Exercise 2: Trying to Remember

(Again from Tony Hoagland's The Art of Voice)
"Uncertainty may seem like an odd quality to cultivate in a poetic voice, but in fact our unsureness about what we think, see, feel and remember is one of the most convincing dimensions of a human voice. 

One of the ways of getting uncertainty on the page is through syntactical methods. Repetition, hesitation, self-revision, stutter, questions, self-interruption - these are a few of the devices for showing the speaker working through the effort of thinking.

...

[Use Caryl Pagel's poem "Old Wars"] as your model and write in the voice of a speaker trying to recall an event from the past or trying to figure something out about another person.

Her answer still stirs a spark
from those ashes swept into
some forgotten corner.
Lying face-up on a Pilates Reformer
staring at the rectangles of a false ceiling
I was at least three oceans away
in a conversation that was combusting
taking this fragile ecosystem within down in flames - wait
how did it begin again?  In the car,
on a rainy day, while navigating concrete
curves like a wavy doodle along the Bohuslan coast,
I think I asked, what do you think of
him? (My husband, of course I knew,
she had given us her blessings at our wedding
it was captured shining in her eyes
across all the photos) So why did I ask?
I was in a state of symbiosis with
my husband which blurred into a fusion -
I was fishing for compliments
not for myself - because that's always harder -
but for the one whose praise I felt entitled to a cut
(like a pimp) I think
that's why I asked,
I felt like basking in his glow,
but her reply dowsed my pride in fuel
and dropped a lit match - You are so lucky
to have found him - did she say that?
I remember the word 'lucky' but
there was more, why did I freeze
then melt or did I burn then freeze
like magma resigning itself to rock -
did she start by saying 'someone like you',
'so difficult', 'only he would put up with it?'
Along those lines although
just a degree of difference in navigation
decides whether the vessel lands or crashes.

Exercise 1: Gerald Stern's "Blue Skies, White Breasts, Green Trees"

Use the poem "Blue Skies, White Breasts, Green Trees" by Gerald Stern (from Chapter II) as a formal model for generating a speaker's poetic testimony of her mistakes, misunderstandings, and misperceptions.

This exercise is taken from The Art of Voice: Poetic Principles and Practice by Tony Hoagland (an excellent book by the way that was both insightful and inspiring).

(What I took to be a poetic calisthenics exercise
turned out to be an exorcism of spirits both benign and belligerent on memory lane)

What I took to be the silent room of a library
turned out to be a bathroom door with scribbled secrets
What I took to be a snowman with a tattoo
turned out to be a skateboard careening downhill out of control
What I took to be a string of fairy lights
turned out to be buttery croissant crumbs luring the future closer...
The future where
What I took to be a birthday cupcake
turned out to be a mental health warning
What I took to be a helium balloon
turned out to be a headless stone statue caught in a drizzle
What I took to be a hairy arm
turned out to be a rejected science-fiction manuscript about time travel
What I took to be your bleeding heart gleaming wetly on the pavement
turned out to be a patch of rust masturbating in front of a mirror -
Good riddance to that.

(9799)

Revival

This blog's title - left over from a previous era in my life - rings truer than ever. The full quote, courtesy of the perspicacious George Eliot - "It's never too late to be who you might have been". To that, I add the equally wise words of e.e. cummings - "It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are".

So, who am I? (Cue Jean Valjean's epic revelation - 2460-ONEEEE... lol) I have decided that I am a writer. I've toyed with this identity countless times in the past, made and broken promises like a fickle, faithless lover. But time and again when newer shiny pursuits lose their lustre - when distractions reveal themselves as dead ends - I circle back to one of my first loves - words.

Writing immortalises the plebeian sacredness in my life. A watchful eye that lavishes attention on mundane moments, like rain on thirsty plants, so they bloom. Writing is a form of therapy. It is a cool caress on a burning wound; fresh flowers on a grave. Yet I do not write for myself only - I would not be able to sustain it. I need an audience. To be published. To be read.

I have decided to hone my writing skills by doing poetic writing exercises and posting the results - along with any other by-poems - on this blog. This latest infusion of determination started with *drumroll* a rejection. I entered the Golden Point Award 2019 with five poems, three of which I actually thought were pretty good.  Not good enough, apparently. While I am occasionally skeptical about the Golden Point Award prize-winners (I've noticed certain trends), it also made me reflect on how I simply have not been writing enough. The last time I entered the GPA was in 2013 - and not having won anything, plus having cobbled together an entry in a rush, I swore that I would be well prepared for the next round. 2015 -  I had been sucked into the chaos of advertising and didn't enter. 2017 came and went, I had stopped writing for years by then.

Listening to Outliers this week by Malcolm Gladwell was terribly humbling. In Chapter 2, he makes a treatise for practice as a prime factor of success - with examples of phenomenal talents such as Mozart, Bill Gates, The Beatles all fulfilling the 10,000 hours rule before they made it big. Honestly, my heart froze as I heard this while running errands. I counted my own hours. I've hit the 10,000 hour mark for advertising. But for poetry - I generously estimate about 200 hours. This means I'm missing 9,800 hours. How vainglorious of me to imagine that I can waltz in after a five? seven? ten? year hiatus, start writing again and win the competition.

I also suffered a brief but intense bout of regret-itis.

I started writing when I was 13. Because I didn't get into CAP one year, I didn't try again. I wrote on-off through secondary school - generally relationship-centric rather crappy poems - and then went through a love-lorn intense writing phase in JC. My JC lit teacher Mr. P recently sent me four poems I had let him read in JC - they're actually very good for a 17/18 year old, I think. Yet somehow, I just didn't continue writing enough, even though I majored in Creative Writing at Brown with an honours thesis in poetry. Even there, I constantly disappointed myself by not putting enough time into poetry class assignments and my thesis. Part of me questioned whether I really enjoyed writing poetry - or just the idea of being a poet.

Counting back, I realised that if I had kept up writing when I started at 13, I would have hit my 10,000 hours by Senior year college. Failing that, if I had started taking writing seriously when I graduated (spurred on by a disappointing farewell note from my disappointed thesis advisor) I would have hit my 10,000 hours by now.

After disparaging the GPA judges, and languishing in the throes of what-could-have-been, time to embark on the pro poet (proet) journey! Yes I will probably be 43 by the time I hit my mark, but being precocious is overrated anyway. It's never too late to be who you might have been.