poetry of witness

I have been thinking so much about this small gap in time we are moving through and the big changes in my own life (without, even, a true change in geography): meeting Carolyn Forche & becoming connected to the poetry community in a very deep and wonderful way, becoming someone's wife exactly one week from today, my travels to see two oceans this summer, the collapse of the 35W bridge, and beginning a new job (and dealing with what it means to have been budget cut from a job).

I approached this week's workshop with a manuscript that I both loathed and depended upon. This was, though rough, my twenty "best" poems, and one I added that I wrote on Tuesday. We dove into workshop, reading thick manuscript after manuscript, two working on their second book of poems, others with so many phrases that gave me chance to pause, to catch my breath, to revel in the beauty of words. I felt humbled in this room.

And in the middle of this week, the tragedy we are all so familiar with, though some of us are still lingering, still following the news incredibly closely, as the rest of the world has already moved on, thinking of home rooms and bombs in Baghdad. Our community is still so rocked by this, so precariously teetering on the realization of what has truly happened, how what we have lost is so grounded in the locality of our state, how we will always remember where we were when we found out, just as we might remember where we were on 9/11 (it was always The Fiance delivering such news, and I'd always thought it was less than it truly was--really? planes? but the Oklahoma City bombing had immediate causalities and--really? the bridge collapsed? no one will be hurt, right?). (Someone wouldn't let that happen, right? It couldn't happen, not to us; that always happens so far away.)

And the wedding! Of course, I cannot forget the wedding, with my dress hanging in the window, with the Adidas shoeboxes stacked in the dining room, with the RSVPs sorted, and my hairstyle debated. And the rain! It rained here today, and The Fiance told me there is a 30% chance of rain on our wedding day, which is supposed to give us luck, but we aren't affiliated with any church (or religion), so it will be awfully difficult to wander through the muck of a marina and woodsy park if there is rain about. I hate to wish for no rain; Minnesota is suffering from a fairly dramatic drought this summer. You can see it in the cornfields--the places where the green should be green but is just as yellowing as wheat, as the corn silk itself.

This summer has been so fast paced, and yet, working at This High School seems a thousand years ago. Here's the thing that is probably so human about my moving: I'm ready for it, the moving on, but I don't want my school to be ready. I want them to have some small ache, or suffering, for my absence. (At least, I know, Emily will miss me!) And everything about this summer: the theatre course, the trip to Charlotte, the writing workshop--it's all been so wonderful and so gratifying and so good for me (and I wish I could just have a life that is full of this--travel and experience and small moments of part time work and poetry, all the time, poetry)--but so much of this summer has felt like one preparation leading into another with so little time in between. I find myself wanting to reside in the moment, to mull it over, again and again--how I want to think about my work beyond this past week, how I want to think about redemption in what I am doing--but really, what is the very most important, and I cannot deny this: I am marrying my favorite person in the whole world in exactly seven days.


Other pieces of news I follow:

NY Times Article: Charles Simic Becomes Poet Laureate

mentor

After twelve hours on campus, so much to do with poetry, with looking out on the Mississippi, with dinner and wine, after driving to and from and watching the way the city glows at night, I will leave you with this:

Workshop went well today. My manuscript was on the block, and there was helpful feedback, and much encouragement, which, I think, was one of the most valuable things for me right now, especially in this time of self doubt as a writer. Carolyn (who I can call Carolyn, but it's so strange because, really, I'm silly enough to still put poets, especially of her caliber up on this pedestal, which isn't very fair, but I'd rather poets raised up than some of the others I've seen listed in the "role model" category) gave me many great tips, but the one I think I needed to hear the most, right now, is that I don't need to worry myself too much over revision. Worry about generating and riding this tidal wave that is my current writing life. I have time now to write, and I haven't been able to stop, not really, so I will do this.

And, this is the best news of all, I will continue to work with Carolyn, who has promised to help me work on a manuscript to apply for graduate school and to write me a letter of recommendation. (Lucky life.)

And as we departed, the promises to have a reunion next summer, in Maine or Oregon, perhaps, the gorgeous coastal places to inspire this mighty band of poets, and Carolyn saying to us all, "Really? Will we really get together?" in that voice that is hopeful, like a child before Christmas. She doesn't really realize what a gift she has been for all of us.

the shift of my landscape

The route to school today was not as difficult, sardined, or frustrated as I had anticipated.

Crossing the Mississippi is an accepted movement in the Twin Cities; it slices through Minneapolis and major roads bridge between banks.

I used to think how amazing it was to cross the Mississippi on the Washington Avenue bridge, moving from the east bank of campus to the west.


Class was still good today. All members accounted for, two staying home. One had wanted to stay with her children, which made sense. We continued with critique, the bridge coming up in conversation, and if we looked out the conference room window, we could see the line of media vans, their antenna spiraling up from this safe place, my college.

I thought of how Carolyn Forche is a poet of witness, one who has recorded the newsworthy. I think of how, in the days after 9/11 we spoke of the comfort of poetry, and every September 11th, in my classroom, we read "Keeping Quiet" by Pablo Neruda out loud.


And I think of how writing about these things is so difficult, when you see the scope and range of your own geography shift like this. Yes, I am writing now, and I've written words about yesterday, and I wonder about those 9/11 poems, the ones with true reference in the afterward, and if those poems will ever work, when we have our own freight for that day. How these become history, and sometimes it is distance we need the most to write well.


I will leave you with another poem I scribbled in my notebook. I need to note: Sharon Olds is considered a poet whose personal life is opened up for the reader. She claims the things in her poems did not actually happen but instead, she twisted the truth. Carolyn Forche, in workshop, has told us that we sometimes go where the poem takes us, sometimes it isn't rooted in truth, but something based on truth. I won't tell you how much of this poem is true--how much is created. I say this, not only because I know my mother will read it, but also because I recognize it as important to change things, to alter, in order to create a better story. I am the kind of person who forgives James Frey his lies in A Million Little Pieces because I want the story to be good. I am OK with being betrayed with the truth. Of course, the whole poem could be truth. You'd never know. (It feels incredibly rough, but I thought I'd share anyway, since generating and revision are parts of the importance of workshop.)

Knocking

I always believed my parents met
on a blind date, the one in which
my mother was the replacement for
the girl who was sick. I imagined
them in the back of a tan Duster,
a white corsage clipped to my mother's wrist,
knocking against each other
on the slippery upholstery at each bend
in the road. They were never driving.

But this isn't how it happened,
and I'm learning so much about
my parents isn't true. I haven't slept
right since the night my father slept
on the pulled out mattress and I knew
about the divorce before she did.

mudlark

This is my writing notebook. It is one of the most visually appealing and well traveled little books I've had in a while: it has journeyed with me to Green Bay, to Charlotte and Charleston, to the Twin Cities, and will go to Alaska (besides its regular residence here in town). It's square, a little beat on the edges, but in those pages, I have begun to feel like a poet again--that blissful, etching, scribbling, wonderful feeling I had when I was taking MFA classes as an undergraduate.

And Carolyn Forche continues to be brilliant, lovely, and has had us all laughing with her stories. Here are the little nuggets from today's workshop:

- when we write about [the Holocaust] [or anything big, like 9/11 or Civil Rights], we are writing not just about the event but in the aftermath of the event
- write about something by narrowing the focus instead of trying to take in something so huge (she then spoke of how CD Wright used to make them write five hundred words about one word, like an onion or a brick)
- Length of lines: How much weight does each line bear? What is truncated, left out?
- Compact poems as "hand grenades"
- keep a folder for each poem and its drafts, keep a folder for all the most recent poems in a manuscript
- David Abrams - The Spell of the Sensuous
- trust that what you've already said has done its job (don't overdo it)
- boning the chicken, lift the comb skeleton from the flesh of the fish
- Joseph Brodsky taught that there is a word for which the sake of the poem was written (to which she told an entertaining story, complete with accent, of how Brodsky would machine gun fire questions at his students after memorizing poems, complete with punctuation and line breaks)
- gesture of a poem: how it opens up or closes down at the end, how it yearns or meditates, how poems can be juxtaposed, argue with one another, how they move toward preservation and memory
- Larry Levis - Sensationalism

- Nothing to do with writing, but this is something that has been on my mind, especially after visiting my Midwestern transplanted friend in Charlotte and having a conversation about racism in the South and in the Midwest: the North is more covert about its racism, though isn't any less so racist

I will leave you with this: not a poem, but a little note about a venture my friend Eireann and her lovely friends Zach and Brian (who is making our programs and made our beautiful invitations for the wedding) are beginning: Yes Press has just released its first broadside postcard, and you can purchase them individually or by subscription (which is what I did--so you should do it too--since it's what all the cool kids are doing!).

walking the poem

Another day of startling beauty, finding others' talent overwhelming, finding myself keeping time with my pen, filling pages of little notes, writing two poems that might actually transform, grow. I find that poetry, and being witness, being present to poetry is like a balm for me. I do not need the other soothers, the other modifications that regular days might need.

A few things I noted today at random:

- the word "telos" means that which we are headed toward (with a suspended ending)
- keep in mind the different audiences for different modes of poetry and that there are quite a few species of poetry
- (on death) we have trouble with the festival pitching its tents
- the concept of the intermission poem to wend your way from one section to the next
- when you throw all the poems up, what has the most gravity?
- books and names thrown about: Paul Celan, Fanny Howe's Gone, The Motets, Olena Kalytiak Davis' And her Soul Out of Nothing and Shattered Sonnets, Jacques Rouboud's Some Thing Black, Dancing in Odessa

Three lovely things about ordering the manuscript:
- walk the poem--put manuscript on the floor--labyrinth of your poem--pick it up and physicall move it around (Linda Gregg does this)
- Read through manuscript, copy down just first line and last line, see what poem this makes--type them as couplets and see how they sound together and if a couplet sounds strange there, this is a poem to move
- when ordering poems, don't think about what the poem is about but what gestures the poem is making

I wrote two poems while in workshop also, so don't forget the first draftness of them. I will share one today, to close this humble post on day two of workshop with Carolyn Forche:

Like threads being pulled out from
the stamen, veiny flower, we are undoing
the wedding dress. It hung on a hook
in the bedroom closet for twenty years.
It collected dust, tears, pollen.
At night, when we were sleeping, it would
slip off the hanger and wend its way
around the room, in the moonlight.
We are killing the dress, plucking
feathers. I wish it would bleed; I wish
it would cry out as it deflates. I wish
I knew how to keep it from acting
the martyr.

meeting Carolyn Forche

When I think of last night, and I think of this morning, I cannot even wrap my mind around the reality of it: I have been in a room, twice, with Carolyn Forche. She knows my name, and, at this point, has read twenty of my bare naked poems, poems I both love and hate, poems that shame me and must be written.

I've kept little moments in my writing notebook, and I'll share them here:

- use italics rather than quotation marks to notate intruding voices
- arc of disclosure--book of poems as one poem--read last line of poem into next poem to see how they speak to each other
- motifs to set (blue table, before something terrible happens, a bell rings)
- there is a period of time that a poem can be revised--at some point, the poem dies within the poet
- sometimes the poem says things happen (that didn't)
- what arises in the poem isn't always the truth, but a kind of truth
- be aware of the consciousness of the poet
- sometimes you can only tell it plainly

Then, while we were reading, discussing, little snippets of poems would bloom up on my page, and I'd have to stop, have to close out the noise and just write for a moment, things about dreaming and pressing kisses in, something about tiaras and parades. Little moments of filtration and dissipation. Syncopation.

After, I wandered down to the university bookstore, because I must buy more poetry to read after I've had poetry on the brain, and I also picked up a visual dictionary and I LOVE it. I also plan to order a etymological dictionary, such a small treasure for a poet. (disaster--distance from a star) She said what I already knew: it's so important for a poet to have a meaty reference library. I've been building that bookshelf (or two) in that studio (so silly to call it that, the second bedroom) for a little while now. One of my favorite contributions comes from Kelly, who somehow remembered, which touches me so much, that I'd lusted over the New York Public Library Desk Reference. Many months later, on my birthday or for the holidays, she bought it, wrapped it up, and presented this poet's gift.

This week, too, is a gift. Right now, I cannot seem to ground myself in the reality of living poetry for a week like this. Yes, the wedding is hemming in, and I have to consider the practicalities of starting my new job, but for the most part, I am allowed to breathe poetry for a while. I can sit in my room, music low, and look at diagrams of seed pods and see how they will rise up on the page.

And the more I do this, the more I know this is what I want to do. I am doubtful of any level of talent at this point, but I know that it makes me happy, and that feels so important. It's scary because failure seems more logical than success, but I cannot accept myself as anything else--living, breathing poetry.

becoming the other: a persona poem workshop

I had a class at The Loft Literary Center today, one of my favorite places to be. This is now my fourth workshop (I have taken one on: 100 Things Every Writer Should Know, small group workshops, and putting together a poetry manuscript for publication). It's a nice variety of classes, but I think at this stage, the generative ones are the best and favorites for me.



The space itself is beautiful: pale exposed brick, exposed wood beams, a half dozen letters branded into the floorboards. A coffee shop downstairs (two chais, delicious), the Minnesota Center for the Book Arts and somewhere, Milkweed Editions (where Eireann's book has been published).


For the first time, I thought I would open up my writer's notebook and share some of what I wrote. I've done this before, only just out loud, so the only permanent place is in a spiral bound book I could always slip into the garbage and no one would notice. Here, there is a small sense of permanence--one could always copy and paste and show people: "See, look, this is how she writes really; isn't it terrible?" or what have you, so it's scary to show drafts, especially to folks who do not also write this way. But I have vowed to try to open myself up more, to begin to allow this part of myself become more dominant.

So keep this in mind: these are two first drafts, if you could even call them that, in the most obvious state of raw-ness, and may never be reworked because I look back on them a week later and find them terrible. But these are the two I chose from my two dozen pages I wrote at this workshop to share, though there are others that have a germ of potential too (maybe I'll share those later).

We were to take on so many different personas: a flamenco dancer, a person dead, a person without a voice from opression, close friends and loved ones, the person in the picture, etc. It was hard sometimes, and I would start off shakey each time, but as I got moving, I think there were some glimmers, some moments that might be worth returning to. So often there aren't, so often do I write terribly, but I have been trying to keep writing, no matter what. Just write. Follow what I tell my students. At one point in the workshop, I had to stop writing from the persona of a mother and write about my own life because my current attitude (that Oprah-esque embracing of the self) is too dominant to really allow myself to creatively explore The Other. Once I had written a page and a half about a phone conversation and looking at the small things, I was able to re-enter to the persona of an abused servant in a mansion household. (Any requests?)

So here they are, in all their raw glory. No editing, though I am tempted, because I did say they came from my notebook, and I don't want that to be an untruth. (Know that if you recognize the persona, I have taken embellishments for dramatic action, though I did use much truth, especially in the second.)


The beekeeping suit
reminds me of astronauts,
steps across the moon landscape
of Texas, the hum of the hive,
wax candles and honeycome in a jar.
My boots gray in the dust and
I am forever grateful for: ice tea,
lemonade, cube of ice. I watch the sun
set, the hum stilling, now
fireflies coming to the twilight air.
I thought I liked midnight
the best, but now, the purpling
of the horizon, and my heart
stilling in a sweaty ribcage,
may eclipse. I left Minnesota
with frost covering the ground,
the Brazilian allowed to work late
freely (i am not there to sit up,
awake, ask him
if he had forgotten, the pasta
long gelled in the pot). I wonder
what changed
between us, but after the return
from his homeland, we hvae
drifted instead of warmed.
I have allowed the drift
to turn into harsh words
and quiet purpling bruises before, and I know
he would leave before I flung
any pottery, but I can't
let this fade--not again.

The sweet Texas air will tell me,
oil fields and cow pasture,
what in m future will bud.
I could stay here, decide
for myself, not return, change
before he changes first.
I could keep bees, sell organic
fruit from the bed of a pickup truck,
make love to migrant workers,
tumble out of bed before the sun,
my skin growing darker until I become
another person entirely.



And another:



This is how he proposed:
I was sitting in the college library,
lamps low, bars of wood sending shadow
across the page (I was a much better
student then you grandfather; he loved
to hvae fun). He came up to me
and sat, laughter in the creases
of his body. On a slip of paper
he filtched from an ornery librarian,
he drew: one house, a man, a woman,
two children. It reminded me
of pictures catching sunlight
in the school down the road,
rudimentary sticks, unformed.
One arrow and the word, "Me." He stopped
and smiled up at me. Me, man.
Another arrow and the nickname "Red"
(for my hair). You, woman. This
is how your grandfather proposed
sixty five years ago.

Now he can only move back
to those memories, the ones most
overplayed, imprinted to the screen
of memory. He has forgotten small things:
the bars blocking boat from water,
the word for "dog," the way out of the house,
your name, to dress,
to dip tortilla in salsa (and not iced water),
to call the fire department as the field
next door blazes, and yesterday,
he lost his driver's license.

That may have been the hardest,
as he realized what he was losing. We woke early,
I pulled the snaking vacuum
across carpet mats, and we picked out
his best suit the night before.

We didn't even take a road test.
Your grandfather lost his keyes (twice)
and agitation rose to the surface.
We walked out, arm in arm,
he in black, my white summer dress
pressed against my knees. I took the keys,
not afraid, though I haven't
driven since the accident. This changes
everything--his daily swims
at the college pool, groceries will need
to be bought at once, I will take it on.

That night, in my white nightgown, I drew
a picture of our home, his prison.
I drew him (man) and me (woman)
and felt love pushing back bars.