I’ve been thinking about writing a good amount lately. I read James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time, and other than knocking me upside the head every page, it reminded me of his quote about making each sentence as clean as a bone.
I read the sam sax poem that I recommended two blog posts ago and gosh, it just made me realize that poems don’t need to be as contrived as I make them. Whenever I write poetry, I try to pack all the mystery of Shakespeare into the lines with convoluted phrasing. Take this poem that I wrote a few weeks ago:
Brain wave
Hinges squeak as joyous news wrenches the cerebral
Wood open, flashing the temporal lobe cold.
As the neurons synapse and fire
hopes that ignore the last month, they
assume life as unchanged, the sky as still blue,
Her as reachable, attainable, physical
Parietal reality rockets towards the door
Shuts the frost out, warms the temporal lies.
It murmurs that I can tell someone else—
That their praises will sweeten the
Now curdled joy curved on my lips.
But the door knows the lack
it is barricaded against;
It knows what death took
And who I have to learn to live without.
Like, I had a real good time writing this poem. I liked researching parts of the brain and using the emotion and logical sides to describe this sentence from one of my earlier blog posts: Most of the time [the memory that she’s gone] without fanfare, like someone opened a door and the cold wind overwhelmed you before the door swung shut again, leaving you in the shock between temperatures. But does the poem make a lick of sense without this image stated clearly in a prose sentence? No, it really doesn’t.
I’m thinking that poetry is less about the cool words you use and more about the complexities of emotions that you are trying to bottle. I think some of the lines I’ve written in these blog posts have a lyrical nature to them, and I pulled some of them out to try to write poems about them, but maybe they don’t need to be poems because they can be expressed in this prose. Perhaps I should try to capture emotions that make less sense than those ones did.
In that spirit, here’s a draft of one trying to communicate the thoughts that have been rolling around in my head for the last week or so.
--
The pin
I’ve kept her card tucked in the back of my phone.
It doesn’t quite fit, covering a piece
Of the button to unlock the screen that used to connect me to her.
I’d like to say that it reminds me.
That it keeps me never in extremes
Keeps me heavenly minded.
Instead, it’s a nuisance I live with:
Pricked cheeks to keep me from bleeding out
Onto the white clothes of the mother-fulls out here.
“I wore her pin every day,”
My prof said after I cried in class,
“Just so I couldn’t avoid grief out here.”
--
I’m really nervous about student teaching. But today I was in a 7th-grade classroom with an awful teacher, and one of the students asked me, “Why do you want to teach?” I said something about my skills being suited to the profession and having relationships with my campers in the summers, but I was surprised at how off-guard I was caught. I caught myself from saying something about Mom because she is and isn’t why I’m going to be a teacher. It’s complicated.
I used to say I wanted to teach because the world is a story and every person’s life is a story, so English is how we connect to each other. Then I said I wanted to teach because I want to build relationships with young people. Right now, teaching for me is about seeing stories that haven’t been seen and encouraging students who don’t think they have a story or a future, that all they see themselves completing are video games. Maybe it’s about giving voices to students through reading, through writing, and through relationships. Maybe it’s just the most direct way to give my love and support direction.
I read the sam sax poem that I recommended two blog posts ago and gosh, it just made me realize that poems don’t need to be as contrived as I make them. Whenever I write poetry, I try to pack all the mystery of Shakespeare into the lines with convoluted phrasing. Take this poem that I wrote a few weeks ago:
Brain wave
Hinges squeak as joyous news wrenches the cerebral
Wood open, flashing the temporal lobe cold.
As the neurons synapse and fire
hopes that ignore the last month, they
assume life as unchanged, the sky as still blue,
Her as reachable, attainable, physical
Parietal reality rockets towards the door
Shuts the frost out, warms the temporal lies.
It murmurs that I can tell someone else—
That their praises will sweeten the
Now curdled joy curved on my lips.
But the door knows the lack
it is barricaded against;
It knows what death took
And who I have to learn to live without.
Like, I had a real good time writing this poem. I liked researching parts of the brain and using the emotion and logical sides to describe this sentence from one of my earlier blog posts: Most of the time [the memory that she’s gone] without fanfare, like someone opened a door and the cold wind overwhelmed you before the door swung shut again, leaving you in the shock between temperatures. But does the poem make a lick of sense without this image stated clearly in a prose sentence? No, it really doesn’t.
I’m thinking that poetry is less about the cool words you use and more about the complexities of emotions that you are trying to bottle. I think some of the lines I’ve written in these blog posts have a lyrical nature to them, and I pulled some of them out to try to write poems about them, but maybe they don’t need to be poems because they can be expressed in this prose. Perhaps I should try to capture emotions that make less sense than those ones did.
In that spirit, here’s a draft of one trying to communicate the thoughts that have been rolling around in my head for the last week or so.
--
The pin
I’ve kept her card tucked in the back of my phone.
It doesn’t quite fit, covering a piece
Of the button to unlock the screen that used to connect me to her.
I’d like to say that it reminds me.
That it keeps me never in extremes
Keeps me heavenly minded.
Instead, it’s a nuisance I live with:
Pricked cheeks to keep me from bleeding out
Onto the white clothes of the mother-fulls out here.
“I wore her pin every day,”
My prof said after I cried in class,
“Just so I couldn’t avoid grief out here.”
--
I’m really nervous about student teaching. But today I was in a 7th-grade classroom with an awful teacher, and one of the students asked me, “Why do you want to teach?” I said something about my skills being suited to the profession and having relationships with my campers in the summers, but I was surprised at how off-guard I was caught. I caught myself from saying something about Mom because she is and isn’t why I’m going to be a teacher. It’s complicated.
I used to say I wanted to teach because the world is a story and every person’s life is a story, so English is how we connect to each other. Then I said I wanted to teach because I want to build relationships with young people. Right now, teaching for me is about seeing stories that haven’t been seen and encouraging students who don’t think they have a story or a future, that all they see themselves completing are video games. Maybe it’s about giving voices to students through reading, through writing, and through relationships. Maybe it’s just the most direct way to give my love and support direction.