These set of poems I entitled “Linger” were worked on in the beginning half of 2007 under the guidance of the poet Donna Masini.
While the poems of 2006 dealt a lot with the feelings of “distance” and “fear”, I feel like in these poems I began to face many of my own taboos. What I mean by that is I started writing more into the subject of the “self”, regardless of whether it’s myself or the “self” of others.
Donna Masini also played a big part in inducing this poetic change for me. Masini is a bit less of an “image poet” as Gabis (in my opinion), in her poetry I think she tends to focus a lot more on the energies of physical interaction. “Words are physical,” she said to me once, and that poetry is something that she reads with her heart. I think during that time I interpreted her styles as working with a kind of muscle memory, to convey emotions through bodily reactions to matters.
Let’s look at “Your Carousel”.
This poem was interesting for me to write because it’s on a subject that I have thought and written about for a bit of time. I was addressing a friend of mine who passed away in high school, while remembering my fascination with the gothic and macabre. A lot of the images I used here are very meta-physical, and by that I mean they were created from memory but of association. This probably sounds a little weird, but in a way it can be seen as embellishments to my memories, but to me I feel like I wrote from an interpretation of the physical feelings I have felt for the situation.
When I look at the images I am sometimes still a bit surprised at the things that I wrote. Things like:
“the black lace parasol you used to hold in the rain for an excuse to drown.”
or
“children running into your unlit carousel”
and even
“silence only for the occasional tears rolling down powdered faces”.
I think I was mostly inspired by my friend’s character, and kind of her perspective and her approach to sickness and ultimately death. The syneaesthesia I created in the poem was almost like my answer to her suffering and her passing, the beauty that I believed was involved in her pain.
The process of writing this poem was very different from what I had been doing previously. I think I allowed myself to be more aware of the part of me that was still grieving, letting my subconscious speak in metaphors. It was almost like I was establishing a “self” out of that side of me, a persona if you will.
I never really noticed how this “period” of my poetry explored the different facets of me. Another piece that I found to be very important during this time was “Exhibition: Self-portrait on Canvas”.
I’m not sure what went through my head while I was writing this, but it probably had something to do with that Plath that I was reading. (Typical, I know) Masini was big on Plath, and the one thing that she always talked about was her ability to perform on the page. I was actually getting into the idea of performance art during that time, which may have contributed to this poem as well. But I digress…
This is not a poem that I am very proud of; I wouldn’t say it’s a finished piece by any means, but I do enjoy the roughness it brings. The poem explicitly explores a bodily relationship, an empathic connection between the speaker and the subject. The speaker is deeply affected by the physicality of the subject, and he/she is eager to understand the causality of the subject’s actions.
There are lines that suggest a strange kind of intimacy between the two:
“Screaming helps him concentrate” “…trembles at the sight of blood”
But also lines that suggest distance, criticism, and unfamiliarity:
“Thick red syllables\That clog too quickly” “Skin rips, his stroke angry and\Too verbose for the canvas”
The speaker narrates the every action of the “painter”, and the poem ultimately gets lost in a whirlpool of the speaker’s obsession and the subject’s passions.
I find the discourse in this poem quite intriguing because it is an attempt to understand a “self” by indirectly addressing it on the page. It is almost as if the speaker is attempting to crack the subject even though there is no direct interaction between the two, and it’s more than just an address, there is the desire to redact.
. . .
I also started writing tiny poems like “Before” around this time. They are almost like imagery exercises, and they’re great for learning to compress language, I think. And again, this poem is clearly very egocentric, and contains a lot of physical eros (as Masini would say).
I think overall there’s a feeling of daring desperation in this set of poems, especially compared to the work of the previous year. Even Masini had told me to “relax” in her comments, and I think she had seen the impatience that I wrote with throughout this course. It’s as if I have been imprisoning many voices inside of me—capturing moments, images, voices, as I have in the past and then I finally decided to let it all out to speak for themselves.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Friday, August 28, 2009
A bit on Donna Masini
Donna Masini
-Born: December 13; Flatbush, Brooklyn.
-Grandparents from Italy; Paternal (Florence), Maternal (Potenza).
-Mother came from a family of ten, Father from a family of four.
-Came from family of four; being the oldest.
-Neither parents finished a college education.
-Attended Catholic elementary school until 4th grade, then Catholic high school; only child in her family to go to Catholic school.
Education:
-Hunter College BA Phi Beta Kappa, major: Honors, concentration in English and Classics.
-NYU Masters in Creative Writing (Poetry)
Quotes from a 1996 interview:
“It wasn't until I was writing--in the very politicized atmosphere of the eighties--that I tried to figure out what "class" I came from. Indeed when Adrienne Rich blurbed my book and called me "working class," I was upset. I felt branded, dirty, exposed. The underlying assumption that my work would be less intelligent. (This of course despite my love for the work of many other working class writers)”
“Despite the fact that I write about my family, oil burners, etc. I was always afraid of being found out. At Hunter College I was afraid teachers, other students from educated families, would sense I was an imposter. Ironically, one of my most important teachers at Hunter--James Wright, who is from Ohio--appeared to me to be so refined that I would never have suspected his background, and in fact took pains to hide my own from him.”
“I am primarily heterosexual (though of course one can always “visit”…)”
Communion
We called it “receiving,” and each of us in our bridal
white, walked down the aisle toward the Body
of Christ, our poofy dresses and veils floating, crowns
on our heads, clutching our rosaries and bouquets—those
carnations we'd lifted out of green tissue from the florist’s
box.
(Does any flower have a fresher smell?) I led the procession
with Kathy Creamer, rows and rows of tiny brides.
We had not eaten. We had not drunk. We had confessed
the day before. We were pure. We would never be so pure
again
once the body had entered us. We made our way back
down the aisle. I held the disk my body
had prepared itself to carry, lightly on my tongue, careful
not to let my teeth graze the host. I know I smiled an idiotic,
beatific smile.
Later I’d say it was because I was receiving
the Lord (I’d bow my head and say the name) Jesus,
but even then I knew I was acting, faking it, my spirit rising
above the aisle—looking down on the rows of us to see how
I looked
now I had received. Maybe that’s why, back in our pews, we
were told
to put our heads in our hands—to keep us from drifting.
To keep us in our bodies. We knelt, face in hand, and
waited.
Or maybe It was too much to see that very man—the
incarnation
stretched before us—naked but for the floating cloth—
those beautiful legs stretched across the altar and we girls,
having received,
kneeling under the groin vault. Or maybe we just couldn’t
let anyone see our faces when finally, after years of waiting,
we held it in our mouths—Corpus Christi—that first time,
that first man we took into our bodies.
1) Where do you put the line between poetry and fiction?
I think that when I’m working with a poem, technically… sometimes I stop thinking about the people or the subject matter and I’m working with the play of the dynamic of line and syntax, the dynamic between what the line is doing and what is the sentence or fragment or what the crumble of syntax is doing.. But I can say that about fiction too, I mean the character is right there… I had a funny thing happened to me recently where somebody recognized a character in my book, it was a minor character and it was a complete projection on her part because the only thing that was right there was the red hair and a name… which was funny to me, I had a very different picture of what that character was, but people bring to your work ideas about you or their feelings about you.
2) How has Catholicism affected your writing?
I think it would first of all be the sense of mystery… I mean that this psychic gate of growing up Catholic at that particular time… there was a real sense of mystery of transformation, or someone who died and resurrected, and that you were a witness to the mystery of self, the examination of conscience. Fear, all those things are kind are very palpable darkness for me was connected to what my father did, he repaired oil burners, he worked in basements, he was in the muck of it, those two things were both mysterious to me, and they were both transforming… Catholicism was about the transformation and the spirit, but yet to a kid it was very much about fear, guilt and fear… and beauty… also confession, the making of a narrative, of what you had done… atoning for that, all of that was really intriguing and frightening… I think it’s where my imagination was forged…
3) To whom are you writing?
Well I sent an email this morning to… just kidding… it depends…
In poems, I don’t really think about who I’m talking to, I know some people think about that a lot, I’m just trying to see it, I’m just trying to get it down on the page, in some ways there are certain things I love, a diorama, a particular jello mould, just silly things, or memories of something, and I just want to get it on the page, I just want to make somebody see it. So it’s really, I guess there’s a reader that I want to see it… different poems will have different kinds of address…
4) Please name several poets that are important to you.
Gosh… Audre Lorde and James Wrights were like parents to me… June Jordon is a dear friend…
And poets who I read and are really important to me… that shifts from time to time, there was a time when Lorca was huge and Neruda, I would say Elizabeth Bishop, and of course Whitman and Dickenson… I think about poets I teach a lot, they’re not always poets I love deeply, Hopkins, Elliot, Frost... I’m starting to love Frost more and more.
For more contemporary poets… Brenda Hillman, somebody I love, Anne Carson. Of course Mark Doty, I read him almost exclusively for a period of time… I think he’s technically brilliant and a really important poet … you know and then there are close friends whose work means a lot to me…
5) You allowed yourself to become more vulnerable from your first book of poetry to your second, would you disagree?
I think you’re right… I felt a real difference between the speaker, I felt connected to both speaks in both… I think that there was a way especially when I was working on that first book and was really under the sway of Whitman, I remember Li Young Lee saying me to me once… “How do you manage that large voice?”, we were doing a reading today, it was a huge voice, and I don’t think I always quite inhabited that voice, it let me say certain things, and let me write about certain things like Vietnam which was something I really wanted to write out of I guess I would say, Vietnam was something I really wanted to address… but I think towards the end of that book… I came more to a daily language, less incantatory, and I was really interested in particular versions of the self in Turning to Fiction, self and story… so you’re absolutely right, it’s a different register in a certain way.
6) How has becoming a teacher affected your writing?
I have to learn a lot more when I become a teacher. There was a lot I had to teach myself about how to, I think my dynamic with people is good, but you know you want to help people with their poems, so I had to learn how to help different students get through to their imagination. So it was a lot of technical things… I really feel privileged in a way to be working with the imaginations, the inner lives of so many different kinds of people, and actually be able to in some way service that or help that, it gives you that kind of intimacy… It has taught me a lot about people, the differences between people. I’ve also seen extraordinary imaginations different from my own. Now I can say that about my friends certainly and with other poets, but with students you’re almost fostering their own relationship with their imagination and I’ve also been amazed by the kinds of breakthroughs people have had, I’ve been challenged by my students… It’s interesting to me, on the other side of it is, it’s really hard to maintain an intimacy with my own imagination while I’m teaching.
-Born: December 13; Flatbush, Brooklyn.
-Grandparents from Italy; Paternal (Florence), Maternal (Potenza).
-Mother came from a family of ten, Father from a family of four.
-Came from family of four; being the oldest.
-Neither parents finished a college education.
-Attended Catholic elementary school until 4th grade, then Catholic high school; only child in her family to go to Catholic school.
Education:
-Hunter College BA Phi Beta Kappa, major: Honors, concentration in English and Classics.
-NYU Masters in Creative Writing (Poetry)
Quotes from a 1996 interview:
“It wasn't until I was writing--in the very politicized atmosphere of the eighties--that I tried to figure out what "class" I came from. Indeed when Adrienne Rich blurbed my book and called me "working class," I was upset. I felt branded, dirty, exposed. The underlying assumption that my work would be less intelligent. (This of course despite my love for the work of many other working class writers)”
“Despite the fact that I write about my family, oil burners, etc. I was always afraid of being found out. At Hunter College I was afraid teachers, other students from educated families, would sense I was an imposter. Ironically, one of my most important teachers at Hunter--James Wright, who is from Ohio--appeared to me to be so refined that I would never have suspected his background, and in fact took pains to hide my own from him.”
“I am primarily heterosexual (though of course one can always “visit”…)”
Communion
We called it “receiving,” and each of us in our bridal
white, walked down the aisle toward the Body
of Christ, our poofy dresses and veils floating, crowns
on our heads, clutching our rosaries and bouquets—those
carnations we'd lifted out of green tissue from the florist’s
box.
(Does any flower have a fresher smell?) I led the procession
with Kathy Creamer, rows and rows of tiny brides.
We had not eaten. We had not drunk. We had confessed
the day before. We were pure. We would never be so pure
again
once the body had entered us. We made our way back
down the aisle. I held the disk my body
had prepared itself to carry, lightly on my tongue, careful
not to let my teeth graze the host. I know I smiled an idiotic,
beatific smile.
Later I’d say it was because I was receiving
the Lord (I’d bow my head and say the name) Jesus,
but even then I knew I was acting, faking it, my spirit rising
above the aisle—looking down on the rows of us to see how
I looked
now I had received. Maybe that’s why, back in our pews, we
were told
to put our heads in our hands—to keep us from drifting.
To keep us in our bodies. We knelt, face in hand, and
waited.
Or maybe It was too much to see that very man—the
incarnation
stretched before us—naked but for the floating cloth—
those beautiful legs stretched across the altar and we girls,
having received,
kneeling under the groin vault. Or maybe we just couldn’t
let anyone see our faces when finally, after years of waiting,
we held it in our mouths—Corpus Christi—that first time,
that first man we took into our bodies.
1) Where do you put the line between poetry and fiction?
I think that when I’m working with a poem, technically… sometimes I stop thinking about the people or the subject matter and I’m working with the play of the dynamic of line and syntax, the dynamic between what the line is doing and what is the sentence or fragment or what the crumble of syntax is doing.. But I can say that about fiction too, I mean the character is right there… I had a funny thing happened to me recently where somebody recognized a character in my book, it was a minor character and it was a complete projection on her part because the only thing that was right there was the red hair and a name… which was funny to me, I had a very different picture of what that character was, but people bring to your work ideas about you or their feelings about you.
2) How has Catholicism affected your writing?
I think it would first of all be the sense of mystery… I mean that this psychic gate of growing up Catholic at that particular time… there was a real sense of mystery of transformation, or someone who died and resurrected, and that you were a witness to the mystery of self, the examination of conscience. Fear, all those things are kind are very palpable darkness for me was connected to what my father did, he repaired oil burners, he worked in basements, he was in the muck of it, those two things were both mysterious to me, and they were both transforming… Catholicism was about the transformation and the spirit, but yet to a kid it was very much about fear, guilt and fear… and beauty… also confession, the making of a narrative, of what you had done… atoning for that, all of that was really intriguing and frightening… I think it’s where my imagination was forged…
3) To whom are you writing?
Well I sent an email this morning to… just kidding… it depends…
In poems, I don’t really think about who I’m talking to, I know some people think about that a lot, I’m just trying to see it, I’m just trying to get it down on the page, in some ways there are certain things I love, a diorama, a particular jello mould, just silly things, or memories of something, and I just want to get it on the page, I just want to make somebody see it. So it’s really, I guess there’s a reader that I want to see it… different poems will have different kinds of address…
4) Please name several poets that are important to you.
Gosh… Audre Lorde and James Wrights were like parents to me… June Jordon is a dear friend…
And poets who I read and are really important to me… that shifts from time to time, there was a time when Lorca was huge and Neruda, I would say Elizabeth Bishop, and of course Whitman and Dickenson… I think about poets I teach a lot, they’re not always poets I love deeply, Hopkins, Elliot, Frost... I’m starting to love Frost more and more.
For more contemporary poets… Brenda Hillman, somebody I love, Anne Carson. Of course Mark Doty, I read him almost exclusively for a period of time… I think he’s technically brilliant and a really important poet … you know and then there are close friends whose work means a lot to me…
5) You allowed yourself to become more vulnerable from your first book of poetry to your second, would you disagree?
I think you’re right… I felt a real difference between the speaker, I felt connected to both speaks in both… I think that there was a way especially when I was working on that first book and was really under the sway of Whitman, I remember Li Young Lee saying me to me once… “How do you manage that large voice?”, we were doing a reading today, it was a huge voice, and I don’t think I always quite inhabited that voice, it let me say certain things, and let me write about certain things like Vietnam which was something I really wanted to write out of I guess I would say, Vietnam was something I really wanted to address… but I think towards the end of that book… I came more to a daily language, less incantatory, and I was really interested in particular versions of the self in Turning to Fiction, self and story… so you’re absolutely right, it’s a different register in a certain way.
6) How has becoming a teacher affected your writing?
I have to learn a lot more when I become a teacher. There was a lot I had to teach myself about how to, I think my dynamic with people is good, but you know you want to help people with their poems, so I had to learn how to help different students get through to their imagination. So it was a lot of technical things… I really feel privileged in a way to be working with the imaginations, the inner lives of so many different kinds of people, and actually be able to in some way service that or help that, it gives you that kind of intimacy… It has taught me a lot about people, the differences between people. I’ve also seen extraordinary imaginations different from my own. Now I can say that about my friends certainly and with other poets, but with students you’re almost fostering their own relationship with their imagination and I’ve also been amazed by the kinds of breakthroughs people have had, I’ve been challenged by my students… It’s interesting to me, on the other side of it is, it’s really hard to maintain an intimacy with my own imagination while I’m teaching.
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Umbrella
I loved the rain
Once,
On the Saturday evening
I left my house
Throat sore from screaming
At my mother
And deaf to her cries.
Just as I thought I couldn’t hear anymore
I heard
The rain drop to its knees
Onto the broken pavement,
It lied there
With no words,
Only a reflection of me
Three years old in an ambulance,
The flashing red and my mother
Next to me as I lay inside,
The siren keeping awake-
It was raining then, too,
I think I was drowning,
I couldn’t hear when the tires screeched
And crashed into a lamp post;
The light dimmed, I felt the glass.
But that ending never happened,
And that rain was no longer breathing
Next to me;
It never stopped running.
Once,
On the Saturday evening
I left my house
Throat sore from screaming
At my mother
And deaf to her cries.
Just as I thought I couldn’t hear anymore
I heard
The rain drop to its knees
Onto the broken pavement,
It lied there
With no words,
Only a reflection of me
Three years old in an ambulance,
The flashing red and my mother
Next to me as I lay inside,
The siren keeping awake-
It was raining then, too,
I think I was drowning,
I couldn’t hear when the tires screeched
And crashed into a lamp post;
The light dimmed, I felt the glass.
But that ending never happened,
And that rain was no longer breathing
Next to me;
It never stopped running.
Your Carousel
I cried
The rain that fell last December
Hoping to wake your sleeping heartbeat、
I sat there waiting
Thinking of the black lace parasol
You used to hold in rain for an excuse to drown;
I wonder if that’s what you felt
When I called
And your mother had to hold the phone next to your face
So I could hear you breathe.
Then, with my wet hair and eyes
Left uncovered by your hand,
But by another type of black above me
I was forced to sing your eulogy.
A song of static
Sleeping adults, unaware of their screaming
Children running into your unlit carousel,
Breaking the unmusical winter that you adored,
Leaving silence only for the occasional
Tears rolling down powdered faces
Onto your grey skin;
You’d laugh
At my nervous pulse
Trying to recreate your laughter,
I was merely breathing
The hypnotic lullabies
That effervesced from the black porcelain eyes
On your wooden horses;
The kind of ebony you could not fall asleep to-
I smashed them,
After I smashed my own eyes.
Yet、
My hands,
They started singing, too.
The rain that fell last December
Hoping to wake your sleeping heartbeat、
I sat there waiting
Thinking of the black lace parasol
You used to hold in rain for an excuse to drown;
I wonder if that’s what you felt
When I called
And your mother had to hold the phone next to your face
So I could hear you breathe.
Then, with my wet hair and eyes
Left uncovered by your hand,
But by another type of black above me
I was forced to sing your eulogy.
A song of static
Sleeping adults, unaware of their screaming
Children running into your unlit carousel,
Breaking the unmusical winter that you adored,
Leaving silence only for the occasional
Tears rolling down powdered faces
Onto your grey skin;
You’d laugh
At my nervous pulse
Trying to recreate your laughter,
I was merely breathing
The hypnotic lullabies
That effervesced from the black porcelain eyes
On your wooden horses;
The kind of ebony you could not fall asleep to-
I smashed them,
After I smashed my own eyes.
Yet、
My hands,
They started singing, too.
Wings
I was lost in the sky this morning,
Watching the sun melt away the clouds
Until a plane broke through
My stare, behind it she was
Running
With the five year old me,
In the playground where I chased after sparrows
And she was always a step behind
Just watching;
She had given up her voice
Just so everyone could hear mine when I was born.
She was a slave that never tried to get away
Even when I wanted to climb on her;
She never ran,
She couldn’t,
With a leash around her neck
Instead of my arms.
The summer I left
I had my Gameboy and
Comic books instead of her
In my backpack,
Without goodbye;
I knew she’d be here, waiting
Until today
We met again but I didn’t say hello;
I wanted to see her run,
With me in her shadow
Crying as she surpassed me
Finally,
With wings.
Watching the sun melt away the clouds
Until a plane broke through
My stare, behind it she was
Running
With the five year old me,
In the playground where I chased after sparrows
And she was always a step behind
Just watching;
She had given up her voice
Just so everyone could hear mine when I was born.
She was a slave that never tried to get away
Even when I wanted to climb on her;
She never ran,
She couldn’t,
With a leash around her neck
Instead of my arms.
The summer I left
I had my Gameboy and
Comic books instead of her
In my backpack,
Without goodbye;
I knew she’d be here, waiting
Until today
We met again but I didn’t say hello;
I wanted to see her run,
With me in her shadow
Crying as she surpassed me
Finally,
With wings.
Warm Ashes
Kissing you
Is like licking an empty ashtray;
I wonder if that sting
Means more than just the taste of ash.
What are the stains on your teeth are trying to
Tell me,
Am I more than the cigarette smoke
That darkens your breath
For a second.
Look into my eyes and ask why
They’re brown, not green; I know
I have to be like you
To enjoy the taste of the tobacco on your tongue.
And tonight,
Will I fall asleep with you smoking
Only to wake up to blue-grey ashes,
Breathless and scattered
On a street corner.
Is like licking an empty ashtray;
I wonder if that sting
Means more than just the taste of ash.
What are the stains on your teeth are trying to
Tell me,
Am I more than the cigarette smoke
That darkens your breath
For a second.
Look into my eyes and ask why
They’re brown, not green; I know
I have to be like you
To enjoy the taste of the tobacco on your tongue.
And tonight,
Will I fall asleep with you smoking
Only to wake up to blue-grey ashes,
Breathless and scattered
On a street corner.
Blowing Bubbles
You didn’t hear me
Come in,
My sticky plates had your attention
Splashing in the water.
You submerged them in a sea of bubbles,
But they want to float and
Be held by
Your hands,
Where white porcelain blossoms
And sings to the brilliant glass
That my lips have clouded.
Yet your wrinkled hands only dim as I
Grow iridescent-
They’ve become the silhouettes of your grey hair
And the shadows on my face,
I knew
My tears will no longer reflect
On your tired fingernails.
But I had to ignore
The sweat on your forehead;
I didn’t want these bubbles to stop
Dancing on your hands.
Come in,
My sticky plates had your attention
Splashing in the water.
You submerged them in a sea of bubbles,
But they want to float and
Be held by
Your hands,
Where white porcelain blossoms
And sings to the brilliant glass
That my lips have clouded.
Yet your wrinkled hands only dim as I
Grow iridescent-
They’ve become the silhouettes of your grey hair
And the shadows on my face,
I knew
My tears will no longer reflect
On your tired fingernails.
But I had to ignore
The sweat on your forehead;
I didn’t want these bubbles to stop
Dancing on your hands.
Exhibition: Self-portrait on canvas
Notice the artist’s index finger
Kissing the razor blade,
Stroking-
His eyes rolling
Into its bleeding white;
Screaming helps him concentrate
His finger on the rough cloth
Which trembles at the sight of blood
Digging in, pulling out
Thoughts; he never liked sharing words,
But he’s letting himself pour
Thick red syllables
That clog too quickly-
His eyes roll back again to direct another kiss,
They won’t return until they find the right tone
Running from the middle finger
Hissing to the world,
He paints his eyes, lips, not ears;
He is tired of hearing questions
And hates the people who ask-
Skin rips, his stroke angry and
Too verbose for the canvas,
Unusable;
Only a peck this time on the ring
To get those fine lines-
Red hair for passion,
An invitation to see the lies he kept crawling
In his head,
But not over his eyes
Left open to see your reaction;
And the pinky too he bites
For the blurry blush touch up before
Picture time;
Wait!
A saliva finish,
Tears
For perfection.
Kissing the razor blade,
Stroking-
His eyes rolling
Into its bleeding white;
Screaming helps him concentrate
His finger on the rough cloth
Which trembles at the sight of blood
Digging in, pulling out
Thoughts; he never liked sharing words,
But he’s letting himself pour
Thick red syllables
That clog too quickly-
His eyes roll back again to direct another kiss,
They won’t return until they find the right tone
Running from the middle finger
Hissing to the world,
He paints his eyes, lips, not ears;
He is tired of hearing questions
And hates the people who ask-
Skin rips, his stroke angry and
Too verbose for the canvas,
Unusable;
Only a peck this time on the ring
To get those fine lines-
Red hair for passion,
An invitation to see the lies he kept crawling
In his head,
But not over his eyes
Left open to see your reaction;
And the pinky too he bites
For the blurry blush touch up before
Picture time;
Wait!
A saliva finish,
Tears
For perfection.
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Reflection: Poems of 2006
2006 was the year when I finally decided that I want to pursue the craft of poetry.
The poems I have posted previously were all works from the first poetry workshop I took in college, under the guidance of Ms. Rita Gabis.
It's quite funny to look back at all these poems, to see the "fear" on the page that has now become so apparent me. There is a lot of reluctance in these poems, a lot of distance between the words, the speaker, and the poet. I remember the transitional phase that I was going through while writing these poems, it was my masked persona phase as I would call it. I was trying to tell stories, to illuminate matters and subjects through a masked speaker. It wasn't so much where I was refraining from becoming too personal in my writing, but in all the poems there is a sense of reservation coming from the speaker.
Take the poem "Chase" for example:
The speaker imagines the relationship between the subjects of "Lightning" and "Thunder", but the intents of the speaker is not quite clear. There is obvious sympathy present in the words of the poem, but it's unclear why exactly he/she cares and ponders about this situation. The poem is mainly observant and lacking perspective, which I think creates an interesting reading of the situation. It's almost like an intentional sensory deficit.
I think the poem also reflects a lot of on the transitional phase that I mentioned before concerning this time period. Take a look at the previous draft of this poem:
Chase
I hope for once,
Thunder can catch up
To the swift lightning.
For I lament thunder’s curse
Of his eternal step behind
His careless lover.
And every time
I, too, cry
Along to thunder’s downpour
When he misses her footsteps.
Notice how the "I" has disappeared from the earlier draft of the poem. It's almost as if there was a certain difficulty in admitting to the personal in this poem, and the focus has changed from the speaker's pathos to the subjects emotions.
In (what I'd like to think was) my break-out poem of 2006, "Persona", you can see the start of the moving-away from the impersonal speaker, but the feeling still lingered.
There was clearly a lot of displacement in this poem, through the evocation of Homer's epics, and mainly through the secondary subject of the father. The idea of the mask is a literal concern in this poem, we have the uncertainty of the speaker and the gestures of the father, both serving as a kind of metaphor to describe the desire of both parties wanting to shield themselves from the impending awkwardness.
Now let's look at the first draft:
Persona
You insisted
On a bedtime story,
It is not my habit-
But I shrugged when.
You took out Homer,
(Thanks mom)
From the bookshelf
As you read
About Odysseus’ reunion with Telemachus
You smiled
So hard, you almost cracked the cement
Of your face,
And you cried
For Priam’s plea,
But your tears were bland,
They were not salty like mine.
I soon fell asleep
To your bad acting.
Again, there is the transition from the direct address to an indirect address. In the earlier draft it's apparent that the speaker is more blatantly concerned about his own well-being and opinions, but after revisions the father gets a lot more attention. I think while working on this I became more aware of of the "other person", but also became more scared of this "other person" and so this displacement occurred. To say things through the other person's actions, and to harvest the discomfort that comes with the surrogate voice...
(Oi, I'm getting sleepy writing this, probably not a good thing, haha.)
One of the things that Ms. Rita Gabis said to me about this set of poems was that "The fact that these poems are "in process" does not distract from their power and promise", I think I can agree with that now that I have reflected upon them. I have always found it embarrassing to look at old writing of mine, but I think the discoveries I made today taught me that it can be worthwhile. I think though these poems may be a bit unpolished, the awkwardness and the reluctance of my then-voice ultimately gives it a bit of a hindsight beauty.
Thank you for reading!
The poems I have posted previously were all works from the first poetry workshop I took in college, under the guidance of Ms. Rita Gabis.
It's quite funny to look back at all these poems, to see the "fear" on the page that has now become so apparent me. There is a lot of reluctance in these poems, a lot of distance between the words, the speaker, and the poet. I remember the transitional phase that I was going through while writing these poems, it was my masked persona phase as I would call it. I was trying to tell stories, to illuminate matters and subjects through a masked speaker. It wasn't so much where I was refraining from becoming too personal in my writing, but in all the poems there is a sense of reservation coming from the speaker.
Take the poem "Chase" for example:
The speaker imagines the relationship between the subjects of "Lightning" and "Thunder", but the intents of the speaker is not quite clear. There is obvious sympathy present in the words of the poem, but it's unclear why exactly he/she cares and ponders about this situation. The poem is mainly observant and lacking perspective, which I think creates an interesting reading of the situation. It's almost like an intentional sensory deficit.
I think the poem also reflects a lot of on the transitional phase that I mentioned before concerning this time period. Take a look at the previous draft of this poem:
Chase
I hope for once,
Thunder can catch up
To the swift lightning.
For I lament thunder’s curse
Of his eternal step behind
His careless lover.
And every time
I, too, cry
Along to thunder’s downpour
When he misses her footsteps.
Notice how the "I" has disappeared from the earlier draft of the poem. It's almost as if there was a certain difficulty in admitting to the personal in this poem, and the focus has changed from the speaker's pathos to the subjects emotions.
In (what I'd like to think was) my break-out poem of 2006, "Persona", you can see the start of the moving-away from the impersonal speaker, but the feeling still lingered.
There was clearly a lot of displacement in this poem, through the evocation of Homer's epics, and mainly through the secondary subject of the father. The idea of the mask is a literal concern in this poem, we have the uncertainty of the speaker and the gestures of the father, both serving as a kind of metaphor to describe the desire of both parties wanting to shield themselves from the impending awkwardness.
Now let's look at the first draft:
Persona
You insisted
On a bedtime story,
It is not my habit-
But I shrugged when.
You took out Homer,
(Thanks mom)
From the bookshelf
As you read
About Odysseus’ reunion with Telemachus
You smiled
So hard, you almost cracked the cement
Of your face,
And you cried
For Priam’s plea,
But your tears were bland,
They were not salty like mine.
I soon fell asleep
To your bad acting.
Again, there is the transition from the direct address to an indirect address. In the earlier draft it's apparent that the speaker is more blatantly concerned about his own well-being and opinions, but after revisions the father gets a lot more attention. I think while working on this I became more aware of of the "other person", but also became more scared of this "other person" and so this displacement occurred. To say things through the other person's actions, and to harvest the discomfort that comes with the surrogate voice...
(Oi, I'm getting sleepy writing this, probably not a good thing, haha.)
One of the things that Ms. Rita Gabis said to me about this set of poems was that "The fact that these poems are "in process" does not distract from their power and promise", I think I can agree with that now that I have reflected upon them. I have always found it embarrassing to look at old writing of mine, but I think the discoveries I made today taught me that it can be worthwhile. I think though these poems may be a bit unpolished, the awkwardness and the reluctance of my then-voice ultimately gives it a bit of a hindsight beauty.
Thank you for reading!
Friday, August 21, 2009
Hot Chocolate
It started snowing at midnight
As I walked down the empty streets, shivering.
The snowflakes fell along the
Half-asleep street lights,
Almost floating amidst my hollow thoughts;
I had forgotten why I am out here
Treading the frostbitten fields of insensitive civilization,
Going as the traffic lights told me to
Stopping when
The cold wind pushed against my face;
Now I remember
The same sting, and the palm of your hand.
Your voice still echoes in the vacant sky,
Finding its way around the crowded snowflakes
Just to tell me
You don’t love me anymore,
You don’t love me because
I am different;
The only black snowflake falling,
Tainting, and obscuring the white of your eyes,
They are no longer reflective,
And you can’t see that
I am still trying to reach you
Before my breath fades into the silence of December
As I walked down the empty streets, shivering.
The snowflakes fell along the
Half-asleep street lights,
Almost floating amidst my hollow thoughts;
I had forgotten why I am out here
Treading the frostbitten fields of insensitive civilization,
Going as the traffic lights told me to
Stopping when
The cold wind pushed against my face;
Now I remember
The same sting, and the palm of your hand.
Your voice still echoes in the vacant sky,
Finding its way around the crowded snowflakes
Just to tell me
You don’t love me anymore,
You don’t love me because
I am different;
The only black snowflake falling,
Tainting, and obscuring the white of your eyes,
They are no longer reflective,
And you can’t see that
I am still trying to reach you
Before my breath fades into the silence of December
Discourse
I almost forgot about
The experience of walking into the woods.
Was I barefooted
Or with shoes?
It doesn’t matter,
For I was greeted
By the dance of falling leaves;
Inviting me to rest with them,
And decompose
Into the earthly ground
I found myself
Transcending-
Perhaps just peering through
The language barrier
Between me and the blooming flowers,
And my kiss became memories,
Clinging on as
Morning dew on a dormant leaf,
Hoping to evade
Evaporation.
The experience of walking into the woods.
Was I barefooted
Or with shoes?
It doesn’t matter,
For I was greeted
By the dance of falling leaves;
Inviting me to rest with them,
And decompose
Into the earthly ground
I found myself
Transcending-
Perhaps just peering through
The language barrier
Between me and the blooming flowers,
And my kiss became memories,
Clinging on as
Morning dew on a dormant leaf,
Hoping to evade
Evaporation.
Chase
Lightning emerges,
Her form twisting in agony
Over the slumbering body of Thunder,
Her fingers ache to touch him,
But her coyness holds her back
From waking him;
She is too afraid
To confess her love,
And she leaves
Not knowing that
Every time, her voiceless departure
Leaves Thunder crying
In his awakening to her continual absence.
Her form twisting in agony
Over the slumbering body of Thunder,
Her fingers ache to touch him,
But her coyness holds her back
From waking him;
She is too afraid
To confess her love,
And she leaves
Not knowing that
Every time, her voiceless departure
Leaves Thunder crying
In his awakening to her continual absence.
Brilliance
A translucent rubber ball bounces
In the palm of a boy,
Its new home
For twenty-five cents
From the vending machine,
Shining like the boy’s eyes-
A glimmering aquamarine
It was, to the child,
Until it carelessly slips
Out of his hand’s embrace,
Falling
Into a murky puddle,
Its brilliance obscured
And abandoned.
In the palm of a boy,
Its new home
For twenty-five cents
From the vending machine,
Shining like the boy’s eyes-
A glimmering aquamarine
It was, to the child,
Until it carelessly slips
Out of his hand’s embrace,
Falling
Into a murky puddle,
Its brilliance obscured
And abandoned.
Blessing
I tried to pick up the tea kettle
Only to have my fingers scorched by the harsh porcelain.
“I can’t.” I said,
With tears covering the shame in my eyes.
You smiled,
And picked up the kettle yourself
To serve
The tea.
I wondered
Why it didn’t burn you the way it burned me,
No fair.
You continued to smile
While watching me sip my tea;
I was angry with it,
I didn’t get what was so funny.
But now I know,
The kettle was just as hot against your wrinkled fingers.
Just that
You knew I was eager and impatient.
Only to have my fingers scorched by the harsh porcelain.
“I can’t.” I said,
With tears covering the shame in my eyes.
You smiled,
And picked up the kettle yourself
To serve
The tea.
I wondered
Why it didn’t burn you the way it burned me,
No fair.
You continued to smile
While watching me sip my tea;
I was angry with it,
I didn’t get what was so funny.
But now I know,
The kettle was just as hot against your wrinkled fingers.
Just that
You knew I was eager and impatient.
Lullaby
No one sang me to sleep,
Footsteps,
My only lullaby.
Feet bound by shoelace,
They cannot feel
The insensitivity of their steps.
Agitated
I am, in a reluctant embrace of body heat,
Breathing through my skin-
The blemished cement.
There is no room for complaints,
My thoughts are flooding into storm clouds,
Ready to shatter
In response to the nocturnal lamp posts
And their vulgar brown lights
Pouring over my head like hot coffee;
Baptizing me into insomnia.
The night sky hovers,
Staying dark even with this brewing cacophony;
I hate its bed of stars and mockery,
A sarcastic grin of
Tantalizing sympathy.
I thought about suffocation,
I will wager my awakening for a moment of rest,
My eyelids are heavy,
But I can’t put them down
Because I am floating
On a bed of broken words.
Footsteps,
My only lullaby.
Feet bound by shoelace,
They cannot feel
The insensitivity of their steps.
Agitated
I am, in a reluctant embrace of body heat,
Breathing through my skin-
The blemished cement.
There is no room for complaints,
My thoughts are flooding into storm clouds,
Ready to shatter
In response to the nocturnal lamp posts
And their vulgar brown lights
Pouring over my head like hot coffee;
Baptizing me into insomnia.
The night sky hovers,
Staying dark even with this brewing cacophony;
I hate its bed of stars and mockery,
A sarcastic grin of
Tantalizing sympathy.
I thought about suffocation,
I will wager my awakening for a moment of rest,
My eyelids are heavy,
But I can’t put them down
Because I am floating
On a bed of broken words.
Persona
I remember your face from that time
When mom told you to read me a bedtime story.
You came into my room
And took out Homer fearlessly
From the darkness of my bookshelf,
I wondered if you even cared that
I was scared.
But then, you sat next to me
And I saw
How different your face was from my impression.
You opened the book, and I was mesmerized
By the wrinkles that folded along your face,
Sketching your visage
Like the front cover of a used paperback novel-
Dried and discolored,
But you didn’t notice and
Continued flipping through the pages.
When you read
Your voice chilled me like the blank of your eyes,
Unmoving, I couldn’t see my reflection in them;
I wonder if you saw me
When you read about Odysseus’s reunion with Telemachus,
I hoped to see you smile
But no, you were afraid to crack the cement of your face,
And when you read about Priam’s plea
I wished for you to cry,
Because I wanted to ask you
Dad,
If your tears are salty, like mine.
When mom told you to read me a bedtime story.
You came into my room
And took out Homer fearlessly
From the darkness of my bookshelf,
I wondered if you even cared that
I was scared.
But then, you sat next to me
And I saw
How different your face was from my impression.
You opened the book, and I was mesmerized
By the wrinkles that folded along your face,
Sketching your visage
Like the front cover of a used paperback novel-
Dried and discolored,
But you didn’t notice and
Continued flipping through the pages.
When you read
Your voice chilled me like the blank of your eyes,
Unmoving, I couldn’t see my reflection in them;
I wonder if you saw me
When you read about Odysseus’s reunion with Telemachus,
I hoped to see you smile
But no, you were afraid to crack the cement of your face,
And when you read about Priam’s plea
I wished for you to cry,
Because I wanted to ask you
Dad,
If your tears are salty, like mine.
Hello Hello
Hello reader,
I will be posting all the poems I have worked on since 2006 in chronological order.
In addition, I will be reflecting on my writing process in my poems/group of poems while discussing the long-term/short-term changes I have made in my revision process.
I would really appreciate it if you can leave a comment, no matter how long/short, after you have read my pieces.
Thank you~
Jesse
I will be posting all the poems I have worked on since 2006 in chronological order.
In addition, I will be reflecting on my writing process in my poems/group of poems while discussing the long-term/short-term changes I have made in my revision process.
I would really appreciate it if you can leave a comment, no matter how long/short, after you have read my pieces.
Thank you~
Jesse
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