7. How(e) I Relate to Eve

Part of Eve's Discussion

It was like the moment when a bird decides not to eat from your hand, and flies, just before it flies, the moment the river seems to still and stop because a storm is coming, but there is no storm, as when a hundred starlings lift and bank together before they wheel and drop, very much like the moment, driving on bad ice, when it occurs to you your car could spin, just before it slowly begins to spin, like the moment just before you forgot what it was you were about to say, it was like that, and after that, it was still like that, only all the time.



This is one of those things that I read and just keep thinking "I. Wish. I. Wrote. This." That doesn't happen often--usually I can enjoy a piece from afar, applauding a writer's talent and wondering 'What can I selfishly take from this?'-- but occasionally I want to be 100% selfish. I want it to be mine.

I feel like I could talk about this poem forever, but I'll narrow my love down to a few points.

First, I find it difficult to call this a poem--does anyone know if that's what it's "classified" as (wow, hate using that word in this context)? But because it's in a book of poetry, I'll call it that. The drastic shift from typical stanzas and line breaks is sudden (though at the beginning of the work) and we all know anything sudden draws your attention to it. The first time I read it, I didn't really read it, though. I quickly looked over it, then moved on to poems-proper. Now that I have, of course, it's my favorite.

The images and ideas, of course, are fantastic and though I may never have had a bird eat out of my hand, nor decline eating out of my hand, it's relatable. The way the ideas string together is my absolute favorite part, though--that she can use commas rather than any other punctuation mark and you can still read it logically, connecting the points together in a way that you otherwise wouldn't. It sets a fantastic rhythm, and I kind of obsess over rhythm.

The way this is written really reminds me of one of my favorite authors of all time, Audrey Niffenegger. I don't know if I can say she's a favorite author, because I've only read one of her books so far, but even though upon first glance at the plot the book seems like a sensationalized love story, it's not. Her writing style is absolutely gorgeous--expected images in a new way and long, drawn out lines, like in this poem. A quote from The Time Traveler's Wife can be found at the bottom of my Blog. So, of course, I liked that.

The title, too. As usual, I read the title but don't really think about it until I read through it, then I look back at it. It strikes me that the title is "PART of Eve's Discussion"...who else wants to know what happens before and after this??? Especially if it's written this way!

And last but not certainly not least, I'm relating to this poem big time right now. I have some hard-time stuff going on at home, and even if it's not what this poem is "about" (ew), it's exactly how I feel at the moment. Is that now the best thing--when you can read a poem and get lost for a while, forgetting everything going on in real life?

6. She Wore Only Long Sleeved Shirts

As me free entry this week, I'm going to post the poem I submitted for the first round of work shopping. Of course, I've already gotten everyone's comments and I've read over them several times. We all can't get orally-workshopped every week, though, and I ended up actually kind of liking this one, the problem is...I apparently didn't get across what I intended to. For anyone that is willing to, I'd really like for you guys to read over it one more time, then read my explanation of what it was SUPPOSED to be about, reread the poem, and help me out on what to add or remove to make that more apparent.

(Ignore the "___", indenting doesn't take on the blog, so I needed to get a bit inventive.)

______________________________________________________
She Wore Only Long Sleeved Shirts

Every morning she put on a long sleeved shirt
and always took a pen.
___Because Dave was still talking to her
___about his wife; Because Renee, the adrenaline-obsessed
___secretary could do something unexpected.

Every afternoon she hid from nonfiction dialogue
and prayed for fictional pain.
___Tales of desperation and death
___with life and loss and truth scratched
___their places into her wrists and then held on like 4-D tourniquets.

Every day she missed someone calling her attention
until she had no name.
___But--potential exotic names slashed
___vertically up her wrists, vaguely attached to lovely notions:
___loneliness, betrayal, envy.

Every night she scrubbed those arms no one saw until they bled,
raw and clean and smooth.
___She started over
___in a world where spring air
___got to taste like kiwi pear chamomile tea.

But she'd never had kiwi pear chamomile tea
Or connected notion to product.
Fictional pain became too 4-D
And Dave and Renee were too selfish to care.

And when she died the only writing she was commemorated by
was a reminder that she should rest in peace.

______________________________________________________
Alright. So, I think this is a perfect example for how a writer can totally, completely understand one of their ideas and THINK they present it clearly, but the connection ends up only existing in their head. That's apparently what happened here, because I still understand this poem as what I meant for it to be, though I can certainly understand all of the connections everyone made in workshop.

It's supposed to be about a writer. She writes ideas for stories (plot lines, character names, etc.) on her arms, but wears a long sleeved shirt so no one can see--so she can try to still fit in with "normal" people (of course all of this was also supposed to be an obvious connection to suicide, also).

• Dave and Renee are characters.

• She's too obsessed with fictional things (fake characters, big themes like desperation and loss and life, obscure but beautiful descriptions, like a spring air that gets to taste like kiwi pear chamomile tea) to really live in the real world (which relates to "Every day she missed someone calling her attention/until she had no name.")

• Despite this, she washes her arms off every night and starts over and when she dies, she's produced nothing.

Yes, of course there is a connection to cutting and suicide (I was feeling particularly frustrated with writing that night), but it's meant to ask the question "Is what we do worth it? Why do we slave over something insubstantial? Does it even matter?"

Honestly, I was worried the suicide aspect wouldn't play up enough (although upon rereading it is more apparent than I realized), and was expecting everyone to understand that it was about a writer, but I don't think anyone really did. Very much the fault of myself and not the reader, of course!

So, basically, my question is: What should I add or detract, what images should I play up or details should I put in to make this more obvious, to make my point actually come across?

And I encourage everyone to do this, if you have a poem you want more feedback on that you weren't able to get on your off-week of workshopping!

5. One-Liners are not Heroic

I don't know if I can say I have a favorite type of stanza, or anything like that. I was...confused by the concept of a one-line poem. I guess it takes a lot of effort and talent to convey something in one line, where every single syllable counts, but I also don't feel that you can say a lot in one line. At least, nothing substantial? I guess I just feel that you need a couple of stanzas (or, rather, several lines considering a single stanza is acceptable). Of course, nothing is as dreaded as the prose poem I dislike so much!

If I have to pick a type, I'm most interested in the potential of heroic couplets. In the stanza packet we read it says, "it was a form in which a high subject matter could be written." I think you could play with that idea a lot, through irony or some other means. On nationhumanitiescenter.org it says: "What happens in poems has a lot to do with what is going on in a particular society at a particular time." That fits, too...how 21st century is it to take something nearly perfected in the past, something so classic, and pick it up and turn it on its head while keeping the essence of it? I don't know, but I just love the entire concept behind that.