This weekend my boyfriend and I are going to Hell City Tattoo Festival in Columbus Ohio. To our benefit, both of us are pretty seasoned when it comes to spending multiple days at a tattoo event, and we both boast volumes of skin art all over our bodies. When it comes to the tattoo culture; and I’m not going to even discuss the current state or rather the current “fad” of tattoo culture ie: Miami Ink, LA Ink, the Rockabilly and Pin Up Culture – instead – when it comes to the meat and potatoes of my link with the culture in many ways it is deeply connected to my love for poetry.
When I actually sit down and consider my writing, I am struck instantly by my own personal and overwhelming affliction with symbolism. In many ways I have found my inability to escape symbolism as perhaps the largest hindrance toward my advancement as a poet. Though through all the trails and error I am driven constantly by the motivation that lies in the metaphor, the imagery, the core movements of my own interior working itself to the surface; wholly and unapologetically symbolic.
I often hate when I have to explain my tattoo work. It’s personal – though I understand the contradiction of having artwork so available on my skin that of course I’ve laid the groundwork for those questions. Yet, the reason I hate having to explain my work is that it often feels like a draft of a poem. I am already at the end, and somewhere at the beginning, but the lines are all blurred together – and there is always room for something else to creep in and “mean” something.
Symbolism is a currency that has spent itself in ink, over my arms, my legs, my torso – yet the language that I expend is not as easily translated. When I come home from tattoo conventions I am always a little more aware of the creativity and innate compulsion we have as human beings to use expression as a guidebook or a road map.
Our Story Workout class gets folks writing fiction in class and all week between sessions. But what a lovely surprise when some of the exercises inspired Judy F. to write a couple poems:
ONE DAY IN THE LIFE
At 7:00 a.m. my mother crashes into morning,
Tanks up with a good breakfast for a good day:
O.J., milk and cereal for the kids,
For herself: coffee, black, and a beer, frosty cold.
Mother hangs laundry, pausing only to vomit in the tulip bed.
Mother 7-Crowns her morning with a call to the cabbie
To circle by Cut-Rate Liquors for a bottle and a pack of coffin nails.
Mother drives three blocks to her mother’s house for
Afternoon communion: coffee, wine and gossip at the kitchen table.
Home again by 4:00. Lukewarm condiments decorate the table,
Ruptured hot dogs float with globules of grease in a pot on the stove.
Did she remember to eat lunch?
At least she remembered to turn off the stove this time.
For dinner mother fixes Chinese chop suey no Chinese would recognize.
Then dishes, homework supervised, the children dispatched to bed.
The sullen husband follows soon thereafter.
Dreary evening slides into somber night – my mother’s own time.
Another cigarette burns down to mother’s yellow finger tips
While she reads another novel of human folly
And drinks herself quite jolly.
Time: This Way Out
Mr. Attila: released with love
Silence stands about me.
Loneliness attends.
Love did not bind you.
Tripped out of time by the disaster of disease,
You plunged out of life and into memory.
You snatched my heart and slipped away.
Great care hardly hindered you
as your little self slipped through my fingers,
like minnows sinking into opaque water,
like dreams dissipating in the sun’s resurrection.
Time: mine like swimmers sucked by relentless currents
into the expansive sea.
Time: yours like the waves’ foamy fingerlets
sucked into the anhydrous sands of the never ending beach.
The ties between us stretch to tenuous,
then imperceptibly desist.
It was that time again last week. When I make my students write poetry. After the collective sigh has dissipated and they actually put pen to paper, the magic happens. Take a read:
by Melissa J.
Poems annoy me.
Let’s talk about some sad stuff!
Dress it up a bit,
tear it apart and slap it on the griddle.
It’s art!
See?
You cried!
How universal, art!
How relatable!
Publish me,
please.
by Robert G.
The hours tick by.
The days race, blurring from crib to cane.
Soft skin turns dry.
Every crease turns to wrinkle.
Every wrinkle deepens with despair.
The child in you is old and dying,
tarnished by the life not wanted,
the life poorly chosen.
Bones grown old,
always cold.
Awaiting frigid embrace.
I’ve been out of grad school for almost two full years, and after all this time have begun taking stock of what it is I miss most about being submerged in academia for so many years. Among them: surprisingly is my affinity for critical reading. Lately I’ll read essays, journals just so I can use a retractable highlighter and a soft lead mechanical pencil to jot some incoherent notes in the margins. One essay of interest that hasn’t left me in days was one I just read in a recent Poetry Magazine, the February issue.
There was an argument for a reason as to why religion has little if any place in modern poetics. Immediately I was captivated by the subject as recently I have been working harder on ascertaining my own spiritual growth and development. The essay centered itself on the hinge of a Heidegger theory of poets for the world versus poets for the earth. I won’t even attempt to summarize the essay here, but I will share one of the more potent moments that has stuck beside me the past week.
An issue of creation. An issue of the imagination. And in the essay in particular it was the issue of: “imagination is imperialistic.” I wasn’t stunned by the idea, instead I felt illuminated and in gratitude to the writer of the piece that he could hit on such a round idea that at times has left me clambering for any linguistic code.
The idea itself, imagination is imperialistic, when read aloud phonetically already sounds powerful and mighty. It already sounds as though the imagination is nothing to throw around lightly. I loved it and tried desperately to separate and serrate it’s creases of meaning and intention. Broken down the idea is simple, you create therefore you “create” or even, you engage in the action of creation therefore you build, construct and redefine the world around you.
So I was blown simply put, by this elegant translation of creation and left curious about my own ideas concerning the engagement of imagination in my poetics.
Robert Hass and Philip Schultz are the 2008 recipients of the Pulitzer in Poetry. Looking backwards in Pulitzer history, this is the first time that two Poets have been awarded, and perhaps the first time ever that two writers were chosen in the same category ever. (If someone can disclaim this please let me know.)
Which leaves me to an interesting thought. Why? Does the world somehow need, value or appreciate poetry now more than ever? Has the condition of what has been going on politically, socio economically, environmentally, domestically - any and all of the above - has this lead to a desperation to truly understand the fundamentals of the human heart, the human psyche, that poetry can bring forth? I’d like to believe, that yes, this is why. The world needs poetry more than ever. An innate characteristic of poetry has always been one of humanity. There is distinctly a natural connective tissue with the Poet and the world that is undeniably linked. This could be said of all writers, though I’d like to think this is naturally something that the Poet instills within their craft automatically. This of course, opens up room for a discussion over Truth and Honesty in poetics - something I believe with all my heart separates most good poetry from bad poetry.
Yet, let’s look at the evidence behind this sudden recognition of two accomplished Poets, two very distinguished Poets who have been given such a high honor as a Pulitzer Award. Thematically there are various levels to both collections, though if one were to systematically break down the interior themes of both collections one may uncover the root of why there is an undeniable need to recognize these two works. This root, simply and irrevocably could be determined as such: reverence. Not so much for the ideas, ideologies, confirmations, assertions or facts or fiction, instead, there is this amazing reverence in being human and being able to accept memory, loss and struggle of perception.
Right now, I think the human condition is fragile. Right now I think poetry can be a vehicle for social change. Right now I believe that our world needs the discovery and unearthing that poetry can give each of us individually. There is something about the translation of poetry internally that breaks down the complexities and even constructs everything we thought or felt was real.
Hass and Schultz have each won $10,000 in recognition for their passion and commitment, and in turn perhaps have elevated the importance and highlighted the human need for poetry.
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