The _____

Remember the dispute over the use of blanks in Jorie Graham’s poetry I was having with my peers in poetry?  I’ve been doing some more thinking about it.

My favorite example is in her poem The Lovers.  Here is a shortened version:

They have been staring at each other for a long time now.
Around them the objects (circa 1980).
Then corridors, windows, a meadow, the ________.
They have been staring at the end of each other for a long
time now.
She tries to remember but it is hopeless.
She tries the other one –Hope- casting outward
       a bit,
oh but it costs too much
…
Here is the glance between them, quick, the burning.
Here is the glance afloat –on the back of what, dear nothing ness?
Here it is, here-
They’ve decided they’ll feed everything into it and then they’ll see.
They’ve decided they want the rest tight round them now like
       this.
They want to be owned, it is all that can own them.
The look, the look finally free of the anything looked-for,
the hurry finally come unstuck of the hurrying,
something fiery all around like dust or a jury.
You there.  They are done talking.
They are done waiting.
Either they are or they’re not, she thinks, hold still.
Something fiery all around –let it
       decide.
It will need to shape it (won’t it?)            hold still.
And the cries increasingly                         hold still.
Like a _______ this look between us      hold still.
If, inside a small terrified happiness begins,
like an idea of color,
like an idea of color sinking to stain an instance, a thing,
like an arm holding a lit candle in a door that is parting,
if, oh if –banish it.
Listen, this is the thing that can trap it now –the glance–
the howling and biting gap-
and our two faces raised
that nothing begin (don’t look away),
that there be no elsewhere,
that there be no elsewhere to seed out into,
just this here between us, this look (can you see me?), this
      look afloat on want,
this long thin angel whose body is a stalk, rooftree,
      blossomfree,
whose body we are making, whose body is a ______
(only quicker, much quicker, a conflagration)
…
alive, yes –yes –but this between, wingless–

It’s a beautiful poem that I don’t pretend to understand well enough to explain.  However, I do feel as though I’ve grasped the emotion of it.  To me, this poem is about how the look between two people can become so much more than the visual perception of someone’s face. My favorite line is “Like a _______ this look between us.”

A blank indicates an absence of something, but can have many different meanings.  A blank can indicate something completely inexplicable –like the meaning conveyed through a glance.  This technique serves this poem well by using a blank to describe the look between the lovers.  The glance is meaningful because it is wordless.  To do it justice requires, at some level, an absence of them. 

This train of thought inspired me to write a ___ poem of my own on another kind of blankness, forgetting something.

A folk melody
-your voice’s vibrato
trilling across the notes of years
a creeping, dead feeling,
like the memory of pain
but missing: the sting
only the puzzling, aching
absorbing of something
seeming like nothing
-like fingers  through holes in a scarf
yours brushing with mine
I know that you sang in my ear, but
the feeling of the sound
once beloved, is
now a curious_____.

I certainly don’t claim to have the command over the technique that Jorie Graham has, but it’s a start.  Feel free to share any thoughts you have on the technique, or in criticism of my poem. 

This book: I made into a work of art.

A few weeks ago I blogged about the intimacy in the experience of defaming a book.  I explored the idea of using them, not just for reading, but for practical purposes, or as mementos.  All of this reflection stemmed from my recent preoccupation with book art.  A few months ago I saw a fantastic art show at 2nd April Art Gallerie with pieces made of books, and signed up for the class to learn how to make book art. 
Tuesday night my roommate and I ventured out (feeling a little proud of ourselves I might add) to the Arts District.  I’m not sure what we were expecting, but as it turns out, book art doesn’t need to be extremely difficult. 

The artist, Pam, showed us some simple techniques.  I chose to take the pages and fashion them into loops, then tuck them into the spine.  I cut the edges from some sections in order to have alternating lengths of pages, and varying heights of loops.

My roommate chose to fold the corners of the pages in a variety of different ways to create triangles.  Her piece is still unfinished.  The more pages you do, the tighter, and sturdier the piece gets.

There were seven women in the class, each with different styles.  One was a librarian, another a mom, and another an elementary art teacher.  One woman made a book that was a sampling of about half a dozen different techniques that the artist showed us.  Another chose to alternate between folding, and also cutting to achieve a wave-like effect. 

As we sat, schemed, cut, folded, and chatted. I find it ironic that over the experience of defaming some books we all started telling our stories to each other.  Overall, the class was a therapeutic experience.  I left feeling refreshed, and with a newly decorated book that will undoubtedly serve as a conversation piece for a long time to come.

Collaboration

This past week, I and two friends that are aspiring poets decided to begin a collaborative poetry project inspired by John Gallaher, and G.C. Waldrep’s work together on Your Father on the Train of Ghosts.  We decided, rather than writing whole poems back and forth to each other, that we would focus on creating whole pieces together.  We would use Google documents to share the project.  Each person would have full rights to edit, and the freedom to add, change, or delete whatever they felt necessary. This, we thought, would be most advantageous to us, because each of us have different poetic strengths and weaknesses.  With our thoughts combined, we guessed, our writing would be much stronger

Since this is only week one, we haven’t made much progress.  However, we are encountering a few, as the cliché goes, bumps in the road. The first poem, we determined, would be about imagination.  We failed to specify, however, which aspect of imagination we wanted to capture, or any kind of idea about imagination in particular that we wanted to express. Now, each of the three of us have been adding, cutting, and rearranging pieces of this poem, with no clear idea as to what we’re going with it. Schedule discrepancies have made it difficult to meet together and discuss this issue.  Meanwhile, a messy pile of words sit in cyberspace, taunting us with their not, as of yet, being a poem.

I’ve also been working on the staff of Sightlines, Malone University’s online art journal.  It works to organize events for student artists, such as open Mic nights and writing workshops.  The staff also puts together a publication each semester, made up of student submissions. My involvement thus far has been limited because I’m still trying to figure out how the system works.  I’ve been able to help advertise for Open Mic Night, participate in a writing workshop, and help gather submissions for our next issue.  Usually, though, my job is mostly to sit in our weekly meetings and feel a little bit useless.

Sightlines is a great project, but it is facing a few obstacles at the moment.  As of right now, the staff is comprised of about ten English majors. This can cause several problems -the first being that we have a limited perspective with which to run our organization.  Though we have some writers that are also musically or artistically minded, we lack the presence of other artists who can truly speak for other artists of their kind. This causes networking problems, which seems to be limiting our audience, and the kinds of art we receive for possible publication.

Also, too many of the same type of people in a group can often cause a regrettable kind of tension.  A professor of mine often says: “You wouldn’t be an English major if you weren’t fragile.”  Working together with other writers, I’m realizing even more as we have begun reviewing submissions, can be a bit of a challenge.  Often, those with a writer’s sensibilities tend to have very analytical tendencies, which give cause for very distinct idea, and strong opinions.  My other project, thus far, has been the same way (just today we had an argument over the effectiveness of Jorie Graham’s use of blanks in her work).  Yet, in both situations, there is an incentive to keep pushing forward. 

I remember talking to a professor about my frustrations, recently.  She went on to tell me, in her own frazzled and personal way that my experience is a lot like being an English professor trying to work with other English professors.  I realized that my experience is not entirely unique. 

People of our kind have the ability to drive each other absolutely insane. However, the intelligence and creativity that each of them hold is invaluable.  Working with others, whether it be on a future best-selling novel or using side walk chalk to advertise for an itty bitty college publication, is not only purely necessary, but offers variety of thought within a particular kind of perspective.  Even though I’m working with other writers, I’m working with writers very different from myself.  If we hold on to that (and have a little patience) we have a lot to offer each other.

Understanding and Ownership

About a month ago I picked up a book in the clearance aisle of a Christian bookstore that intrigued me, called The First Drop of Rain. The book is a sort of essayistic commentary on T.S. Elliot’s The Wasteland.  It’s formatted almost like a devotional with a series of short sections followed by some questions meant to provoke thought or discussion.

 In the first section the author brings up an interesting thought that has been on my mind ever since I cracked the first page.  She writes, “A professor once told me that nothing can belong to us, even our own experience, unless we understand it. I watch my life with my eyes.  I touch it with my fingers.  My mind considers and my heart longs. Across the landscape of my interior, truth coalesces and I begin to understand.  As I write my stories, I begin to understand.”  Then she asks, is it true?  Can something belong to us if we don’t understand it? 

This came to mind today during a writing seminar I attended.  Poet John Gallaher visited Malone University to talk to some students about “The New Spirituality in Contemporary Poetry.” He discussed the tendency of modern poetry to deal with more spiritual themes, even if they aren’t entirely overt.  

He also addressed the issue of poetry in which the meaning is difficult to grasp.  Specifically, we mentioned the anthology American Hybrid, which I have been leafing through somewhat disinterestedly for a poetry class.  I find myself reading passages like the following, and wondering “What on Earth could this writer have meant?”

[Insatiability by Cal Bedient]

For every angel
                                a preposition.
You call,
                swarm guitar string longitudes,
o air flame shining relations
                                                wandering contemporary.

Steeple white clapboard “to”
                spikes enormity Iowa blue-
as the moon is a clasp for night.

“Of,””with” –moments like rain,
when what rises from the river is not only river.

Lightning never lay me bare to bed

                She sat atop him as if he were everything,
                but not to her-

tablespoon of sugar in water.

Spaces be cream
                or exaggerated like raspberries,
red hustlers.

                                Roots that tug to be “up,”
                                “inside,”
                                                will never find a bride

We’re oyster spit, yet the sea
opens before us the white swan of the wounded.

I have had no understanding of these poems, no interest in them, and therefore no ownership of them.  I felt justified in this sentiment until Gallaher explained that poetry ought not to be about the intended meaning, but about the meaning that the reader derives for himself. He put it like this: “You don’t buy a car for the person that made it to drive it.”  It’s all about what it means to you.  Often in modern poetry there is a sort of vagueness to the words.  Gallaher suggested that this space between ideas allows us to fill in our own ideas and emotions, and ultimately to assign our own meaning. 

In this case, the quest for understanding is what inhibits ownership.  If I allow myself to stop demanding exactness from the work, and of myself, my experience is much different.  In rereading the previously confusing poem above, the mystery in the words begins to draw me in.  Allowing the poem to lead you can evoke emotions and rich images that are more satisfying than any concrete truth.  

A Book's Second Story

Recently, I’ve been reflecting on the richness and importance of books –not only for their words, but simply for their tangible existence.  Andy Goldsworthy has a poem called “Library.”  In it the author is describing a collection of books.  He writes:

This book saved my life…
This book I tried to carry balanced on my head with seven others.
This book I actually licked.
This book — remember? I carved a large hole in its pages, a "how-to
magazine for boys" said this would be a foolproof place to hide my
secret treasures. Then I remembered I didn't have any secret treasures
worth hiding. Plus, I was down one book…
This book, from when I was five, its fuzzy ducklings, and my mother's
 voice in the living room of the second-story apartment over the butcher
shop on Division Street.... I'm fifty now. I've sought out, and I own 
now, one near-mint and two loose, yellowing copies that mean to me as
much as the decorated gold masks and the torsos of marble meant to the
excavators of Troy…

I have books like that. I have a book that ruined my life and also saved it in ways I can’t explain to anyone.  I have a copy of Streams in The Desert that was owned by my great grandfather McCleary, a Presbyterian minister, which contains a pressed carnation from my great grandmother’s funeral.  My Bible contains an interesting assortment of mementos that anyone else might find random and meaningless. 

Each has a distinct story that goes beyond the words contained in their pages.  Anne Fadiman also talks about this in her essay “Never Do That to a Book.”  She explains that there are two types of readers:  courtly book lovers who gently care for their books to keep them in pristine condition, and carnal lovers who love their books to pieces. To the Fadiman family “…a book’s words were holy, but the paper, cloth, cardboard, glue, thread, and ink that contained them were a mere vessel, and it was no sacrilege to treat them as wantonly as desire and pragmatism dictated.  Hard use was a sign not of disrespect but of intimacy.”

She goes on to recount stories of reading experiences –a book critic who read The Collected Poems of Edgar Allen Poe on a backpacking trip through the Yucatan and closed an interesting bug in-between the pages, an avid bird-watcher who left a note from the first time he saw his first trumpeter swan, a mother who cherishes the stain of an egg yolk on a cookbook from her child’s first batch of blueberry muffins…

There is a certain intimacy to be gained in the experience of defaming a book. Handling it allows you to connect with it in an extra special way.  Anne Fadiman says “Just think what courtly lovers miss by believing that the only thing they are permitted to do with books is read them!” Books can be used as decorations, doorstops, paperweights, mementos… anything.

Recently I discovered an art form that takes this idea a step further: Literary Art.  On a recent visit to 2nd April Art Gallerie I browsed a gallery full of intricate and innovative sculptures, posters, and jewelry made out of old books.  The artist was wearing a sunburst necklace out of book pages.  I was thrilled.  I signed up for a class to learn how to create a piece of book art. I’m excited to interact with a work of literature in a tangible way, in an act of courtly love.

The class will be at 2^nd April on November 15^th at 6:00 P.M.  The cost is $20.00 and includes all supplies.  Anyone interested can contact Pam Neff at 

330-685-2276 or piecesofapril@neo.rr.com

The Rough and Tumble

Well… I have a confession.  My blog is late today, because I chose to be an irresponsible student and to spend my night at Muggswigz seeing The Rough and Tumble, an Indie Folk band.  I hadn’t planned on going, but after listening to them at a song-writing workshop this morning I couldn’t resist. 

Mallory, a Malone graduate, and her friend Scott spent some time talking to us about their experience becoming a band, and writing songs together. 

One thing they expressed was that it’s easy to get artistically frustrated, something I know I can relate to.  Right now, as a college student, it’s hard to write for me.  It’s hard to just sit down and commit myself to working on a piece, even if I care about it immensely.  It’s hard to produce something and feel like it even matters that I took the time to create it.  Hearing two established musicians relate to that experience was indescribably encouraging.  Mallory said at one point “Everything you’re doing right now looks like a really big deal, and it is.”  It’s important to work hard and push yourself to learn because it builds you into an artist.

 

They also talked about the concept of criticism, and how it can be healthy, and also really difficult to take.  “We’re fragile people, and we play fragile instruments…” they told us.  “People are fragile, and so are the ideas they have.”  Even though other people’s opinion can be invaluable, at the end of the day you’re both your worst critic, and yet you’re the only one that really matters.  That’s why you need to learn to be a healthy critic of yourself.  Over time you will develop an artistic instinct that goes beyond just what’s good and what’s not. Discernment comes when you’re really aware of who you are, and why you need to write. 

The keys here, I think, are experience and dedication.  Good art doesn't just appear magically.  It costs hours of sleep and sanity, and it might cause you to miss a due date.  But, as Mallory said “You have to do whatever you’re trying to do now, and do it really hard or just stop doing it.”  I was challenged to keep making time for my writing, with hopes that someday I’ll be able to look back and be glad that I did.

Muggswigz

I really like this! Except… maybe you should just change everything.

I feel like I’ve become an editing machine in the last few weeks.  I’ve been working in my university’s writing center as a tutor, have gone to a writer’s workshop through Sightlines, and have been work shopping poetry by both myself and others for a poetry class.  It’s as if I exist to analyze and pick apart.  It’s enough to drive even the craziest writer sane.

Anyone who’s ever worked extensively on a piece of writing will tell you that the hardest part of writing is rewriting.  It’s not the generating ideas, or even putting them together, it’s the fine-tuning them. It’s trying to make your words convey the message you’re trying to express, or stir up the emotion you’re looking to evoke. 

Editing a piece is like being in labor -at least what I imagine labor must feel like.  Those delivery scenes on TV look pretty painful…  Or maybe, a better comparison might be getting a skin graft.  That’s exactly what searching through your entire vocabulary for that right word feels like. Cutting that one line you love is still like cutting your arm off out of pure necessity.  You bleed for a little while

Of course, there’s moral support, but sometimes even that wears thin.  After the third edited draft of a poem I’m working on I accusingly pointed out to one of my best friends that she hadn’t commented on what I’d done with it.  “Oh, you mean the part where you replaced that one word, and moved an entire line to the next stanza?” she said rolling her eyes.  At that moment I wondered if she knew how irritating it was to have my entire pathetic writing career laid out in front of me like that. Yes… just that one word and that one line…. But I think they really clarify my underlying theme!

Other writers, you’d think, should be more sympathetic.  Yet, I think sometimes they’re just more eager to feel better about their own work then they are to actually support yours.   As a writer, your workshop experience might go something like this:

You read your piece.
There is a long, awkward, unavoidable but excruciatingly long pause…..

And then somebody says something to the effect of “Oh I really like the metaphor you use about brushing your teeth,” but promptly misunderstand it.  Your workshoppers start to tell you what you mean, or what you should mean, and you get defensive, trying to flesh out to them the soul of that particular image.  Then, somewhere in their well-meaning and insistent, but wrong explanations you begin to understand the right one well enough to write a doctoral thesis on it, let alone a poem.

Billy Collins says it well in his poem Workshop:

 “Maybe it’s just me,
But the next stanza is where I have a problem.
I mean how can the evening bump into the stars?
And what’s an obbligato of snow?
Also, I roam the decaffeinated streets.
At that point I’m lost.  I need help.

The other thing that throws me off,
and maybe this is just me,
is the way the way the scene keeps shifting around…
The rain and the mint green light,
that makes it feel outdoors, but what about this wallpaper?
Or is It a kind of indoor cemetery?
There’s something about death going on here.

In fact, I start to wonder if what we have here
is really two poems, or three, or four,
or possibly none.”

Sometimes they’ll give you valuable feedback, and sometimes the things they say are only helpful because they make it clear to you what you need to make readers understand within the work.

This kind of work can be tear-your-hair-out frustrating, but, if you’re lucky, after countless hours of labor, rather than scrapping the thing altogether, you’ll have a brush with the thing that inspired it.  Something about the way the sun is shining, your hair is falling, or someone is smiling at you will just melt away all tension, inexplicably cause the creative gear in your brain to click back into place, and enable you to write again.  Insanity intact, you can finish what you started.