Minnesota as Punishment for the Sin of Pride

Last week's Read Write Poem prompt involved a form called the bop, which is, as I understand it, sort of a modern sonnet-esque type of thing: 6 line stanza to set up, 2 line refrain, 8 line stanza adding to the first, repeat of 2 line refrain, then 6 line stanza to wrap up or twist or confound or otherwise resolve the first two, then another repeat of the 2 line refrain. The prompt involved everyone posting two lines, and then each poet choosing another persons refrain and writing a poem around that. There was a really cool set of line about vultures... I loved the lines, but couldn't make them into anything. I had the thought of driving an empty landscape, with vultures, in my head, and also my snowy drive back from Cleveland last weekend. Then was talking about the weather in Minnesota this morning, the possibility of me being able to handle grad school out there. So that's what went into this, I guess.....

Minnesota as Punishment for the Sin of Pride

The old man who rings up my coffee
and gas tells me to be careful on the highway
west. It’s windy as sin out there, he says,
and I know he would have used a different word
if I’d been a local. I smile, say I will,
I’m from Ohio and no stranger to winter.

I drive farther west than I’ve ever been.
The land is flat, the snow blown thin.

I’m no stranger to winter, but this
is ridiculous, my gloved fingers numb,
car buffeted and blind. Snow dervishes
beside the highway frantically praising
this great and unpredictable force
till the wind moves on and white robes
settle hollowly to earth and pavement,
all their passion blown across the prairie.

I drive farther west than I’ve ever been.
The land is flat, my soul blown thin.

Passion has blown me out here to the prairie,
my weight insufficient anchor against the wind,
my coat and blood too thin. There is no sun here,
no color but old snow, salt-bleached asphalt,
and frozen stubble in the fields. My red car
is brilliant in this landscape, my smallness immense.

I am farther west than I’ve ever been.
I fear the flattening, the blowing thin.

A Poem for the Palm Tree in my Hallway

Community

It appeared in the hallway
in November, half-dead, drooping
in the corner before the stairs.
We guessed someone moved out
and left it, houseplants don't travel
all that well, and this one
was none too healthy to start.

We talked to it when we walked by
sometimes. Poor palm tree,
did someone abandon you?

It thrived there in front of the window,
cold winter sun enough to bring it back.
Someone must have watered it
over the holidays, into the new year.

You stopped coming over in February,
and now air is getting warmer. Last week
I opened the window in the hallway to give it
some fresh air, fronds leaning and reaching
toward the light. This morning I saw
that one of my neighbors brought a stick inside
and tied the palm upright with bright orange ribbons.

As if heaven is just a dim and smoky room.....

I had a wonderful, intellectually stimulating, weekend in Cleveland with some old college friends. I didn't realize how stimulating until I started driving home Sunday afternoon and couldn't stop coming up with poem ideas and lines. I wrote a few down when I stopped to get a cup of coffee halfway home. My brain is still buzzing now, and it was so nice to be surrounded by smart people, and to see the way that it helped my creativity; it makes me that much more excited for grad school, and that much more sure that I made the right decision in applying.

However, I am completely saddened that I don't think I got into Wisconsin! They sent a bunch of acceptances out via email yesterday, and I didn't get one, and I am crushed. It just seemed so "meant to be", the way I wrote it on my list before I'd even researched it, and the way I kept seeing that car with the Wisconsin license plates outside my apartment, and the way one of my friends in Cleveland was telling me she knows people out there who'd help me out.... I guess I can't fully count it out until I get the rejection in the mail, but I am quite sad that I don't think I made their cut. I'm starting to wonder if fate is just telling me to go to Penn State, and making the decision easier by not giving me any other acceptances.... I KNOW that I'll be happy at Penn if I go there, and I KNOW it's a good program, and I don't want to downplay either of those facts at all, BUT it's a blow to my ego not to get in anywhere else. I admit that, okay? I have an ego, and it will be really hurt if I only make into one of the nine schools I applied to. Even though it's a good one, and even though they only chose two poets, and even though there are plenty of people who applied to more schools and didn't get in anywhere. I still have that ego, and I still want to feel like I am wanted and valued, and I still want to feel like I have a choice of where to go....

Sigh.....

I'll post a little bit of something that popped into my head on the drive home Sunday:

Ohio

This state
is shaped
vaguely
like a heart
and my life
has flowed
like blood
through all
four chambers.

The title of this post is also a line that occurred to me on that drive, but one which is being worked into a poem.

Polygon

one of the poems I wrote last week. based, very loosely, on me sitting on the golf course in our college town with a boyfriend of mine from way back when.

Polygon

The grass above the second hole
embosses patterns on the backs
of our legs. We are lying under the moon
on the only hill in this town.

You take my hand without looking,
knowing where our fingers will meet.

You know how we always draw the earth
as a circle? you say as you trace fingernails
lightly over my palm. You can feel
me nod. It’s not. It’s not really round.

We’ve snuck onto the golf course,
neither of us comes from a country club
family. The earth is really a huge polygon,
with millions, billions, of sides. We are
cold enough and drunk enough
that this makes heartbreaking sense.

I grasp your hand and stare at the sky,
feeling the earth dig into my skin
and the back of my skull. I think
you’re right. That explains the bruises,
the corners we run into, the angles
we trip over when the way should
be smooth, how hard it is for a girl
to just walk in a straight line.

Poetry is not a warm and fuzzy thing

That's a misquote from a student of Richard Hague's. He read at the Poetry Forum Monday night, and passed out a little broadside of poems inspired by his high school students afterward. One of them used a quote from a student, which was to that same effect, but I don't remember the exact words.

He was a good reader, and he read a few uncomfortable poems, which liberated me to read an uncomfortable poem. I posted a draft here awhile back. It's called Playing Dead and is inspired by something that really happened in my hometown shortly after I had gone away to college. The story has haunted me for years. I'd never read it aloud before, and wasn't too sure about reading it then, but I got a great response, and it read really well. It still makes me cringe a little, the story of it, but as a poem, it seems to have value.

I'm not sure how I feel about the value of making art from horror and violence, except as a way of encompassing it within our minds. But is that art, or is it therapy? Can it start as therapy and become art through revision and a certain distance?

To keep my mind busy at work on a boring Monday....

www.freerice.com

and a haiku about it:

Free Rice

What a luxury
to be paid for sitting here
playing trivia.

You can't win them all

A couple people yesterday mentioned getting rejections from Alabama in the mail. Well, mine came today :( I am disappointed, but just taking the hint that I'm not meant to be a southerner. Of course, I would be way more disappointed if it was my first response; as it is, the acceptance the other day kind of balances it out. Interesting to me is that the two schools got the exact same sample, and statement (except the paragraph about the specific school), and their rankings are very comparable, so it just goes to show how random this whole process is.

2 down, 7 to go.

And I decided I really need to make the effort to send out lots of submissions over the next few months. That's a goal for next week: polishing up some poems to send out.