.

The first poem sounds like Dr. Seuss wrote it: there's that sing-songy anapest, the predictable end-rhyme – catchy enough, but pretty silly sounding. What would happen if it were written in a different meter, with a different rhyme scheme, or no rhymes at all?

The second poem might as well be titled, “One Love Fits All” – it's just a catalog of generalizations. What if each line were made much more specific, even absurd? (e.g., I love the way you eat spaghetti / With your fork between your toes)?