31. From the End of the Semester, Looking Back

In my introduction at the beginning of the semester, I laid out the things I expected to dominate my poetry in the class: My move from NY to the South; How difficult it is for me to coincide an adoration of my friends here, while missing my best friend in NY so much; My hate-hate- relationship with obsessive compulsive tendencies.

I fully expected my poems to be laden with these themes and though, on several occasions, I started to write about these things, the poems never made it past a couple of stanzas. You all know what my poems ended up being centered around this semester.

I was rocked by the death of my aunt in February. It was expected, because she'd had cancer for over a year and a half, but she moved to GA, finally had her own apartment and then her health deteriorated suddenly, and she was gone in two months.

In a way, I'm glad I focused on this poetry now, because maybe it'll allow me to write other things in the future. Sure, I'll always feel the things that were instilled in my poetry, and sometimes a poem about it will likely surface, but I want to be able to write about things other than death. That wasn't the case this semester and in a sense, I'm really sorry about that, too. I wish I could have shown everyone that I could write about normal things, too. It got a little depressing, I'm sure, to pull out my poem each week and say, "Oh, Jenna's writing about death again! What a surprise!"

Nothing I said about my views on writing (in my introduction) has changed. I still believe you write for yourself first, then edit for other people later. In fact, this class likely strengthened that belief, because of the process of writing and then being workshopped. I loved that. I love editing and if it wasn't for my other classes, I probably could have easily spent hours on each poem I was given to critique. I adore this kind of work.

However, not everything is exactly the same as it was in January. The title of my blog is "Organized Ramblings of a Prosaic Poet." I don't know if, now, I would still classify myself that way... sure, I love prose, I plan on getting significantly better at it so I can utilize that love in the future but... maybe poetry isn't so bad.

It was exhausting to write a poem every week, absolutely. But... I have to admit, I didn't hate it. I didn't love it when this activity was taking place at 1am and I was exhausted, but, even if most of the time I was unhappy with the product, it was nice to be actively producing again.

(Ignore following cliche:) I learned a lot in this class, I'm happy to report. I don't hate forms, like I initially thought I did, and I don't hate writing poetry. I've become a more apt reader by reading every one's work every week and it's further instilled my love of editing. Workshopping was always my favorite day, so long as I wasn't the one being workshopped!

I enjoyed this class a lot, and I'm sorry to see that the workshopping is coming to an end. I hope everyone else enjoyed it, too!

30. What to Do... with my Haiku! (haha)

Alright, so the haiku exercise we did for class...

I really want to use it for my final binder. A few times now I've tried to rewrite it into a poem, trying to use some sort of form, if not a strict one, but it just isn't cooperating. There is a lot of superfluous stuff in my original assignment, which I plan on cutting out/re-writing/re-placing, but the problem primarily is figuring out what kind of form to wrestle it into.

My original work:

Jenna Harvie
Haiku practices

closed bedroom door --
her shadow darkens
the crack of light
--Penny Harter

While sitting in class: the Haiku seems rather harmless. It’s a homework assignment, a nicely simple image, but nothing more than a poem in a form you don’t particularly enjoy.

While watching television, a crime series: the Haiku seems like it fits perfectly in that world. It’s a scene in your head and it flashes in to be part of the episode. You have to remind yourself later that you made that part up.

While walking from your car into your house, at night, alone: the Haiku is suddenly very sinister. There’s a person waiting for you, now, hiding just out of sight. You don’t notice the small details that would give away their hiding place. You are afraid. When you get inside, you lock the doors, and wonder if you locked the stalker inside with you.

While sitting in the living room talking to your parents: the Haiku is slightly silly, but still heavy. The “her” is now your sister, standing just around the corner, listening to your conversation. She misunderstands the context and becomes upset. Again, you have to remind yourself this did not really happen.

When playing with your friend’s baby, in her room, with the door slightly open: the Haiku is foreboding. In your mind, your friend watches through the crack and sees how happy you are tickling her beautiful baby girl. She worries why she can’t keep that happy attitude all of the time. Later, she will contemplate walking out and leaving the baby alone, with your smiling face as the goal and guilt in her mind.

When watching television, a comedy: the Haiku is funny. You imagine the door is open rather wide, but a large man in a Hawaiian print shirt still manages to block out all light. Joey and Chandler exchange rude, but funny, remarks at this man’s expense. It is all in your head.

When sitting alone, in your bedroom: the Haiku is a painful reminder of the death you’re still reeling from. You are alone, with a dark shadow that lurks over you always. You try to find the light, but it is snuffed out with every memory, happy or sad.


I tried it already in my own created form (a convoluted but excitingly challenging form that consists of quatrains and tercets, with a rhyme scheme and a series of repeating lines), but it was much too strict for this form. I gave up on stanza three. The same was true of a pantoum.

Should I write this just in stanzas, should I write it freely, is there a form I'm missing that might work? Maybe some level of anaphora?

I'm very open to suggestions, thanks!

29. Marge Piercy

A free entry on a few poems I like by Marge Piercy:


For the Young Who Want To


Talent is what they say
you have after the novel
is published and favorably
reviewed. Beforehand what
you have is a tedious
delusion, a hobby like knitting.

Work is what you have done
after the play is produced
and the audience claps.
Before that friends keep asking
when you are planning to go
out and get a job.

Genius is what they know you
had after the third volume
of remarkable poems. Earlier
they accuse you of withdrawing,
ask why you don't have a baby,
call you a bum.

The reason people want M.F.A.'s,
take workshops with fancy names
when all you can really
learn is a few techniques,
typing instructions and some-
body else's mannerisms

is that every artist lacks
a license to hang on the wall
like your optician, your vet
proving you may be a clumsy sadist
whose fillings fall into the stew
but you're certified a dentist.

The real writer is one
who really writes. Talent
is an invention like phlogiston
after the fact of fire.
Work is its own cure. You have to
like it better than being loved.

Marge Piercy


I think this poem is really true, and something English people can relate to; "What are you going to do with an ENGLISH degree? You gonna teach?"

That last line really drives the rest of the poem home, too--the idea of not having a plaque to hang on the wall, etc.


A beautiful poem on female opression:

A Work of Artific


The bonsai tree
in the attractive pot
could have grown eighty feet tall
on the side of a mountain
till split by lightning.
But a gardener
carefully pruned it.
It is nine inches high.
Every day as he
whittles back the branches
the gardener croons,
It is your nature
to be small and cozy,
domestic and weak;
how lucky, little tree,
to have a pot to grow in.
With living creaturesa
one must begin very early
to dwarf their growth:
the bound feet,
the crippled brain,
the hair in curlers,
the hands you
love to touch.

Marge Piercy

28. anyone lived in a pretty how town

I really love the poem below, and I have every since reading it in my 10th grade American Lit class. It's the sound of poem--the way cummings can utilize rhyme in every stanza without it feeling bogged down. He flows through lines so well (though there are a few places I stumble when the rhythm seems suddenly off) and I really admire that. I'm trying to read poems like this, that flow so perfectly and feel like poetry at the very essence of it, and hopefully draw inspiration from the way the lines are laid out. Personally, I'm not a rhymer; I havea a friend that does it fairly well and I'm surprised by that every time I read his work, but it just isn't something I've ever felt the urge to employ.

I make a connection to The Odyssey, too, with the "noone" double-meaning; I love literary connections!

anyone lived in a pretty how town
by E. E. Cummings


anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn't he danced his did

Women and men(both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn't they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain

children guessed(but only a few
and down they forgot as up they grew
autumn winter spring summer)
that noone loved him more by more

when by now and tree by leaf
she laughed his joy she cried his grief
bird by snow and stir by still
anyone's any was all to her

someones married their everyones
laughed their cryings and did their dance
(sleep wake hope and then)they
said their nevers they slept their dream

stars rain sun moon
(and only the snow can begin to explain
how children are apt to forget to remember
with up so floating many bells down)

one day anyone died i guess
(and noone stooped to kiss his face)
busy folk buried them side by side
little by little and was by was

all by all and deep by deep
and more by more they dream their sleep
noone and anyone earth by april
wish by spirit and if by yes.

Women and men(both dong and ding)
summer autumn winter spring
reaped their sowing and went their came
sun moon stars rain

27. An Amputee's Guide to Sex

I've always thought: Nothing major has ever happened to me. I have nothing to write about.

Granted, that may not be true; To put it melodramatically, we all have experiences that other people will never go through, and so, in a way, our life is "big" enough because it is OUR life, and no one elses.

But this idea, that to be a writer you have to experience something, really came up when I went to the Eclectic release party. Other than the student readers, there were two published writers, one of prose and one primarily of poetry. The poet, Jillian Weise, was absolutely fantastic-- she was lively, engaging, read well, her work was interesting. And she's an amputee.

She read from one of her collections, The Amputee's Guide to Sex (who doesn't get caught up with a title like that), and though the poems were simple, explaining things we both all know and all don't understand, they were so grounded in real-life, I was both inspired and intimidated. This woman, I thought, has something to write about. She lives in a world parallel to ours, but totally seperate, too, and uses her words to invite us in to that world for a brief peek. What do I have like that?

As depressing as it can be, I find readings like that to be the most beneficial. She was fantastic, and I celebrate her awesomeness when it comes to writing simply but powerfully. However, it's easy to get lost in their experiences and think, Well, of course she's a good writer...look at that material she has. As though, for writers, the more abnormal you are, the more blessed you are (who knows, this could be very true, but I bring it up just as a general point).

I'll post a poem of hers, below, as well as a couple of links ot get to other poems of hers if you're interested (I like the simplistic storytelling of this one, which is why I chose it, but if anyone is intruiged by reading poems that center more fully on amputee's or amputees and sex, there are a few poem samples by her on the websites I'll link to). Let me know what you think/thought about her!

WAITING ROOM
By Jillian Weise

I said to myself: three days and you'll be seven years old.
Elizabeth Bishop, In the Waiting Room

We're in a waiting room crayoned
and carved: Toby was here 7-12-87.
There is bubble gum under your chair.
Degas' ballerinas with their feet

over their heads. Look what I can
do, they say to a room full of children
with back braces, broken breast plates.
In the corner, a woman knits sweaters.

She is known as Toby's Mother.
Toby is known as the-kid-with-leukemia.
He will be your roommate in Intensive Care.
He will wake you up, screaming

in the middle of the night and you will wish
he would go ahead and die. The Nelsons,
in the other corner, play chess. They wait
for doctors to explain why their daughter

won't eat. Every conversation is the same:
Have you taken the tubes out? Is she eating?
How much is she eating? Mrs. Nelson brings
homemade white chocolate chip cookies.

They used to be her daughter's favorite.
We like the Nelsons because they feed us.
We like them because they remind us that we
still eat, we're okay.

http://www.softskull.com/detailedbook.php?isbn=1-933368-52-7
http://books.google.com/books?id=gzf5bu6u9xIC&dq=The+Amputee's+Guide+to+Sex&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=Vc22S6L1C4fu9gT8l-TqAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CBcQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=&f=false

26. The Onion, Memory

So, for my part of the presentation we're doing on Tuesday, I'm focusing on the Martian School of Poetry. It's a pretty cool form (though I guess it's not a form, but rather a thematic choice, maybe?), where the poet disassociates himself from the object and explains it through unfamiliar eyes. Defamiliarization, it's called. I was unable to find a full poem but Reid, but Raine's A Martian Sends a Postcard Home is really great and I could talk about it all day, so I put that in there. I did want to give another example, though; it's one that I didn't put in the packet because I have trouble understanding it, so I certainly can't help lead discussion on it. Here it is, below. It's called "The Onion, Memory" and again, it's by Craig Raine. Let me know what you think! (And don't judge Martian poetry solely on this example...I'm admitting it's obscure-ish).

The Onion, Memory
Craig Raine

Divorced, but friends again at last,
we walk old ground together
in bright blue uncomplicated weather.
We laugh and pause
to hack to bits these tiny dinosaurs,
prehistoric, crenelated, cast
between the tractor ruts in mud.

On the green, a junior Douglas Fairbanks,
swinging on the chestnut's unlit chandelier,
defies the corporation spears--
a single rank around the bole,
rusty with blood.
Green, tacky phalluses curve up, romance
A gust--the old flag blazes on its pole.

In the village bakery
the pastry babies pass
from milky slump to crusty cadaver,
from crib to coffin--without palaver.
All's over in a flash,
too silently...

Tonight the arum lilies fold
back napkins monogrammed in gold,
crisp and laundered fresh.
Those crustaceous gladioli, on the sly,
reveal the crimson flower-flesh
inside their emerald armor plate.
The uncooked herrings blink a tearful eye.
The candles palpitate.
The Oistrakhs bow and scrape
in evening dress, on Emi-tape.

Outside the trees are bending over backwards
to please the wind : the shining sword
grass flattens on its belly.
The white-thorn's frillies offer no resistance.
In the fridge, a heart-shaped jelly
strives to keep a sense of balance.

I slice up the onions. You sew up a dress.
This is the quiet echo--flesh--
white muscle on white muscle,
intimately folded skin,
finished with a satin rustle.
One button only to undo, sewn up with shabby thread.
It is the onion, memory,
that makes me cry.

Because there's everything and nothing to be said,
the clock with hands held up before its face,
stammers softly on, trying to complete a phrase--
while we, together and apart,
repeat unfinished festures got by heart.

And afterwards, I blunder with the washing on the line--
headless torsos, faceless lovers, friends of mine.

25. A Lost Loss

Elegy to a Lost Loss

I have a sudden realization that you must be gone
because I’m not crying, or wearing black.

Fear of this intense detachment embraces
me and with fervor I’m suddenly pawing through books,
searching for songs, gazing at pictures

as though these typical activities will lure you back again. I realize
that this is the problem--

I’ve been using you for too long
And now that you’re gone,
what fortitude will my writing have, without you to push me?

I think this relationship is shriveling because of your betrayal--
It’s been three weeks since I’ve cried with any real power

so what did you expect me to do? You were withdrawing,
but you’re a necessity now so I had to resort
to ways of keeping you with me.

It doesn’t seem right, for you to up and leave like this without warning,
because we’ve been so closely tied for so long and it’s your duty to prop me up

but then I wonder was it really without warning? I think you’ve been trying
to tell me, for a long time now, that you had to go
and I resisted despite the drawbacks, because you make me feel whole.

You may be right, but you’ve been such a big part
Of my written life thus far, that I don’t care.

An overabundance of you encompasses me, so where are you now--
I need you most, at this moment, because I’m not ready to step
back in to reality from our most recent rendezvous.

This one--
This one was just too much for me, you know that, and that’s why I’m not ready.

Did I take advantage of you? Is that why you’re leaving me?
I’ll admit there were times when I leaned too heavily, searched for
easy replacements, but what else do I have?

I fear that my writing can only contain fear
and death, because this is all I have experienced

And so, you must stay, because I draw from you.

______

This is the elegy I wrote for this week. Unfortunately, I'm very unhappy with it, because it isn't at all what I set out to do. I really wanted to write about this feeling I understand well--when your grief is withdrawing from you, it seems, because you don't think about it as much as you used to, and the guilt that ensues; I wanted to mix this with the idea that maybe this grief-feeling is dispersing because you've been using it too heavily lately either because you feel you should be sad or for inspirational purposes. I don't like the product and will likely rewite it because this is something I've wanted to write for a few weeks now, but I did find it interesting to write an elegy to an idea rather than to a person. It's surprisingly difficult, but I suggest everyone try it.