writing

02 Only Child- Adam Clay

AngelaLeave a comment

This week I’m looking at Only Child by Adam Clay. I like getting these daily poetry emails, because there’s a nice variety of contemporary poems. It’s cool to be able to get a sliver of the poetry scene every day and familiarize myself with some of today’s poets. And of course, I never feel like I have enough poetry.

I’ve had a really good day today, and my brain is buzzing in that way where it feels inspired, even though I haven’t actually done any creative writing today. The possibility of creation is there, if that makes sense. Hopefully it will linger for a few days.

Once again, I’m going to start my analysis by looking at the form. This one is quite different from the short couplet format of last week’s analysis. Though the individual lines are clipped, the poem is without stanza breaks and it gives the poem an anxious, claustrophobic feel to it, a cycle of thoughts that cannot be broken out of. The individual sentences spill over for several lines, like the speaker’s thoughts cannot be curtailed.

This feeling of entrapment is emphasized in several ways. Firstly, the opening line “Breakfast rained on again” sets the tone of the poem. I mean, just imagine a soggy breakfast! Not only does it conjure a feeling of discomfort and grossness, a rained on breakfast would understandably ruin the speaker’s whole day.

Secondly, Clay makes use of juxtaposition, pairing up opposite words to demonstrate the speaker’s lack of control over the situation. Some examples are “dark of the day,” “humid February,” and “I am/ drawing a self-portrait/ and trying to remove the self.” I really like how these images clash, but in a way that my mind is still able to understand what Clay means. The mismatch is jarring, but not incomprehensible. It’s sort of a consciousness of the randomness and unpredictability of life that we’re all subject to.

There is also an instance of repetition that I really like “I had always/ imagined a different type/ of fatherhood before/ fatherhood found me.” Repetition always intrigues me, because it has the potential to morph the connotation of the word in a minimal way. In this case, perhaps Clay’s idealist version of fatherhood has not been fulfilled in reality, or that he finds it impossible to achieve the caliber of fatherhood that he desires.

Because Only Child hinges on the concept of fatherhood, I really appreciate Clay’s attention to adhere to a domestic and internal perspective. The first third of the poem focuses on light/ dark and the way it morphs in the daughter’s bedroom. The darkness again creates a sense of pressurized closeness, but also a lack of certainty, as the speaker is unable to see ahead of him: I’m still/ trying to see in the room/ that’s gone power out. The weeds in the yard also overwhelm the speaker, and the pressure and responsibilities of fatherhood crowd out the speaker’s sense of identity.

Yet, despite all of this uncertainty, the speaker remains hopeful. He notes that looking back feels like looking forward, and he registers his effect on the world around him. Towards the end of the poem, the sentences become less relentless. They are shorter and more peaceful, and create a sense of calm and light that is still able to stem out of his doubt and anxiety.

instagram: a level-headed look at ‘shadowbanning’

Rules for a poem

1. Create the tone of the poem in the opening line of the poem with a strong, sensory image.
2. Play with opposites and juxtaposition, light/ dark, smooth/ rough, etc, and try to ground the poem with this central conflict.
3. Use repetition to reorient an idea or concept.
4. Vary sentence length and see what effect this has on the poem.

01 Buffalograss- Jake Skeets

Angela1 Comment

I’ve been in a writing funk since the beginning of this summer and a reading drought since the beginning of the month. This is partially due to my worrying about the future (the full-time job search is very draining) and also due to my inability to really sit down and focus and feel. I try to read or write, and maybe a feeling of inspiration will lance through me for a fleeting second, but I haven’t given myself the time to sit down and decipher exactly what the text means or analyze the precise contents of my feelings.

I’m hoping to change that.

I don’t know where inspiration comes from, but they say the more you read, the better you can get at writing. I’m challenging myself to read a poem closely, to decipher its meaning, its form, and all the elements that have elicited an emotional reaction from me. If all goes well, this will be a weekly thing. A poem or paragraph a week. Maybe that can jump start my creative juices.

In addition, I’m going to be giving myself some “rules” or elements (3-5) that can possibly be incorporated into a future poem inspired by the one I am analyzing. Maybe, if these inspired poems are deserving, they’ll pop up on this blog, too.

Most of the poems I will be selecting will probably come from the Academy of American Poets “Poem-A-Day,” which I have been subscribed to for the past several years. I recommend. Who doesn’t want to start off their day with a poem?

I will be starting with Jake Skeets Buffalograss, which was featured on September 12.

There are a couple things that strike me about this poem. First, is the form. Even before a word is read, the look of a poem on a page can create an emotional response or cause the reader to read the poem differently. For example, a reader will expect a different sort of movement if the poem is broken into couplets (as this poem is) versus one giant wall of text versus lines scattered with different alignments. One might expect a couplet to be balanced, with a methodical rhythm or rhyme scheme. However, this is not the case in Skeets’s poem. Instead the enjambment creates a sense of arrhythmia and tension in this nature-intensive scene.

The poem moves quickly from a domestic scene “Barely-morning pink curtains/ drape an open window” and immediately move outwards into the world. This already causes the poem to have a disorienting effect, to move from one side of the curtain to the other without a pause or stanza break. Outside, the “Roaches scatter,// the letter t vibrating in cottonwoods.”

I love the word vibrating there. It’s a strong and unusual verb in this context, and it gives the sense of something impermanent, as this elusive t will at some point stop moving and only the viewer’s memory will tell him that there is something in the grass.

The next couplet also uses strong tactile verbs: I siphon doubt from his throat/ for the buffalograss. Doubt becomes this tangible object that the speaker gets to handle intimately, ultimately deciding what becomes of it. This is a stanza of action, and it is made stronger by the full stop after the period. No enjambment here.

One of my favorite parts of this poem are the lines “His tongue a mosquito whispering/ its name a hymn on mesquite,// my cheek.” I love how this finite moment is stretched into something longer by bleeding into the next stanza. It’s also worth noting the sonic play of mesquite// my cheek. Again, this division creates an imbalance, as if part of the thought has spilled over to the next line. The animation of the tongue into a mosquito is also lovely, and the attention to the mosquito’s whispering makes the reader even more aware of the upcoming sound play.

Overall, this is a poem about desire. The urge to be together is natural, primal, but also desperate and consuming. The seeing and being with another is almost warlike. Everything that they are and say can collapse back to the earth.

Rules for a poem

  1. Take a scene from nature (the backyard, the Grand Canyon, the sunset over the ocean) and use this as a language pool for verbs and sounds to enhance the setting.
  2. Use an imbalanced couplet form. Figure out where line breaks can create the most tension.
  3. Move the poem from a smaller, enclosed space to someplace much more open.
  4. Play with space (3) and time. Speed up slow moments or slow down fast moments.
  5. Personify one part of the scene.

The Hatred of Poetry- Ben Lerner

AngelaLeave a comment

What does it mean to be a poet? What qualifies as poetry? These are just a sample of questions I’m left with after reading Ben Lerner’s essay, The Hatred of Poetry. I have yet to read any of Lerner’s actual poems or his book, 10:04, which several of my friends have read. Still, the essay makes it remarkably clear that Lerner has thought deeply and read widely about the topic of poetry.

He begins with a poem about poetry he had memorized for class that opens with the line: I, too, dislike it. I think every poet will assert that at least part of the reason they write is because poetry simply feels like it is alive in the universe. It is out there, begging to be understood and transformed into speech. Similarly, the hatred of poetry is just as universal. Everyone has had the feeling of a poem nibble on their insides, but more than likely, they’re more aware of their dislike for the genre.

I, too, dislike it.

Only five years ago, in my junior year of high school, we were assigned to read and analyze an American poet of our choosing. I knew nothing of poetry. I thought it was obtuse, vague, simply throwing a sequence of words on a page. Poetry was only a form for metaphors and symbols that I was too stupid to understand. Either that or poetry was intentionally evasive, all about misdirection, the poet purposefully hiding whatever they were trying to say. At the time, I would not have hesitated to say that I preferred the bluntness of prose.

Even now, when I am hesitantly claiming myself to be a poet, there are still highly-acclaimed poems that I just cannot get into. Though I may find myself lingering on an image or drumming a rhythm in my head, there are still so many poems that I read and wonder what part of it has eluded me.

As a poet, I have come across the hatred of poetry with more frequency than the average person. Sometimes it’s more polite, an admission with a shrug that they just don’t usually read poetry. Other times, the accusation is blatant: poetry is easy! So are you trying to just write poems as a job? Most recently, another intern and I were inventorying books at the University of Notre Dame Press. We were allowed to take any book of our choosing, a perk that I verged on abusing, and the other intern would be drawn to a particular cover or title, only to place it back on the shelf upon discovering that it was poetry. I was amused.

Inherently, poetry is a form of self-expression, of the world striking some sort of chord with you, whether that be beauty or anger or love, and it’s calming to feel so part of the universe. We have turned to poetry as a form of art and communication for so long that it almost seems as if the very genre is a part of us.

However, the hatred of poetry is equally as universal, and perhaps even more rampantly expressed and heard. Yet, we’re quick to chalk up every rhyme or unusual phrasing as “poetry.” (ie: I’m a poet, and I didn’t even know it!)

So which is it? Is poetry something that is inherently an aspect of humanity or is it something to be rejected?

I wish I had an answer to this paradox, but I do not. Nor do I feel confident in providing an answer as to what makes a poem a poem or what makes a person a poet.

But I think that may be one of the many thrills of writing poetry. No poem is perfect, but every poet is trying to speak a truth as honestly (though not always as straightforward) as possible. Perhaps we hate poetry, because in a sense, it has already failed us. There is no formula for a perfect poem, and we aren’t trying to figure out the alchemy for the creation of a flawless poem. Would I even like poetry if I feel like I know all of its secrets? Poetry is the symbol we communicate with, but in the end it’s a symbol, not the authentic world around us or the genuine wellspring of emotion we have inside of us. I think I like poetry because for a few brief, electrifying microseconds, the poem glances off the precise sentiment I am trying to express, skipping like an impulse or skimming like wind over the calm surface of a lake, and I feel bare and raw and so here in this world.

But other times, when the jagged lines are trying too hard, the stanzas a half-tone too sharp or flat, limp as an overly ripe fruit: I, too, dislike it.