Part 1, by the way, will end at about Chapter 24 of the book, with Voldemort gaining possession of the Elder wand, one of the three Deathly Hallows that allow the bearer to conquer death.
I’m a firm believer in raw emotion. I’ve always felt that my best work comes when I’m not trying too hard, and I believe that this especially shows in my poetry. Poetry, to me, is more potent than fiction in expressing one’s true feelings. I often feel that when I read a poem I am looking into that author’s soul, and this is not a feeling I get with fiction. Of all the poems I wrote this semester, the ones that mean the most to me are the elegy, “October,” my open form poem, “Reaching,” and my pastoral, “Wasatch.” These three poems were written in the proverbial “heat of the moment,” and I tried to convey my emotions through the poetry. As I wrote, I had no thought whatsoever for the form of these poems. It was only later, during revisions, that I realized that whatever form these poems had taken expressed the desired emotions just as much as the words themselves. Since I realized this, the revision process was extremely simple for me. I had figured out that the form worked the way it was, and if I tried to mess with it too much I would lose something.
Let us look first at the elegy, “October.” I feel that some back-story is necessary here. When I was fourteen years old, I was enamored with the world of theatre. It was everything I wanted at the time. Everything I did was putting me towards that goal. It was not until I came to SUU that I decided to leave that world behind me. October has always been the time of year that these memories come back the strongest; because it seems that all of my theatre memories happened in October. I made the switch from a music performance major to an English major in January of 2009 because I knew that I had to do it. Somewhere deep down, I knew that I needed to write more than I needed to perform. But even now, as much as I love writing, I feel a sense of loss for my former self. I tried to convey that in this poem, not only with the words but with the structure of the stanzas as well. The line numbers themselves are insignificant, but the pattern is what matters. Two stanzas of three, then two of four, with the exception of the last stanza. It should have four lines, as per the pattern, but I ended it at three because that era of my life, despite its potency at the time, was cut short. The only change that I made in the revision of this poem was to cut one line and add another so that the line count matched up in each stanza.
The open form poem, “Reaching,” is a companion to “October,” and was written only a few weeks later. This one was especially meaningful to me because this year the nostalgia lasted longer than the month of October. Usually October is a bit mellow because of all the memories, but November – and the beginning of the holiday season – brightens things up a bit. This wasn’t the case this year, though. The first few weeks of November were especially painful, remembering the theatre I had done in the past and how much I missed that world. Also, a boy who’s broken my heart more times than I care to admit decided to start talking to me again, and that’s always difficult. The form of this poem was assigned, but I still was pleasantly surprised by the ease that this content fit into the form. The stanzas are, again, simply the length they are to create a nice feeling of conciseness, but it’s the couplets that I wrestled with. I tried to write them so that, even if they had punctuation, they could be read as a single thought. This is especially true with the second couplet. It can read, “It can reach me here in the safety of November,” but it can also read, “It can reach me here. In the safety of November, the memories return.” I tried to use the couplets to create that sense of punctum, because early November was just that, a bit painful. I also find it interesting to note that punctum is also the Latin word for tear ducts. That is an interesting correlation. I actually made no revisions to this poem, because this was one of those cases where I felt that the raw emotion would be lost if I changed anything.
The third poem I’ve chosen is my pastoral, “Wasatch.” It wasn’t until after I’d written it that I realized that this pastoral is also an elegy, and that was not a conscious choice on my part. The assignment for this poem was to think of our relationship to a particular place in nature, and nowhere do I have a stronger relationship than with South Fork Park, which is up Provo Canyon in the Wasatch Mountains. On June 5, 2000 a cottonwood tree fell as my family was having a birthday party. My grandmother and cousin, both named Mollie Rose Sorensen, were killed. As I wrote this poem, I tried to remember how I felt in the early years after the accident. I was afraid of cottonwood trees. I wanted them all cut down. But as the years have passed and my family has gone back every Memorial Day to plant flowers, I have lost that fear. I enjoy going to that park now. I might even go so far as to say I feel safe there. I almost feel a disdain for the cottonwood trees that grow there now, because I know that the one that fell on our birthday party was bigger than the ones that are still there, and I tried to convey this in my poem as well. Part of the assignment for this poem was that the stanzas were each four lines long, so my writing process went something like this: freewrite about how I feel about South Fork Park, then and now; dash out some quatrains on the subject; pick the best quatrains and re-order them into a poem. I was frankly surprised by how well the quatrains fit together and managed to convey how I really felt. The only changes I made to this poem were to add another stanza talking about my cousin and grandmother, and to fix some simple grammatical errors.
When I first embarked on this semester, I thought that I would be forced to revise my work, and I worried that I would lose that raw emotion. Since I have tried to revise my poems, though, I’ve realized that the raw emotion is what makes the poetry work. The simple revisions I’ve made have no doubt helped a bit, but the revisions were so simple, so small, that I hardly notice them at all. I guess I’ve truly realized what Basho meant when he said that there can be no distance between the writer and the subject of the poem. When this happens with me, the “end” result is a poem that is full of the emotions I wish to convey, and no revision is necessary.
Musings by Taylor Creek
The red mountains,
Giant monoliths of Navajo and Dakota sandstone,
Tower at impossible heights,
Sheer cliffs dropping off for hundreds of feet.
Nothing can grow up there.
Only here, on the banks of Taylor Creek,
Can I see the trees –
Juniper, cottonwood, quaking aspen, piñon pine–
That have sheltered the life of the canyon
For thousands of years.
The first ones hunted and gathered,
The second ones planted and built their pueblos,
The third ones settled and named the place Kolob – close to God.
I am here now, alone in the brilliant sunlight,
And when I am gone someone else will take my place.
Hopefully they will worship this place as I do.
As I listen to the water falling over itself –
Where does it come from, this eternal spring? –
I feel that this could have been the place
Where Eve took the apple and life began.
Kolob means “close to God,”
And nowhere do I feel closer to him
Than here.
NINTH
The September sky:
It’s not quite blue anymore –
Washed out, actually.
Miniscule red bug
Crawling across my paper,
Savor the sunlight.
Sitting in the grass
As summer draws to a close,
OCTOBER
That darkened street,
And the streetlamp – orange,
The smell of snow was on the air.
Your hair was down and loose
And you ran
As fast as you could down the road.
So much energy.
Your fingers buzzed with it.
Boundless energy and laughter
And secrets.
You were always running then
Laughing then dancing then
Playing then wishing then
Living, then.
Where are you now?
On this cold October street
Under this orange streetlight?
No.
You are gone with The October,
That one so long ago.
You chose a different path,
A different Creation that wasted you.
But you knew what you were leaving behind,
And you went willingly.
I ask you now,
Do you have any regrets?
REACHING
The leaves are all
Fallen. Finally, October
Has ended. Nothing
Good has ever come
From that month, and
I escaped
Unscathed
This time. But
Now October
Has grown arms, and
It can reach
Me here. In
The safety of November
The memories return.
Why? Where will
I find peace? And
When will I
Be freed from this
Past nightmare?
Where do I go to
Hide from my
Own soul? Can
It be done when
BORN FREE
In no way could I tell you the truth now.
I dare not break your heart more than I have.
I was not made to bend and scrape and bow
At husband’s feet till I’m laid in the grave.
I love the wind, the sky, the earth, and rain,
The lightning and thunder, the burning sun.
They bid me follow them again,
To this rough-hewn valley I now call home.
You would not - you could not - follow me here.
You are content to stay just where you are,
Living in suburbia year after year,
Where city lights make invisible stars.
If you’d go with me, would I let you come?
WASATCH
This forest, these hundred-foot cottonwoods,
They tower over everything –
Powerful, majestic, eternal.
Deadly.
It was here, among the trees,
On this sweeping green lawn,
In the lush, wild, untamable forest,
With the clear cold creek running by.
It is here where we lost
Our wife, our mother, our grandmother.
And here where we lost
Our daughter, our sister, our cousin, our granddaughter.
They were wise and fair,
Beautiful as the roses
For which they were named,
And, like roses, too soon cut down.
See that towering cottonwood there?
One hundred feet, at the most.
The one that killed
Was even taller.
We’re not afraid of these trees,
Not anymore.
Year after year after year
We return to remember – to immortalize.
It’s been ten years now.
The two young memorial trees
Are growing strong,
A beautiful flowerbed at their feet.
It is here where we return
To remember their lives – not their deaths.
We plant those flowers for them –
Because they want us to live.
They want us to live like this forest,
Green and growing, alive, eternal.
The trees and us – our roots go deep.
In a world of changes,
Some things remain the same:
Snow still falls in the wintertime,
Birds still fly south when the cold descends,
And the family still gathers for the holidays.
The uncles and grandpa discuss hunting, football, and politics;
The aunts swap recipes and child-rearing secrets;
The children run wild in circles round the house;
And grandma looks on with misty eyes.
Stories are swapped over the dinner table,
Over the kitchen sink,
Before the fireplace.
The revelry continues late into the night
And the winter sky grows dark.
All the while, snow is falling from the bottomless sky.
Today!! *happy dance* I'm excited! And a little sad... But mostly excited!!! Next week, people! HP7 hits theaters worldwide next Friday!! *more dancing*
IN BETWEEN
The touching,
The seeing,
The experience.
The pushing,
The pulling,
The unbrokenness.
The taking,
The leaving,
The nonexistence.
The going out,
The coming in,
The existence.
The wounding,
The healing,
The immortality.
The living,
The being,
The eternity.
REACHING
The leaves are all
Fallen. Finally, October
Has ended. Nothing
Good has ever come
From that month,
And I escaped
Unscathed
This time. Or so
I thought. But
Now October
Has grown arms,
And it can reach
Me here. In
The safety of November
The memories return.
Why? Where will
I find peace?
And when will I
Be freed from this
Past nightmare?
Where do I go to
Hide from my
Own soul? Can
It be done when the past
Refuses to die?