What is poetry? Aug. 27

We read a few poems and discussed what poetry is. We decided poetry could be described as

• defying expectations
• making the ordinary extraordinary
• orange juice concentrate
• coming to your senses

Emily Dickenson says, "If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry."

We read "Do You Have Any Advice For Those of Us Just Starting Out?" and identified words or phrases that appeal to our five senses.

We also read "The Pasture" by Robert Frost. This poem is an invitation to come to our senses.

I defined poetry as a way of being in the world, one in which we are alive to our experience and our senses.  I shared some examples from my life: of getting dressed in the morning and talking with my wife about aging, about watching my children bury a baby rabbit, about holding my injured child, and about attending a funeral viewing. Being alive to our experience does not mean being "drama queens" or "emos"; rather, it is being truthfully aware of experience, whatever what emotional content that experience may include. If you are bored, write about being bored, but write it truthfully. Capture what it is to be bored in the world.

We practiced being in touch with our senses by listening without talking for a minute and then writing what we experienced. We talked about avoiding clichés which fail to conjure a sensory experience for a reader. For example, if we say a chair squeaked, it means nothing. We have heard that onomatopoeia so many times, we fail to hear the "squeak." Instead, we looked for fresh, more accurate ways to help readers experience sensually what we intend. One student suggested the chair sounded like a croaking. This is more effective. We could keep searching for just the right words to capture and recreate the sense experience. I thought the sound was shorter in duration than a croak (which has drawn out vowel sounds and thus sounds long). I thought it was lighter in tone as well, perhaps a chirp.

Here are the little poems I shared from my writing. Please keep in mind they are first drafts:

Almost Middle-Aged

Man tucking button-up shirt into jeans
The way the shirt balloons near the waistband reminds him of his father
Asks wife still lying in bed,
Tucked in or not tucked in?
Tucked in.

On the edge of his bed tying his shoes,
Do I look like an old man?
I don’t think so.
Do old men know that they look like old men?
Do old women know that their men look like old men?

The Viewing

 
She was only fifteen
Her classmates mourn her never-to-bes
No driver’s license, no first kiss, no wedding dress.
I wait in line
Having decided the day before not to try to say anything.
(What could anyone say?)

A sign says
Members of the family are still healing from injuries from the crash—
A gentle squeeze is appreciated.
Handle with care.

I view her family

Her father and brothers in matching sea foam green ties
Lined up as if for a wedding reception.
Her mother is smiling until
She says to someone I do not know, “I just have to look up there,”
Signaling away from the open casket
Towards the photograph on the easel
And her voice pitches shrill and her face contracts
And I look away.

I hug her father—men don’t usually hug this way, at least we never did—

He tries to introduce his other children,
His son wears an arm brace and sits on a stool
His oldest daughter is in another room tending to his first grandchild
His other daughter says, “Thank you for coming.”
(What else could she say?)

And then I am there in front of her

Her face is caked in makeup like calamine lotion
Her closed eyelids seem larger-than-life
She is not so much a porcelain doll
As dried clay.

A dress silken green

A spray of flowers and peacock feathers
A ratty stuffed animal tucked in by her folded terra cotta hands.
I think of my own children
And with sympathetic imagination ask myself
Why that toy? Why those feathers? Why that dress?
How to select a casket? A picture frame? A photograph?