When I first became “serious”
about writing poetry, I was all about being pastoral. I found beauty
in nature, its simplicity inspired me and there was always plenty of
opportunity to use it in various, non-complex ways. I began as the
nerdy girl in the front of class, pretending I was taking notes while
actually writing bland love poems about my crush du jour (and they
were bad). It took years to move beyond my permanently
unrequited loves and move towards subjects outside of myself. To
write a poem about a tree or a pond became a major event, because it
wasn’t about me. The irony is that I began to become
uncomfortable talking about myself at all. I would sit in undergrad
poetry workshops with poems about vocabulary, nature, you-name-it.
Very rarely did I write about myself, and when I did, it was so
bogged down with image and diction that I became a secondary focus,
the language was what I wanted people to see.
Flash forward to now, as I sit in the
midst of a fantastic graduate program at the University of Nebraska
studying for my MFA in writing (my focus is poetry, of course). Every
semester, the students are paired with different mentors. These
educators are not your typical profs; they are writers, publishers,
editors, basically everything a writer wants to be when they “grow
up.” Yes, they teach at other programs, and are fantastic, but what
sets them apart for those of us in the program, is that they truly
care about what we want to write, what we want to
study. One girl in my program is the sweetest thing you’ll ever
meet, but her dark writing literally gives me nightmares, she is that
damned good! Her mentors will steer her towards the dark,
grotesque-yet-eloquent writers that best exemplify the writing she
wants to produce. Last semester, I wanted to work on developing a
feminist voice and examine race, class, sex/gender roles; I read Ai,
Plath, Rich, Lorde, an anthology called Gurlesque, and about
twenty poets I had never heard of. It was fantastic. I evolved. I
became comfortable with these subjects I wasn’t totally sure I was
qualified to write about as a white, heterosexual, married woman with
five kids. But I did it.
So what do I want to write about now?
My rage. My. Rage. There are writers out there who have made
entire careers based on their personal lives. My concern is that I am
not entirely comfortable writing about the dark places, and I am so
scared of any writing that does come from those places will be
too maudlin or, worse, too “flowery.” But I still want to do it.
Why? Because no writer truly writes for him/herself, no matter what
they say. They always want someone to read their work and connect to
it, react to it, feel something. Like my dark friend, the fact
that her work gave me nightmares is somewhat of a compliment because
she knows that it stuck with someone. So how do I connect when
I’m not even sure of what to say?
Here is what I
know: there are poets and prose writers (prosets?) that have gone
before me. There will be some Etheridge Knight, some Anne Sexton,
Plath of course, Sharon Olds and others on my list that have
explored/expressed anger in different ways. This is a good place to
start, always find someone who’s doing what you want to do.
Second? I’m going
to write crap. I believe it was Anne Lamott in Bird by Bird
that recommends writing “shitty first drafts.” Now that is not to
say that one shouldn’t even attempt to write something good before
writing something awful, but that one should feel comfortable with
imperfection. Remember this: no one will read your work until you
deem it ready to be read. Take all the time you need to revise and
make it into what you want it to be, but don’t be worried if it
comes out like, well, shit, the first few times.
After that, I’ll
cull some of my favorite parts and play around with them. At a
lecture during my most recent MFA residency, Natalie Diaz presented a
marvelous new technique: IEDs, Image Explosive Devices. These little
sweethearts break apart that simple image you have, say, an apple,
and blow it up into millions of pieces. Identify all of the things an
apple is, all of the things it is not. What is the space it occupies,
the space it does not occupy? From three pages of exploring
everything you can about this one image, you can retrieve one or two
amazing things about it that are completely new. When working
with what scares you, a little explosion is always warranted, if only
to pick it apart so much that it becomes almost meaningless, like
saying “egg” over and over—after the 40th time, does
it even seem like a word anymore? Will this ghost that you’ve built
up and given power to still be imposing when you’ve stripped it
naked and dissected the corpse it came from? Maybe, maybe not. But
there will be some amount of triumph and pride that you got through
it.
Another idea to try
is the extended metaphor. Write a poem (or story) that has seemingly
nothing to do with the thing you are actually writing about.
For instance, me being my pastoral self, I wrote a poem about a tree
in a forest being overshadowed by a taller tree, shaking beneath it
in storms, but never getting the light or water it needed to flourish
and basically allowing the other tree to have all the power. It
wasn’t about a frickin’ tree. It was about an abusive
relationship where someone simply shrinks away and allows it to
happen. Only one girl in my workshop got it. But she got it.
That’s the person you’re ultimately aiming for, but if you’re
scared to address something, do it by using a veil. Eventually,
you’ll be comfortable enough to write the next “Daddy” (Sylvia
Plath, I do love you so, no matter how cliché our love affair may
be). You can’t get to the “Screw you/it/this/him/her/all of it,”
without first clearing your throat a few times and mustering up the
courage. Extended metaphor is a great thing to try for doing just
that.
Finally, don’t be
afraid to be funny. Remember that old adage, “If you’re scared to
go on stage, just imagine the audience in their underwear?” While
odd, and, depending on the audience, disturbing, it has a grain of
truth to it. How often do we try to find the humor in the most
serious things? At funerals, people tell happy stories about the
dearly departed because they want to lighten the mood. It doesn’t
cheapen their mourning, but provides an outlet for it. If something
about your fear is ridiculous, be ridiculous. Heck, even Harry Potter
learned that in Defense Against the Dark Arts (3rd book, I
think thing was called a boggart). Even if it doesn’t work, it may
make you more comfortable.
In the end it comes
down to the things we want to expose, and how we go about doing it. I
am not entirely comfortable trying to write about things that upset
me, but I look at it like this: if the ghosts are determined to hang
around, they better damn well make themselves useful, give them a
chore or two to earn their keep in the recesses of your mind and
heart.
In closing, I’d
like to share the obligatory anecdote of a writer’s life. I asked a
poet to autograph her book, Boneless, for me after a great
reading of her work and an amazing lecture on compression and the
line. We hadn’t talked about any of this, but she took a couple of
minutes in signing my book. You want kismet? Here is the inscription
she wrote to me:
“To Jillian—With
Pleasure in your wild spirit! Write what scares you—Jan Beatty,
2012.”
Amen, Jan. I plan
to.
