Weirdest poem I've ever written...

This process was extremely detailed and very confusing, but you've got to know it.

First, Dr. Dubrasky said to visualize ourselves getting into a car, and driving to our favorite place. Then she told us to write down 15 nouns, 15 action verbs, and 15 adjectives/adverbs that were in or described the place we visualized. Then she told us to make 3 categories: blue, black, and brown. We had to put 5 nouns, 5 verbs, and 5 adjectives in each category. Then we had to pick one word that described that category. THEN we had to pick one more word that described the three describing words. That final word was to be the title of our poem, and we had to use one category for one stanza, adding words if necessary. So here's my poem:

PINPRICK

The children playing, splashing

Bright blue sky onto the cool driveway,

The wind blowing, sending yellow shadows flying

Onto the shining green grass

Near the hedge entwined with wisteria.

The fence is waiting,

Humming with electricity,

Guarding against the mountains beyond.

The family in the house behind the pergola is laughing,

Stupid little chirping laughs,

Like the birds in the red tree.

But the silence and calm of the mountains is so alluring,

And the golden sunlight is warm on my skin,

So I’ll be patient.

The sharp smell of weed killer permeates the air,

And I can hear the small sound of gnats buzzing above the kiddie pool,

Creating a discordant harmony with the lazy chirping of the crickets I can see in the

grass.

The pool water is still, and all is quiet,

Sitting in the sun, talking with my brother on a warm summer day.

Melted

Grandpa,
Was it hot, that day you walked
To the Meadow Gold Dairy for a field trip?
Was it sunny?
The red sign on the wall would have reflected the sun.
Did it shine in your eyes?
Was the inside cool and clean?
At the end of the day, when they gave you
The Fudgesicle,
Did all your friends rip off the wrappers
And stuff them in their mouths?
Did you take the wrapper off too?
Is that why, as you carried yourself home on your crutches,
Your fudgesicle melted along the way?
Is that why there was nothing left when you got back
But a chocolate-stained popsicle stick?

My Thoughts on My Work

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.

Revision

In poetry, we were assigned to write 12 or so poems. Then we've got to revise 5 of them to turn in as a portfolio on Thursday. Here are my five:

------

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,

The red bug, the fly, and me.

------

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?

And you reply:

------

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

The past refuses to die?

------

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?

I dare not do it. I need my freedom.

------

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.

We’re alive, and we remember.

Tradition

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.

Poetry update

It's been a while since I posted my latest poems, so here they are:

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?

Kolob

HERE

Here is beautiful.

The red mountains,

Nothing could grow on their face.

Why, then, is there beauty here?

Here is extreme.

The sun is brighter,

And the sky,

The bluest I’ve ever seen.

Here is unchanged.

Man has been here,

And those before him,

They have been here too,

And will be here after.

Here is blurry.

The line between what is natural

And what is supernatural,

It doesn’t exist here.

Kolob means “close to God,”

And nowhere do I feel closer to Him

Than here.

Villanelle

Author's Note: I hate villanelles. Seriously. I thought pantoums were bad, but these just might be worse!

----------

CAN’T

I might end up in poet’s hell.

I can write sonnets and haikus,

But I can’t write this villanelle.

I used to think I could write well,

But now I don’t know what to do!

Hey! Maybe I’ll go to poet’s hell.

I can spin wonderful tales to tell,

Stories that would enrapture you.

But I can’t write a villanelle.

If we could work together, that’d be swell!

But you’re not a writer, so I’ll go without you,

Off on my own to poet’s hell.

Maybe if I drank a bottle of Propel,

Then I’d at least have the energy to.

But right now I’m too tired to write a villanelle.

If I could do it, it’d put you under a spell,

And just in time for Halloween, too!

So maybe I’m going to poet’s hell,

But I just can’t write this villanelle.

Elegy

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,

Your coattails flying.

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 the 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 so I ask you now,

Do you have any regrets?

And you answer:

200th post!

This is my poetry for this week. The assignment was to read a book of poems by Laura Tohe, choose six lines that we liked, then write lines to go along with them. The first line is hers, the next is mine, and so on. Then we had to take our lines and put them together into a poem.

FLYING

At the rim, I want to jump into your canyon and run into your ocean, naked and reborn.

This is where I was born and where I will die, in the oceans of red sand like blood - one with the earth.

Winter mornings when the red earth is dry, I will reach for you.

And when spring comes again, the warm, wet earth will bleed red with life.

The silver breath of a thousand horses, and it is only yours I seek

Solid, cold, unchanging - why is it always you I turn to?

I can't go near you without feeling the earth sing through you.

Strong and eternal - your voice, melting like honey, warm, safe, and healing.

Cedar and rock monoliths know the motion of the wind, the patience of waiting, the gathering of strength, here it's possible to know the world in the words of our ancestors, the simple beauty of blue horses running.

We, too, gather our strength, waiting for our own turn to break free and run with the wind.

Take this map of rainbows and fly, fly, child.

This is the charge we've been given: to live, and learn, and love. Let us fly.

FLYING

This is where I was born and where I will die, in the oceans of red sand like blood - one with the earth.

And when spring comes again, the warm, wet earth will bleed red with life.

Solid, cold, unchanging - why is it always you I turn to?

Strong and eternal - your voice, melting like honey, warm, safe, and healing.

We, too, gather our strength, waiting for our own turn to break free and run with the wind.

This is the charge we've been given: to live, and learn, and love. Let us fly.

Wasatch

{{{ This is my assignment for this week's Poetry class. It's due on Tuesday. Please take a look at it and tell me what you think, and if any changes should be made. I want this one to be read-in-class worthy. Thanks, all! }}}

Wasatch

That forest, those hundred-foot cottonwoods,

They tower over everything -

Powerful, majestic, eternal.

Deadly.

It is 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 granddaughter, our cousin.

See that towering cottonwood there?

One hundred feet, tops.

The one that killed my family

Was even bigger.

We're not afraid of these trees,

Not anymore.

Year after year after year

We come back to remember - to immortalize.

It's been ten years now.

The two young memorial trees

Are growing strong,

A beautiful flower bed 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.

We're alive, and we remember.

Haiku Sequence

He passed me in the hallway,

A hot smell, like coffee,

Doesn't match the sun outside.

Walking to school this morning -

Chill, for September.

I should've warn a jacket.

Why are the Provo mountains

Orange already?

Those in Cedar are still green.

The grass has gotten greener

In the last few days -

Isn't that kind of backwards?

Miniscule red bug

Crawling across my paper,

Savor the sunlight.

The September sky:

It's not quite blue anymore,

Washed out, actually.

Sitting in the grass,

The red bug, the fly, and me.

Summer is waning.

(( This was our assignment for Poetry this week. She told us that haikus had syllable counts of 7-5-7, but we figured out yesterday that it's actually 5-7-5, so half of mine are one way and the other half is the other way. ))

Weekly Writing

I figured, since I'm an English major.... Hm. Let me back up. Since I'm an English major, I'm doing a lot of writing. That's kind of a given. So I figured I'd post some of it here. I might as well, I mean, what does Lila post on her blog? Photos (mostly), and she's a photography major. So! Here goes:

This one is for this week's Intermediate Poetry class. The assignment was a Short Narrative, 12-14 lines with 10-12 syllables in each line, no rhyme or meter:

BIRTHDAY

They burst into my room on the stroke of midnight,

Arms full of candy and roses for my birthday.

We went to the theatre, my boyfriend and I,

Laughing at the antics of the wannabe Scots.

Then to dinner, then home – my real home this time.

Next day, more theatre, The Lion King was great.

Spice cake and ice cream on Sunday with my fam’ly,

Life cannot get any sweeter than today.

Then breakfast in bed, a holiday off from school.

Lazy day with family, playing in the yard.

But now the sun is setting, it’s time to go home,

And I can safely say, “Best birthday ever.”

This is one I wrote for last week, it's called a Quotielian. Basically, all we had to do was write down one observation/description per day. The last line was an adaptation of 2 lines from Macbeth, one where Lady Macbeth says, "Make thick my blood," and another where Banquo (or Macduff) says, "this guest of summer." So we twisted that around and stuck our versions on the end of our poems:

QUOTIELIAN

The near-full moon, robed in wisps of blue-white-grey cloud, climbs slowly into the sky.

His outfit - forest green pants, soft tan shirt, warm red necktie - the very image of a summer's day in the desert.

The curtains darkened the room so much that I thought the sun had gone out.

The clock creeps by with interminable slowness.

The two divas - one dark, one fair - sit side by side, eyeing the soloist with small, slightly mocking smiles.

The circles under her eyes are evidence of a sleepless night, and she sits with eyes downcast, the picture of boredom.

The audience trickles into the waiting theatre, noisy and uncultured, at home in this relaxed, expectant atmosphere.

Make sweet my song, this echo of merriment.

(yes, I know you've seen that bit about the divas before, but it just fit so well here)