Reading as Writer (poetry)

“Waste” by Kay Ryan

Not even waste
is inviolate.
The day misspent,
the love misplaced,
has inside it
the seed of redemption.
Nothing is exempt
from resurrection.
It is tiresome
how the grass
re-ripens, greening
all along the punched
and mucked horizon
once the bison
have moved on,
leaning into hunger
and hard luck.

I don’t know if this is entirely appropriate (this poem wasn’t assigned as a reading in the book/in a packet), but I figure I’m doing pretty much the same thing anyway…

First I have to mention that this poem is very obviously “skinny.” It was a point you mentioned in class, speaking of writers crafting longer or shorter lines, and Kay Ryan was your example, and if it’s true of all of her work, then this is one example, and a good one. Her lines have such a strong economy, and that’s funny, given the content of the first two lines of the poem. “Not even waste is inviolate…” The poem is a vertical line, traveling downward, looking forward to an eventual destination. That Ryan divides her sentences between lines (the first two lines are a short, “shared” sentence) speaks to the flow of it. It is spoken with a quick cadence, and we don’t stumble as we read it, but continue on to the next line all the way to the end of the poem.

Ryan uses internal rhyme to move the piece forward, and also utilizes rhymes at the ends of her lines to bolster ends of sentences. Near the beginning, we see “inviolate” rhymed with “it” (line 5), and later, “redemption” rhymed with “resurrection.” Later, we see internal rhyme dominating more of the soundscape, though it is also present in the beginning of the piece. Some examples are the “a” sound in “waste” and “day,” the hard “e” sound in “redemption,” “exempt” and “resurrection” (three adjacent lines), the “i” sound in “tiresome” and “ripens,” and the “u” sounds in “punched,” “mucked,” “hunger” and “luck.” There is also some repetition (the “mis” in “misplaced/spent”) and a general feeling of consonance, given by words like “punched” and “mucked” and “hunger” and “hard luck.” It’s an elegant construction. The sounds of the vowels are varied (the “ee” in “greening” and the “eye” in “horizon” and the middling “redemptions” and “resurrections.”

Replicating this kind of work is going to be difficult for me, but I’ll post the results below.

Hope is a small
thing, hardly
worth the effort.
It is appalling
how often we
tell these lies
in front of children.
Impressionable minds
want to know,
and this is the
garbage we offer.
We may be tethered
down, but they
shouldn’t suffer
for our years
of controlled descents
to basement dreams.

um…confessional/the other one

Five years ago
Henry awoke three hours
Before his death.
He was supposed to have been
a good man, or he thought,
But a disagreement between
him and his wife
on THAT point
proved to be
his undoing.

Henry was a bastard
and he got what he
deserved. I’m sorry
that it hurt–he didn’t
deserve THAT. But
Henry didn’t last long
after he knew he
was to die. And really,
The shock of it was
the worst part. For
someone like Henry
The fetal position
is one he’s only seen
in his wife–
never one he actively
Tried himself.

–

My mother was the strongest
Personality I knew. Sometimes
She said people were bastards
because they weren’t “getting any.”
Henry wasn’t, but not because
I didn’t try. He didn’t love
Sleeping with me. Maybe a roll
in the Hay would have done him
wonders–made him forget his
cold and pinched demeanor, made
him groan and spasm and flop
like the rest of us do when we
do it alone.

I’ll confess that I’m not sure.
But after awhile, you stop asking
questions, and the rote in your life
is the mode of your life, tireless
and final. You expect only that
the next few moments are the moments
you have just endured, spread out
over a timeline of a forward-moving
marker saying “You Are Here.”

–

I don’t know that the second poem differs that much from the second stanza of the first, BUT I thought it was interesting to include a first-person shift in perspective, and I thought a bit of a confessional within the narrative was…fitting. I like that the first is a little skinny, and the first STANZA of the first is a little glib. It snakes downward, speaking in a language that is familiar and pulpy.

The second poem is more squat. I had a hard time with the form of the “confessional,” because I wanted to include the words “I confess…” or something to that effect. Or for some reason I wanted to delve into melodrama, thinking this was some piece of 1930s thriller trash. Wikipedia calls a confessional a sightline into a poet’s heart (or it means to) and it’s difficult to write in that form when the subject matter is not of SELF but of someone else. It’s supposed to be deeply personal.

And maybe I did it wrong, but I thought “what would I confess if I were her?” and I thought…”what is private?” And sex came to mind, and that (the “not getting any”) IS something my mother would say… of teachers I didn’t like, or rude people she met in grocery stores. So I put it in there, and that’s what began the poem. I don’t know. These are usually the things that spark my stories/poems. These little bits of a character’s personalities and then everything else is a segue.

Pantoum & Sonnet.

Pantoum:

My mother tells me
there are things you don’t do
and then THINGS YOU DON’T DO
And there is a difference

there are things you don’t do
(walk out on a pregnant woman)
And there is a difference
Between that and the checks you send.

(walk out on a pregnant woman)
don’t; you’re asking for trouble.
Between that and the checks you send
That trouble lasts a lifetime.

don’t; you’re asking for trouble.
Everyone who’s done it knows
That trouble lasts a lifetime.
And you will always be a deadbeat dad.

Everyone who’s done it knows
There are things you can’t change
And you will always be a deadbeat dad
And you’ll always be exactly like your father.

There are things you can’t change
And then THINGS YOU DON’T DO
And you’ll always be exactly like your father
My mother tells me.

–

Sonnet:

The crowing of the teacher would not stop
Though many men had wandered through before
And on no store could they have placed her stock
And of her teaching, none would want for more
And for their reaping, none would stand to gain
The diligent, the studious and aught
And for her keeping, none would choose remain
There after school to be the better taught.

The teacher would not teach for very long
She’d struck a student with her knobby cane
And no one clamored to her weak defense
And those against her banded to a throng
Their vengeance vindicated by her shame
The knuckles on her cane stretched white and tense.

poem for sale.

I wrote this today. I had the thought for the aliens for a little while in my head, but I was reluctant to write it because Kim Addonizio uses the same kind of idea, of aliens…little beings that influence our thoughts and make us DO/FEEL certain things. Anyway, I finally just wrote it.

–

Does anyone else see the alien in the room?
He is editor to my thoughts. He is always there
Mashing up my feelings and pressing them
through the filter you cannot see.

He sifts and filters, and the good stuff
comes through, the good stuff…how he knows
I cannot say. But he does and it makes
the days a little easier. He takes the edge off.

When he keeps them at bay I’m mostly human
Only sometimes slipping into alien thoughts
Alien living. But sometimes I go days being
Disconnected. Thoroughly liking the feeling

Sometimes I catch him in mischief, or slacking
Taking the bad stuff, the bad thoughts–
Fermenting their pulp, and storing it away;
What he plans for them I cannot say

But I’ll whisper it: I think he plans toxicity.
For a torrent of it to flood through my system.
I think he’s dumping the stuff and staying,
To see if it’s Me or Him that remains.

Who would it be? I wonder. Him or Me?
Him or the brain? It’s tough to wonder
And even as I do he helms the filter,
Stronger, maybe, stronger than I am.

After all, it was Me who needed Him.
I wasn’t prescribed to fix the alien’s thoughts.
This he knows. This I know.
Our détente remains.

Some stuff.

Two poems I thought of:

This is a poem I found via someone’s LiveJournal last year. It’s a list poem done very well. I’d recommend it.

http://www.poems.com/special_features/library.htm?

–

And of course, Langston Hughes’ classic poem “Let America Be America Again.”

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed–
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There’s never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek–
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one’s own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean–
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today–O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That’s made America the land it has become.
O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home–
For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore,
And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came
To build a “homeland of the free.”

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we’ve dreamed
And all the songs we’ve sung
And all the hopes we’ve held
And all the flags we’ve hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay–
Except the dream that’s almost dead today.

O, let America be America again–
The land that never has been yet–
And yet must be–the land where every man is free.
The land that’s mine–the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME–
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose–
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath–
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain–
All, all the stretch of these great green states–
And make America again!