Well, I figured my intermediate workshop was going to be a challenge, but I did not know my opinions would be invalidated and my styles and voices questioned. Firstly, I had to stop centering my poetry (which is certainly a style – my preferred style at that). Then, I had to include punctuation, a formatting choice that I used sparingly, which incidentally I am being told to reverse in the new class. Now, I am not supposed to initial capitalize the first word of each new line. Who said I wanted to be a contemporary poet? Oh, and I can’t be inspired by “pop” poets like Rupi Kaur, who is the only contemporary poet I like.
Needless to say, my workshop professor and I are clashing. And I was admonished for stating the poems we read this week made no sense. If something does not make sense to me, I am going to make that clear. Just because some stuffy editors felt otherwise does not mean other people’s opinions should conform. The Emperor’s New Clothes, anybody? Suggesting I am not reading correctly and not that the poet wrote incoherently is insulting. Yellow Submarine is catchy; it is not a top-rate, meaningful song.
Raiding people’s private journals after they die and publishing them is certainly no way to set a precedent on what is the standard and now accepted. That has happened to at least two poets that I know of, Emily Dickinson being one. (She had only 10 poems published with her consent and her catalog is over 1,000.) It’s actually extremely violating and self-serving. I am here to learn, not conform or lie. This week’s reading list included the following:
coping skills lost in the flood
By CA Conrad
make you aching upwards of a
teenage broken phone
come to hear underwater
libraries up the side of
the dinner plate a
little too fast
not ungrateful like
some of these bastards around here
can’t tap out a tune with you looking away
genies of not enough sleep
a happier location for
the war not the
easiest thing you realize
beautiful architecture
refreshing beverages
our signs read hello love us for
the century of
progress we
gave you
bombers
arriving
early here
they are
From “Listen to the Golden Boomerang Return”
a potato
born by
shovel
I am a
bride of
poetry in
my orange
and purple
gown an
unequaled
extinction
machine
pushing
strollers through
ecosystems of
concrete and plastic
we camel through the journey
with our new playbook for
where plunging hands go
don’t be weird
about this
you can be a
bride of
poetry
too
As you can see, neither poem above is left-aligned, another “rule” we were given for this week’s work.
Third Poem for the Catastrophe
By Joyelle McSweeney
O
melting rainbow that embrace this roof
O
persistent covenant
hangs around
giving us nothing, leaves its muck in the water
expects us to be knocked out by its fine colors
weren’t you nothing too, weren’t you
sea bottom
crunched down into fuel
and when that eggshell roof busts through
mama’s gonna buy you
a rainbow ride for free
an illumination, an inflammation
hyperion flame headdress
dream pins in the fuel
balloons of Koolaid burst down to cool
the sticky baby’s head
plus a credit card a glock a new bible
a princess dress
a mermaid princess dress
so you’ll be twice submerged
or an erased Indian princess
pajama set now go to sleep
Bureau of
This is the body of,
waiting to turn on.
graced with a little tremor,
a little-known form, a fibrous hook,
a flimsy lever that makes the jar work
a lever and a clasp
:voila. The pathetic filofax
unfurls, the owl describes;
on air; makes an apse; lopes left
off the phonepole, woodenly.
we rise above the wind park,
commemorially.
our whorled fossil, pinned open.
our emergency kit
holds aspirin. digitalis. adrenalin-in-in.
So, yeah, I said they seemed drug-induced and made no sense. For one thing, the last poem starts a line with a colon 😒😒. Poetry is mainly for the poet, and I am all for that expression and them writing whatever they want, but I am certainly not required to like it or be encouraged to emulate it and “learn” from it. If I can say a movie makes no sense (and in a lot of instances, I am not the only one who feels that way), I can say a poem makes no sense, because, let’s face it; a lot of them do not. If they make sense to the one writing it, that is fine; great, even. Good for them. But do not belittle me or my intelligence and opinion solely because it does not align with yours. If this is “contemporary,” I will wholeheartedly pass.
Featured image: https://poemanalysis.com/poetry-explained/elements-of-poetry/
Cari R Esta 