The Gift of Love

I don't normally mark Valentine's Day, but my eighth grade English class did, so this year I have a thematic piece of childhood writing to share in honor of the holiday.

The assignment was to write an essay or poem inspired by Valentine's Day. I guess song lyrics also counted as acceptable:

The Gift of Love
to be sung to the tune of
"I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing"

I'll give the world the gift of love
This St. Valentine's Day.
The feeling of being cared for
Will never go away.
 
This love will envelop the earth
And fill each empty space.
Everyone everywhere will smile,
All people will embrace.
 
There'll be no shouts of anger heard
And all fighting will cease.
All guns will drop from people's hands:
The world will be at peace.

I thought it was nice I came up with an interpretation of the assignment that avoided nearly-fourteen-year-old romantic angst about, say, Justin who sat in front of me in science class and made funny jokes. I started imagining a teacher having to read dozens of such compositions, so then I wasn't too surprised when I read the complete instructions and saw a variety of suggested topics entirely unrelated to romantic love. The sole opportunity to muse on a crush offers, "If you wish, you may answer this question without giving the name of the person."

My poem was an answer to number 8, "If you could give the world a valentine, what you would give and why?" Several others involve gifts, including the somewhat surreal "Pretend you are a valentine gift. What are you? To whom will you be given and why?" The rest relate to hearts, most notably "If your heart were visible for others to see, what would you want us to see?" I really hope some smart aleck wrote about regular beats and properly functioning blood vessels. I'm surprised that smart aleck wasn't me. I bet Justin would have taken the bait.

The instructions indicate we wrote the rough drafts of these compositions during class, then revised them for homework. I approached the editing more enthusiastically than with most of the other assignments, perhaps either because I wrote the first draft with less preparation or because it was poetry:

Behind the Eye-Mirrors of a Teen Poet

Our most recent look at my childhood writing explored a survey of poetry I wrote for my seventh grade English class. I mentioned that I also kept a personal poetry journal during that time, and today I cracked it open and winced my way through. Unlike most of the other early work I've shared, these poems weren't written for school assignments, so it's possible they've never been seen by anyone else until now. Exciting, huh?

The journal is a cloth-covered blank book I probably received as a gift from a relative, perhaps at holiday time, since the first poem is dated shortly after the beginning of 1988. In fact, it commemorates the start of the year:

Midnight
Inside
Yelling, screaming
Hugging, kissing
Trumpets, whistles, laughing, singing
Outside
In the dark,
All alone,
Without a sound
The new year comes in

The structure of this poem seems influenced by the forms we were studying in class, particularly the diamond poem, but here and throughout this collection, I experimented with different styles. Incidentally, I likely spent that New Year's Eve either watching a Marx Brothers movie marathon or sitting in a wood-fired hot tub surrounded by snow. Either way, there was definitely no kissing involved, but there was certainly some singing.

I continued writing poems in this book throughout 1988, the year I turned 13, but the entries are sporadic, and the vast majority of the pages remain blank. I expect I knew even then that my path to literary fame didn't lie in poetry.

The next poem is the one I retained the strongest memory of and most dreaded facing, though I'm sure I was very pleased with it at the time:

An empty face,
With grief behind the eye-mirrors,
Reflecting back on happy days that bring no smiles.
 
A sad sigh,
Of sorrows and times gone by,
Ne'er to come again.
 
An ache of longing,
Of crying though the tear-well's dry.
 
A black dress of mourning.

That's an Extremely Serious And Weighty Composition right there. You can tell by the "ne'er".

As it happens, I distinctly recall my inspiration for this grief-stricken poem. I'd heard that a neighborhood dog was hit by a car, and later that day I saw one of the kids from that family at school, staring into the distance. Sure, I realized he was probably thinking about lunch or homework, but I connected the look on his face with his recent loss, and I was visited by the muse.

An Adolescent Survey of Poetic Forms

The previous installment of my early writing took us a bit out of chronological order to examine the museum-quality pieces preserved in my childhood home, but today we'll return to our journey through the main archives. We left off with a last look at fifth grade, and I said we were in for some middle school angst ahead.

I may have oversold the angst idea, since the trials of adolescence aren't especially apparent in the school assignments that make up most of what's been saved. I do have a personal poetry journal that probably contains a few emo gems, but I've been cringing too hard to look at properly. We'll get to it soon, I promise.

The most miserable year of my childhood was sixth grade, when I was bullied and nearly friendless (shout out if you're responsible for keeping me at "nearly"). The curriculum that year didn't involve much in the way of creative writing, and I only have one surviving piece of sixth grade work. It's a script called "A Broadcast From Valley Forge" that imagines a television news correspondent visiting General Washington's cold, starving troops to report on the desperate conditions. I have no idea whether the assignment called for this experimental anachronism or if we were expected to write something more conventional, but I do recall delivering this report in front of the class and playing all three parts. I can only imagine what this did for my social standing.

Seventh grade went better, and one bright spot was my wonderful English teacher, Mrs. Mahoney. As a unit in her class, we studied different poetry forms and composed examples of each. Let's see if my poetry skills improved any between fourth grade and seventh grade.

Citizen: An American Lyric

Reading CITIZEN: AN AMERICAN LYRIC by Claudia Rankine challenged me on multiple levels. The material examines issues of race in America and the daily experience of going through life as a black person. Whether Rankine is writing about the thoughtlessly racist statements made by friends and strangers or the tragedy of racially motivated killings, her words hit hard, provoking both discomfort and thought.

The book's format presented another reading challenge for me. It's classified as poetry, which I don't read often, and most of the text didn't match my expectations for the poetic form. The pieces take a variety of formats, but many are prose poems, one or a few paragraphs that convey a moment or an image. Some of these struck me as very short essays, while others recount a brief scene. The collection also contains some longer pieces I'd describe as essays, others with the frequent line breaks traditionally associated with poetry, and a set written to accompany videos. I'll admit that the more poetic and abstract material was harder for me to understand and connect with than the more straightforward prose.

But rather than me trying to explain the poems any further, it's time for some excerpts of Rankine's work. This poem provides a good example of both the format and the subject matter:

A woman you do not know wants to join you for lunch. You are visiting her campus. In the café you both order the Caesar salad. This overlap is not the beginning of anything because she immediately points out that she, her father, her grandfather, and you, all attended the same college. She wanted her son to go there as well, but because of affirmative action or minority something--she is not sure what they are calling it these days and weren’t they supposed to get rid of it?--her son wasn’t accepted. You are not sure if you are meant to apologize for this failure of your alma mater's legacy program; instead you ask where he ended up. The prestigious school she mentions doesn't seem to assuage her irritation. This exchange, in effect, ends your lunch. The salads arrive.

This second person narration is used throughout, with "you" as the protagonist. It's an effective choice that forces the reader to briefly experience the microagressions and abuse the collection focuses on. Several more poems are available at the Poetry Foundation site, along with audio of Rankine reading them aloud.

One section looks at individual racially charged news events, and each of these pieces is labeled as a "Script for Situation video created in collaboration with John Lucas". One video, with a script designated "In Memory of Trayvon Martin" in the book, is displayed here with additional information about the project. More of the videos are available on Rankine's site under Situations.

Alongside all these powerful words, Rankine has included some photographs, mainly of artwork relevant to her themes. These are presented in glossy color, and the whole book is attractively designed, making it a physical object worth handling.

There's a lot going on in this important collection, and I recommend all readers undertake the challenge.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ On the NaNoWriMo Blog, Robin Stevens explains Why the Most Important Thing About Your Novel Is the Story, Not the Words: "They might be nice words, they might be really beautiful words, but if they don't help your story move forward, they need to be deleted. If you wrote them once, you know that you can write something equally good, or even better, again."

An Early Poetry Collection

Last week I introduced a new series of posts presenting some of my earliest writing. The response to the first entry, in which I took a critical look at a story called "The Craziest Rainbow", was enthusiastic and perceptive. Commenters provided insightful feedback and clever ideas for improving the piece. I may or may not get right on that.

But now, more juvenilia!

I'm not a poet, and I know it. In my early years, though, I was still exploring my poetic identity, and records of this remain from several distinct periods. Today we'll look at a small collection of poetry I wrote circa fourth grade, in a little heart-covered book:

Actual Poetry

It's National Poetry Month, so this is a good time for me to write about the poetry collection I read a couple of months ago. (See, I wasn't procrastinating. I had a thematic plan!)

I read ACTUAL AIR by David Berman because of a recommendation in the poetry episode of the Bookrageous podcast. Out of all the books discussed in that episode, this sounded like one most likely to suit my tastes.

Many of the poems in the collection are in fact just the sort I enjoy reading. I was surprised that about the same number didn't appeal to me much at all. I'm sure that all of the poems are as well-crafted as the ones I liked most, but I have fairly specific tastes when it comes to poetry.

In general, I prefer poems that present a scene or small story I can visualize and comprehend. I want to be able to have some confidence that I'm interpreting the poem in roughly the way the poet meant. I don't tend to like poetry that (as far as I can discern) is more about the sound of the words than the meaning, or that leaves me feeling I have little hope of imagining the same explanation as the poet.

"The Charm Of 5:30" is my favorite poem in ACTUAL AIR. It's a lovely example of a scene that evokes specific feelings and concrete (if sometimes odd) images of what's happening. The opening line, "It's too nice a day to read a novel set in England," is the type of funny but completely relatable thought that appears frequently in this collection.

The long poem "Self-Portrait at 28" (some minor errors in this transcription) has many wonderful bits, including another concept I can identify with:

You see there is a window by my desk
I stare out when I'm stuck,
though the outdoors has rarely inspired me to write
and I don't know why I keep staring at it.

By contrast, I'm baffled by a poem like "Cassette County". I do enjoy the rhythm and sense of some lines, but I don't know what to make of the whole.

The images and ideas in "World: Series" are much more accessible for me. "The Moon" is another one I appreciate, and like many of Berman's poems, it's quite funny. "Democratic Vistas" is about writing, and I'll close with an excerpt from that poem:

In support of the novel, I must say it was designed well. The scenes
were like rowhouses. They had common sidewalks, through which one
could hear the faint voices and footsteps of what was to come.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Livia Blackburne draws on her background in recruiting subjects for psychology studies in her series, An Experimental Psychologist's Take on Beta Reading.

→ Author Chris Bohjalian shares a true story of reviews, revenge, and inspiration. (Thanks, The Millions!)