Last Day of April

At my class meeting last week, the instructor, when asked about his appearance on a Colorado Public Radio program to talk about poetry, said he really didn't like National Poetry Month. "We should celebrate poetry and the arts all year," he said.

I agree. That's the problem with delegating a month or week or day to anything. Earth DAY? We live on the earth. We should think about it every day. Ideally, poetry would be more a part of people's lives throughout the year. Part of my goal for the blog this month was to allow readers to think and write about poetry on their own terms, in the hopes that more poetry would begin to permiate their lives.

I think that all of the guest posts allowed us to do just that. We considered poetry as a place of refuge and poetry as a guilty pleasure. We saw how poetry can connect friends throughout the years or... in my lucky case... be a catalyst for a new and lasting relationship. We read original poetry, saw connections between poetry and music, and considered the source of poetic inspiration.

As you can see by the relatively small number of posts by me over the past 30 days, I could have never have celebrated National Poetry Month alone. I actually did a lot of poetry-related work this month, for my class and on my manuscript, but sadly not as much as I wanted was for the blog. So, as April turns to May, I want to extend my invitation for guest bloggers. I can think of at least three people who had hoped to write guest posts, but like me, were too busy to get to it in April. If you would like to help me in extending the spirit of National Poetry Month throughout the rest of the year, I would still love to hear from you. And I, as much as I am avoiding it, still have to finish my "History and Influences" series. In fact I think I am going to vow that part 4 of it will be this next post on this blog. And I have a lot of cute Easter pictures and a list of new Amelia words to post. So maybe that will help hurry me along.

On this last day of April, though, I will leave you with a few more poetry-related links.

This is the radio program that featured my instructor mentioned above, Chris Ransick.

And finally, one of my favorite poets, Kay Ryan, won this year's Pulitzer Prize for poetry. You can read about her life and see some of her poems here. Her poems are like tiny, dense universes. Read them twice, aloud, for wonderful surprises in sound and subject.

And until the next time, happy poetry.

Special Guest Post-

All of the guest posts have been special to me, but this one was written by someone whose writing--be it an email, a legal brief, a note on a birthday card, or what's below--always makes me fall for him a little harder.

Until I got to college, I saw poetry as I suppose many teenagers do -- an outlet
for emotion and pent-up angst. My first poetry class, one on 20th century poetry, changed all that. For the most part, I couldn't understand the poetry we read on my own. But the instructor -- Dr. Lensing, for those who took English classes at UNC -- was very good at explaining them, not just what they meant, but the subtle beauties in sound, texture, and rhythm. I liked virtually everything we studied, but I was particularly drawn to the likes of Philip Larkin, e.e. cummings, Elizabeth Bishop, and Robert Frost. I suppose these poets are very different from one another, but one thing they have in common -- and probably what drew me to each of them -- is their relative straightforwardness. They all write beautifully precise poems using simple language and form. No need for a dictionary or a scholar's command of literature. By now I've realized that, like Liz Self, I like poetry I don't have to work too hard at.

Which brings me to the real subject of this post. I met Kim in college. There were a lot of things I fell in love with about her, but a main one was her writing. I bragged to my roomates about it and made them read her poems. (None were poetry-reading types, but they were patient.) Kim wrote (and writes) like all the poets I like write. Her poems are direct, precise, and uncluttered by allusions I don't understand. There is nothing pretentious about them. Since this is for her blog, I won't go on and on, but I love her writing. These days I don't read much poetry on my own. But I read all of Kim's poems, at least once she's ready for me to see them, and I'm proud to think of myself as something like an editor or at least someone who can make reasonably intelligent comments and suggestions. I suppose all this is to say that, for me, poetry is intertwined with my life with Kim. It was one of the first things I loved about her and remains so.

Guest Post: On subjectivity or just a rant really

Today's post was created by an old high school friend of mine, Chad Edwards. Chad, a musician, created a piece of music to accompany a poem by Emily Dickinson. Listen to the song and read the poem below. You can hear more of Chad's work on his blog, There's A Lot to Hear, which is now included on my blog list. Thanks, Chad, for this great multi-media post!




Emily Dickinson's I Felt a Funeral, in my Brain


I'll make a very subjective statement about subjectivity now: all is within the domain of subjectivity. Yes... everything period. Is that an oxymoron? Yeah, probably, but oh well, welcome to life! Right now you could easily and correctly be saying to yourself, you're full of it,
because breathing air is not subjective, my friend! All right, I won't deny you your subjective opinion so we'll just move on.

Why would I be talking about subjectivity when Kim's blog topic is poetry since it's National Poetry Month? Well, when it comes to the perception of poetry/art, subjectivity to me is the alpha and the omega, so to speak (well all perception in general but I'm struggling not to derail this sucker here). Without this subjectivity all art would have a correct/incorrect way or be either good or bad, right or wrong, black or white, and so on. Though I don't see much usefulness coming from that sort of situation.

While thinking about what to write about for the blog, I was looking into the poem I chose for the song: "I felt a funeral in my brain," by Emily Dickinson. I noticed the many interpretations of the meaning of the poem itself. Now there is nothing inherently wrong with trying to discover the meaning behind things...in fact, I'd venture a guess and say that this searching could very well be a big part of our existence! But many times I worry that people seem to think there is an exact way to interpret a poem or any art form. In my opinion, no interpretation is correct, or incorrect.

The real beauty behind art is that we are always both creating and participating within and with the art form itself. Something interesting I've found over time is the malleability of meaning behind art and how your personal interpretations can change even from moment to moment. At one point in your life you can get something profound from a piece of art, and later that same piece could cause an entirely different reaction, or none at all. While working on the song, I had to think about the poem, the many ways I could interpret it, and how the friend I wrote the song for would as well. I created sounds to go with each section, adding yet another layer of subjectivity to what was there in the text combined with both my feelings at the moment and my interpretion of hers. This subjectivity in art is what makes it a blast for me both to participate in and ponder upon. Everyone is held together by the structure of the form yet each person is having their own unique experience.

Well I guess in the end the point being just simply that beauty is in the eye of the beholder... and I guess I could have saved a whole lot of everyone's time by just posting that, huh? But hey, isn't that what blogs were created for?

Since Amelia is shocking the nation by sleeping past 5 am, here are some pictures and a quick update.



This is her adorable strawberry/watermelon dress (I say watermelon; everyone else seems to think it's a strawberry). She loves breakfast and is learning to eat with a fork and spoon. Sometimes she delicately puts the fork or spoon near her eye and says, as a joke, "Eye?" Then I say "Not your eye, your mouth!" and she grins and puts the utinsel in her mouth. It is scary game for mommy, who does not want her child to blind herself, so I am hoping she gets tired of it soon.

Speaking of saying things, Amelia is talking more and more. Too many new words to remember or list, but she repeats so many things now! Here are a few:

Both
Silly
Suki (no more Gee; we are sad)
Back! (As in, when Suki tries to slip out of the door to the yard, "Suki, back!")
Work ("Daddy work")
Silly

And she likes to play repetition games with words. If I say "You're silly!" She says, "Momma?" and I have to say "Momma's silly!" Then, "Daddy?" and I say "Daddy's silly! Then Suki, Nanny, Poppa, Guru, Ew, Heather, Micah...



Playing in the tub



I couldn't resist this...



or this.

Special Guest Post!

Today's lovely poem and post are brought to you by Gano, also known as Mary Sanderford, Amelia's great-grandmother.

This poem spoke to me, especially the first two lines, after I had the opportunity to visit my childhood friend, now in a nursing home.

I had not seen her in probably twenty-five years--what fun we had talking of our childhood experiences, things none of my present friends would even know about.

There seem to be people and friends for all seasons of our lives--and I thank God for that.

A Friend

by Oliver Wendell Holmes

There is no friend like an old friend
Who has shared our morning days,
No greeting like his welcome,
No homage like his praise.

Fame is the scentless flower
With gaudy crowns of gold,
Bur friendship is the breathing rose
With sweets in every fold.

History and Influences, Part 2

As I have mentally traced my poetic "career," I have realized that my falling in love with poetry has been a falling in love with writing. As in, with my own writing--not that I have loved everything I have written (I certainly have not) but with being able to write. After the childhood experience of reading "The Listeners," I didn't really read poems for a long time. I had some great teachers, including Chuck Sullivan at NC Governor's School, who explained poems to me in a way that made me love them, but I wasn't exactly discovering or reading any poetry on my own. In college, I was lucky enough to have a roommate/best friend who was interested in creative writing. I decided to take a fiction class, but, as chance would have it, that class was full. Introduction to Poetry was open, so I took that instead. Ever since my first assignment from Alan Shapiro to write ten rhyming couplets describing a view through a window, I have been hooked on writing poems.

Typing that out, it seems pretty obvious, and I am sure I am not alone. I remember starting the poetry classes I taught by asking the students, "What is poetry?" Almost everyone included in their answer the idea of self-expression. Perhaps stereotypically, that answer always made me think of an angst-ridden teen scribbling sad or angry poems in a notebook, but it's true. Even if you are not a writer, you have probably written a poem. And if you have ever written a poem, think back--it was probably sparked by some deep emotion or vivid experience, something you had to flesh out for yourself, in your own words.

I say all of that to explain my realization that the poets who have most influenced me have been the poets who have said things I want to say. Whatever their style or specific subject matter, their words, at some point in my life, rang so true to me that when I read them, it was as if I had said them myself (or so I wished, anyway).

Today's post (which took 5 days to write) is about two of those poets: Sylvia Plath and Mary Oliver. These two poets have a lot of differences, but, in my mind anyway, they also have a lot in common. They are both poets I discovered outside of any classroom, and their heightened attention to their subject matter, different though it is, created poems that were exactly what I needed to read at two particular points in my life.

First, Sylvia Plath. It's very unoriginal for a young white woman who writes poems to say she was influenced by Sylvia Plath, but there you have it. I was reading Plath during my second year of college, a time in my life when, for whatever reason (being far away from home; subsisting exclusively on glazed donuts and plain bagels; new-found feminist rage; a long, rainy winter; unrequited love) I was sad a lot. Sometimes I was deeply, deeply sad, and sometimes I was angry. I had a group of girlfriends who were going through a similar time, and we read Sylvia Plath.

Why Plath? I also read a lot of Anne Sexton and Adrienne Rich, but Plath particularly stands out to me as an influence. Part of it has to be her biography. She was pretty and smart; she had a rocky love life with another famous poet; she killed herself by putting her head in a gas oven. That shouldn't be glamorous, but it was to me at the time I most loved Plath, and I know I am not alone. There is even a a movie about Plath's life. Perhaps it was the shock value of her life that attracted me to her at first. But what held my attention was her poetry.

My favorite Plath poem is "Elm." You can read the poem here.

I don't really want to explicate the poem, but I will say that I came across the fact that the poem was first published under the title "Elm Speaks" or "The Elm Speaks." Maybe I am slow, but I never thought of an elm speaking until I read that. Rereading the poem with the idea that the elm is speaking kind of clears things up a bit. To me, before I thought of that, I just had the idea that the speaker was like the elm.

And at the time I discovered this poem, I was like the elm too. The end of this poem especially seemed to speak to me:


I am inhabited by a cry.
Nightly it flaps out
Looking, with its hooks, for something to love.

I am terrified by this dark thing
That sleeps in me;
All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.

Clouds pass and disperse.
Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables?
Is it for such I agitate my heart?

I am incapable of more knowledge.
What is this, this face
So murderous in its strangle of branches?——

Its snaky acids kiss.
It petrifies the will. These are the isolate, slow faults
That kill, that kill, that kill.

If we want to be literal about the speaker being an elm, the "dark thing that sleeps in me" is an owl. But to a depressed and confused 20-year-old, the dark thing is/was the depression and confusion. And sometimes, in college, learning for the first time about feminism and colonialism and environmental destruction and the world's history of wars and who knows what else (liberal arts college, anyone?) I often felt "incapable of any more knowledge."

But besides the poem's subject matter, what struck me about this poem was the way it sounds. Plath's use of alliteration, rhyme, and repetition create these awesome, knife-like lines at just the right moments in the poems. Rhyming "that thing in me" with "malignity" is amazing. (Several of my teachers have commented on Plath as a champion rhymer; I am pretty sure one of them called her one of the best rhymers of the 20th century.) And that last stanza is, like a nightmarish nursery rhyme, is simply haunting:

these are the isolate, slow faults that kill, that kill, that kill.

When I was 20, those lines were in my head for months.

Then. Something happened.

Maybe the lines rang even truer? I fell in love with sadness for awhile. It fell in love with it because it was real, but paradoxically, that made it false, a kind of mask. A fault that could, in fact, kill. Like the myth of the crazy artist, it was dangerous.

I didn't want to be sad anymore, but my art was rooted in sadness. Then I discovered Mary Oliver.

Actually, Dean discovered Mary Oliver. And he gave me her book Dream Work. And then I married him.

This is Mary Oliver's "The Summer Day," which I already posted a few days ago. "Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" Not end it by putting my head in an oven, thank you all the same.

I want to make it very clear, though, that I am not blaming Sylvia Plath for her sadness, nor am I intending to trivialize her death. Mental illness and depression are very real things. And Plath's depression and despair were real, and her death was tragic. But I don't think it was depression and tragedy that made her an artist. In fact, I think remembering Plath's suicide over her poetry cheapens her art and her life.

For me, I had reached a point at which I was in danger of wearing depression as an artistic mask. Just as Plath's poetry gave me words to name my sadness, even rage, Oliver's poetry gave me words to answer it. (In fact, in her poem "Members of the Tribe," which is not online, she does something similar, if not just that.)

Here are some poems by Mary Oliver that are online. Scroll down and read "The Journey."

Now read the first poem, "Wild Geese."

These poems are still, in my mind, tinged with a certain sadness. They are not the stuff of greeting cards. There is "despair," even "terrible melancholy." But, almost like an ars poetica, these poems allow a way out of the sadness. The way is living, choosing to live in the physical world, and if you are a writer, it is writing.

Overall, I don't find Oliver as technically exhilarating as Plath, but in my favorites of her works, the rich, almost photographically-precise images build with a measured, straightforward voice to create poems with just as much power as Plath's. Obviously, the voices are very different. But both are honest and direct. They are real. Those are certainly three qualities I hope for in my own poetry.

So thank you, Sylvia and Mary, for creating your poems.

Whew. Stay tuned for part 3, when I tackle either the Romantics or the Modernists. Or maybe both?

It's not poetry, but...

it IS fantastic! I always wanted to create a Peep diorama when I lived in DC. In honor of the pure fun of creativity, enjoy this slideshow!