beginning draft of a poem?

I need some real, honest feedback here... this needs lots of work.

See, I started writing something in the middle of last week and it's a topic that I've generally tried to avoid writing a whole poem about because it feels too tied up in emotions, and I tend only to write about it in veiled terms (and, of course, it has entered my writing, whether I like to admit it or not). Since I've been having a hard time with getting poems out lately*, I decided to go ahead and use the bits that I had started.

So, here's what I've got... (and what Nora already helped me get started with). As for the help, would you pretend that you don't know what the heck I could be writing about and let me know if this poem makes any sense or connects on any level? If you have questions / confusions / suggestions... anything would be helpful (criticism--especially if you find it super weak and sissy--, please and thank you):

...

PLEASE KEEP

Please. She wanted, what I’m sure she wanted, eyes from me:
she wanted, from the back of my eyes, to read
my memories, my admirations, my love—
as if these things pass in streams.
They stall in pools.

She wanted a taste of the delirium and the coldness
—what travels from outside the body in,
as a tub or a pond of ice-water slivers its way in through your toes,
up past your thighs, until
you can’t even feel yourself. You’re gone.

Did she want the dream I had of you?
When I tripped late into the room and your legs were bent up on my bed,
you sat upon my bed, pouring over my handwriting
and all the crisp pages I’d written of your silence; of your smacking
spoons within a mug of chocolate; your body like a white pond in the room.

But, wait. Could she want to look inside this room?
To see your crumpled body never raising head
to laugh or nod. You merely breathed.
Thank God you breathed--that you did without conviction.

She could have seen that which you didn't: my swift glide beyond the doorframe,
ashamed of papers cast along the floor, the pillows
with footprints because there was nowhere else to step.

She’d know what I never before wrote down:
the stale, choking gasps of you and me alone,
pacing cement-walled halls and holding hands,
how we called each other from within our pains.

That these secrets have been tainted.

She’d know we sealed each other inside for a time,
capped like with airtight lids, we painted the glass about us;
that this intimate was all I knew of you.
Reason enough to receive her questions.

I cannot write but in grunts and swallows
about our deaths:
you drowned, but so did I for a time.

In that room, she would see all I become:
a bastard child, covering up pimply legs and goose-bumped arms
as your ghost of a body sweeps beyond me
behind airtight doors.

You leave us alone again to grieve your loss.
Please. Breathe. Keep breathing.

...

[*As for the writer's block (if you can really call it that... I don't think you can), I think that part of the trouble has had to do with my other classes and the excess of work that I need to focus on, but I've also become brainwashed (I believe) into thinking that there's a certain feeling or mood that is often required to initiate a poem. Actually, when the poet Susan Stewart came to my campus last week and gave a lecture about "Poetry and the Feeling of a Thought", I unwillingly latched onto her words about poetic mood... Sorry for that tangent.]

"The Sadness of Saying Thank You"

I suddenly remembered that can spice this up with colored font as well...

It's taken a little bit of time, but I've reached some kind of plateau. I actually don't know what kind of metaphor I would use to help describe what I'm meaning, and maybe that's the joy of just writing the truth. Anyway, I stayed up rather late last night trying to finish reading that (annoying) book by Foer and then, woke early because I was sure that I had scheduled an appointment before class. Arriving a minute or two late for the appointment, I met the advisor and told her my name.

"Well, I don't have you on my schedule," she said. "I've got a Rachel coming in first thing."

This wasn't the first time I've arrived at this woman's office early on a morning, only to find out that I'd made some mistake. This time, my this-week Tuesday was mixed up with my next-week Tuesday. Not such a tragedy, since I still had about 30 pages left to read and only an hour before class. In any case, I again became aware of the tendency I have to mesh and overlap things in my mind and my schedule....

This afternoon, I returned home to find a thick envelope full of photographs from my mom. Many of the new baby--Kaz--, my sister and brother-in-law, mom, and my other nephew, Judah. One shows Judah sitting proudly on the piano chair by himself, playing. I suspect that he climbed up there himself--a skill he learned while I was home. It's strange to think now of my summer and the many seemingly repetitive moments I spent doing something--such as turning pages in piano books and holding the key-cover back so that Judah wouldn't pull it onto his fingers. It's even stranger to compare those moments with now--with the times that I will sit at my desk and hope for the brightness of some kind of joyous writing or reading moment. Looking at those photos and reading the small note that was enclosed--"Laurel said she misses you, and I do too,"--saddened me.

In one of my classes, we talked about kinds of sadness and each person wrote down three kinds that they could think of off of the top of their heads. One of mine was "Sadness of saying thank you." This was something that I tried to express to a friend of mine in a letter long ago. Maybe it doesn't make sense--and it would seem, perhaps, that anything you look at could be turned into some kind of sadness, if you wanted it to be--; but, I understand this kind of sadness to be what one feels when all he/she can say to someone is "Thank you," though a thousand things more are meant in those two words.

I've felt this way many times in life--and for some reason, I always feel a kind of regret attached to it. Perhaps, more than regret, it is a feeling of nostalgia and for the inability to capture that feeling in words or pictures. Lately too, even looking at the photos of Judah and recalling those brief moments when we were alone--when he would tear through (though not literally tearing pages) of my poetry books, or when he would let me put my sunglasses on him because he knew I thought it was funny, or when he couldn't stop laughing as I walked a silly walk...

Many more memories to come, I should hope.

Perhaps there's no sense in feeling sad about these things.

How 'bout the gray? Is it too boring?
...I could just go back to black.

I can't seem to make up my mind about the template for this blog... and also, I decided that--whenever possible--I need pictures. They make life much prettier.

For example, see left. (P.S. Kuenstler means artists.)

argh about books

I've been reading the book EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED by Jonathan Safran Foer for one of my classes. Less than a third of the way in, I realized that I had heard one of his other books on tape this summer while on the road with my mom and sister. The book, while many parts of it are laugh out loud ridiculous (and, yes, I have literally laughed out loud), irritates me for its style and unbelieveability.

I checked to make sure that I was right about my connections with Foer's other book, and came up with this portion of an e-mail that I wrote during that painful book-on-tape voyage toward Virginia:

"We've been listening to a book on tape entitled _EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE_. Maybe you've heard of it. I forgot all but the author's first name, which is Jonathan; and I wouldn't recommend the novel. Though I've read only one book and heard one story by Chuck Pahlanuik, the writing in this book on tape reminds me of Pahlanuik's. I feel like the characters in the novel live under what seems to be drug-induced haze, or they indulge in their strangeness far too much (say, at all times) for the book to appear realistic to me. And it seems to want to come across to readers as believable. Maybe I'm being too critical... and maybe people like those characters really do exist. There actually was a point in a recent passage where the imagination of one character finally conceded to having thought up the series of events just described... That was a relief."

Did anyone reading this happen upon either of those books and sincerely enjoy them?... ugh. That's all I have to say; but, I'd be happy to hear someone argue the other side. What's redeemable about the novels (other than their strange hilariousness... I think one critic called "dementedly hilarious".)?

Oh, yeah. I forgot to mention that this EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED book was made into a movie and, yes, I enjoyed the movie when I saw it. And, I admit, for the most part, the book is enjoyable... though, I get mad at it every time I start to think that the characters and events are aspiring toward realism. Hmmph. Anyone else see the movie? What'shisname Elijah Woods stars in it...

Apparently, no one except Tolstoy, Hejinian and a few others have anything they'd like to share about shyness... That's okay. Maybe I'll write about it elsewhere.

quotes on shyness

I love reading sentences about shyness. I had a good example earlier in a book of poetry by Lyn Hejinian; but, unfortunately, I let someone borrow the book and the sentence is gone.

One I had recorded from Tolstoy's _Anna Karenina_ about the character Levin goes like this:

"Levin suddenly blushed, not as grown men blush, slightly, without being themselves aware of it, but as boys blush, feeling that they are ridiculous in their shyness, and consequently ashamed of it and blushing still more, almost to the point of tears..."

The kind of shyness that strikes adults beyond childhood interests me a great deal. Thinking about it is also how I have chosen to procrastinate on homework... probably not such a great idea.

Oh, I think I found the Hejinian passage I was talking about in a journal of mine:

"One of the forms of shyness is characterized by the fear of making someone else feel awkward or embarrassed, a kind of hightened sensitivity or extreme empathy" (_My Life_, p. 62).

I later wrote that "I think I am a different kind of shy [than that which] Hejinian spoke of..." Anyway, before I get too confessional on this thing, I'll leave it at that (at least for now). Anyone shy out there who thinks he/she pretends not to be? Does this feel a trap?

the downbreak (opposite)

Ah, well.

"It's a new dawn, it's a new day, it's a new life..."

would be the (probably misquoted) Nina Simone lyrics that are in my head right now. They seem particularly appropriate to follow my last (un)revealing post. Things have brightened up; I've made my decision and have even spoken with some of the academics whose opinions I highly value. Whereas I felt that these people would not support my decision, they were surprisingly supportive and encouraging. I think I'm reaching a peaceful place--which I believe has had a lot to do with the prayer and encouragement that many of you offered. Thank you for this--the big deal that I keep realizing it is.

Even though I'm not going to proceed with my honors plan, I suppose could still attempt a project revolving around the ideas that I had generated--even if in secret. I imagine that, somehow, I would find satisfaction in the successful completion of a private project... similarly to how I delight in poetry.

I found out this afternoon that a professor friend of mine had nominated me for something related to the Hopwood and that this may have had something to do with my winnings... He told me that he deserves at least $50 of the award money if he finds out he played a role in this award. Funny people.

Sometimes I'm afraid of what I might say and of the fault in all that I do end up saying... perhaps this is why I often opt for silence.

burried without feeling in my foot

More and more, I'm recognizing my need for encouragement as part of the basic human need for encouragement. I realize that I've spent months twisting my neck from one side to other (one option to another) and have become sick with confusion, wanting only for someone to knock me down and shriek, "Just pick one, dammit!" I think I've been needing this kind of force.

Or, maybe I needed to do what I've gone and done: stuck my foot in the door and waited to see how long it took before I lost all feeling in that foot--before I decided that I'm much better off keeping my limbs in working condition. I want to be myself, afterall; and I want to be the one that God intended me to be. Temporarily disabling part of my body may only hold me back from running that one particular stretch of the race that I've been training for over the past 21 years. I guess it's been 22 now.

This is all very abstract, unfortunately. I'm keeping my distance from actually talking about the matter by putting up vague wording and the metaphorical language. It isn't that metaphors are dishonest exactly, they're just somewhat concealing. They only suggest at (and limit one's understanding of) the truth of a situation, rather than enabling a reader to fill in his/her own understandings of truth. This little paragraph, I fear, reverts back to my own esoteric tangent involving the metaphor vs. metonym conflict. Let's forget all I've written.

It's been about school and honors and all that I'm embarrassed to admit I've been burrying my head in the sand about.

the blurb goes on and on

Just so you know, I'm postponing my shower right now. So just imagine you're sitting in front of a sticky, sweaty and probably smelly girl. It's what you've always wished for. Seriously now.

I just recieved an e-mail from the instructor for the highest level poetry-writing course and have been admitted to the class--thankfully. Some people with skills of reason and practicality would tell me that I really shouldn't take another creative writing class (as I've filled up a good deal of my transcript with them and other creative expression courses). Another teacher commented on how learning to write creatively has shifted significantly since its early history, in which people who wanted to write just did it and read other material in order to really learn how to write. I think this guy was seriously questioning the value of creative writing classes: does the current-day version of learning to write reflect a denigration of the human mind? Or, if one chooses to look at it from such a negative perspective, perhaps a more likely culprit for our loss of intellectual integrity--as it might be called--is overstimulation. In other words, because our world/society contains a nearly infinite wealth of information and too much to choose from without adequate attention to give over to everything, if someone wants to write in today's society, I think it's reasonable to assume that there are far more examples of poor writing available as opposed to great/skilled writing that one cannot simply start producing wonderful writing by mimicking what they read. Of course, if someone were to point out that such and such is a great work of literature and such and such really lacks the necessary qualities, then this would be what I call class. It would also be a rather prescriptive form of instruction, which I don't exactly agree on. A balance between prescriptive instruction and instruction which enables the student to formulate his/her own understandings of quality must exist. As long as I don't feel like I'm the only one opposed to the canonical works of literature and the so-called qualities that put those works in their place, it will be alright.

I don't think I really intended to say all of this when I started writing this morning. Woops.