“Poetry is a form of necessary speech,” Edward Hirsch writes in How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry, and “poems strike something deeper than thought itself…experience that takes us to the very heart of being.”

Over the months, subscribers have sent results from exercises in Writing It Real, exercises meant to offer a framework and sometimes an occasion aimed at helping writers utter this necessary speech.  Some results are finished poems, some need revision, and some, I know, are meant as a practice of the poet’s craft to help the prose writer.  Still, all of them offer an intimacy between reader and writer that affirms the value of poetry for expanding our capacity for true exchange within ourselves and between ourselves and others.

It is with great pleasure that I share some responses to the exercises in Writing It Real, along with my responses:

Sue Ann Cairns from Langley, BC, wrote that she decided to take time off from marking quizzes and planning classes to try one the Anaphora exercises (Carrying Back to Carry Forward, January 23, 2003). She said that in doing the exercise she had followed the great poet Theodore Roethke’s advice to “get down to where your obsessions are.”

Mothers and Sons

I have listened to you talk on the phone
with the earplug listening device from the Spy Store.
Have felt sick when I heard you call drugs your friend,
then told myself you were just imagining yourself
a rapper from a Detroit ghetto,
Tupac or Snoop Dog with a diamond cross on a silver chain.
Then worried that you were truly delusional.

 I have tried to read your emails at Mitty@switmail.
Have looked in your notebook: words like “fat one” and “ecstasy.”
Have tried to learn this new language—420, for instance–
till you laughed when I said “BC Bud” airily.
On rainy nights I have listened for cars in the driveway,
motors idling, doors unlatching,
because you were out with Daryls or Daves,
older boys without last names, blocked calls on the caller ID
passing around joints, drinking LaBatts,
speed racing on that curve near Peterson School
where I was summoned once with the word “accident”
to find you and the cars in a strawberry field,
one car totaled, but you unhurt.

I have looked in your eyes, trying to see if you were stoned,
telling myself you had a cold, or were tired, or I was paranoid
or I couldn’t tell for sure, and what would I say if I did.
I have gone to conferences at schools, talked with principals and counselors and teachers
and youth workers and students and friends and therapists and probation officers
and family resource workers and parent support group parents–
And friends who were my closest friends began falling away,
falling into silence because what could they say? When their kids
were getting scholarships and playing on basketball teams and going to university–
And they asked about discipline, and what I was doing for consequences,
suggesting sports, as if you would start playing hockey again.
I have let go of dreams, let go of agendas, let go of control the way
the male counselors all said I had to do, as my will was too strong,
and you were too oppositional, and I was too preoccupied, too anxious, too controlling,
and I had to let go and to have my own life.
But how to have my own life when I keep smelling that skunky smell
and seeing glazed red eyes in my dreams, and looking in wastebaskets
for rolled up Kleenex with blood, and q-tips, so many q-tips my husband said I must be crazy.
He is cleaning his ears. Get a grip.
And I have wondered where you were during the day, and known you weren’t at school,
and then been so relieved when the school called, and you were only in trouble
for being in the smoke-pit instead of in class,

And I have bought you books about kids in trouble, the kind you used to read.
I have paid ex-students to tutor you, take you weight lifting.
I have sent you to a wilderness camp in Quebec.
I have asked the judge to mandate drug counseling.
I have asked the principal to mandate drug counseling.
I have lain awake at night, hating the 18 year olds who called so late.
I have gotten caller ID, and phoned *69, and searched your room
for roaches, bottle caps, small plastic bags, bongs.
I have pleaded with my husband, to no avail.
I have shouted, cried, talked calmly, remained silent,
asked questions, stopped asking questions.
I have denied you money.  I have bought you MacDonald’s.
I have paid the cafeteria lady at the school
so you would not have money in your pocket to spend on drugs
but would still keep eating, you have to keep eating,
but then you are eating so much, I think it must be the marijuana,
but it could be that you are growing, yes, you are a teen-ager,
and of course you are hungry, and of course you have hormones.

And I have read books on how to get control, how to let go of control,
how to find balance, center, the spirit of inner guidance
but her flickering light has grown so dim
I don’t know, how, who, where, why–

why not

This poem evokes the speaker’s dilemmas as a mother and as a woman.  The dilemmas of the heart grow more and more complex with every repetition of “I have.”  The form of the poem creates the matrix within which the speaker puts her life on the page.  The breadth of the lines and the breath it takes to say them create momentum, one that slows done to two short words at the end, where the pain jabs deep and clean.  I admire this poem for its capacity to speak about an awful wrestling, for its hard earned necessary speech, and for its release — writing in a moment of need and inspiration.  Fully manifest, as I believe this poem is, a poem walks the line between whatever joy or pain prompted it and the pleasure of speaking about it deeply.

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Suzan Huney used the same anaphora exercise to write in honor of her parents’ 60th wedding anniversary.  Since this is a first draft, I’d like to share my response in the three steps I use (Real Response, March 27, 2003) to help writers grow their poems and prose from first drafts to finished ones.  As always with the three-step response method, I hope that the author will feel my enthusiasm to know more and allow the pattern of anaphora to help her add in more detail.

This is the way we help one another make sure our necessary speech gets onto the page–active listeners prove they are listening and want to hear more and this encourages the writer to put more on the page.

Love Is

Love is this man Judd Huney, joined with this woman Alice Cooper on February 2, 1943.
Love is 60 years of marriage.
Love is faith that though the world was at war that a tomorrow of peace would come.
Love is overcoming obstacles and hurt and forgiveness.
Love is working together to build a grocery business out of an old run down store at Pleasant Beach, and having the spirit to believe.
Love is joy and laughter.
Love is the way Mom stands at Dad’s chair and watches him snooze.
Love is standing by a hospital bed and holding hands.
Love is the shared experiences of cruising through far off places like the Panama Canal, or the adventure of motoring in Mexico.
Love is the day and night sameness that creates the rhythm of life.

I say to you my parents love each other.
I say to you they share a daily feast of love.
I say love is not perfect.
I say my parents have taught me how to love with joy.

60 years of marriage is celebrated with a hug in the morning.
60 years of marriage is celebrated with a cuddle at night after the lights have been turned out.
60 years of marriage is witnessed today by your family as we surround you in love and admiration and thanksgiving for love given and returned.

Love is this man Judd Huney, joined with this woman Alice Cooper on February 2, 1943.
Love is three daughters, granddaughters and grandsons, great grandchildren, aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, and nephews.
Love is Mom and Dad who have shown us the way.
Love is celebrated today.

 Step One:  Velcro Words and Phrases
There are many words and phrases I enjoy that lodge in my ears:  this man Judd Huney, this woman Alice Cooper, 60 years, working together to build a grocery business out of an old run down store, Mom stands at Dad’s chair and watches him snooze, by a hospital bed, holding hands, Panama Canal and motoring to Mexico, I say to you, love is not perfect. Hug in the morning, cuddle at night.

Step Two:  Feelings
a) I enjoy the way I feel a heart bursting with delight, pride and admiration. I enjoy feeling this is a joy shared with others.

b) In this draft, there are places that I feel distanced from the speaker and the poem because of summarizing words like “overcoming obstacles and hurt and forgiveness.”  In fact, I don’t think the writer means that forgiveness is to be overcome like hurt.  “Joy and laughter” and “day and night sameness that creates the rhythm of life” are phrases that stand in for important specifics that would make me experience first hand the depth of love.  However, as they stand, they make me feel like an outsider to this love.  Between the image of “daily feast of love” and the statement that “love is not perfect,” I feel disappointed not to “see” the feast.  I feel disappointed after “love is not perfect,” too, because I feel shut out of seeing how this plays out in the lives of Judd and Alice.

Step Three:  Curiosity
I am curious to see specifics of the feast of love and once I am told that love is not perfect, I’d like to see its imperfections as they exist in Judd and Alice’s life together.  I want to see these things as clearly as I see Alice standing and watching her husband snooze or holding hands in the hospital.  I want to see the day and night sameness so I can feel a rhythm of life and not have to be told about one being created.

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Many of you sent me the results of the Father’s Day writing idea (Writing a Father’s Day Poem, June 12, 2003).  Suzan Huney wrote that she put hers in a card to her dad:

Standing at the End of the Meat Counter

I watch my father’s sure hands trim a strip of fat from a rump roast.
He drops it on the fine saw-dusted floor to be swept up later at closing.

His hair is dark and short and neatly slicked down.  His Old Spice after
shave mingles with the smell of fresh meat and dried blood.

I say, “Hi Dad.”  He turns and smiles and says, “Hello little one.”  I
ask for a nickel to buy candy and he says, “I’ve got a bag of potatoes
for you to sack.  Then you’ll get your pay.”

In the back room, the 100-pound gunnysack has been slit open, and brown
handled paper bags are ready to fill, 10 pounds each.  At least it is
not onions with brittle skin that must be removed before bagging.

I stop my father’s butchering.  He wipes his hands across his stained
white apron, then digs into his pocket.  Five pennies for me.

 I love the straight forward way that the poet describes the father in the setting. The details are direct and specific and build the scene.  The hands that hold the meat at the opening dig into the pocket for pennies at the end.  How much poetry the grown daughter who now writes gets out of that juxtaposition:  admiration for the father doing the work that supports the family and admiration for the father who supported his daughter in learning to do her share, and admiration for the father who asks only so much from the daughter in her work–it’s potatoes not onions.  Using the exercise, this poet captures the importance of small moments in parenting.  The title sets us up nicely, too, to see the moment both through the eyes of the girl at the end of the counter and the eyes of the grown woman today after the long counter of a lifetime.

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Drew Potter sent in this poem for his father:

Waking Late in the Night and Going Downstairs

The light is on in the dining room.
I see my father seated at the table, punching numbers into a mechanical calculator.
It makes a whirring clack when he pulls the handle to generate his sums.
He writes on a paper in front of him.
The ashtray is full of cigarette stubs, and there is a half-full tumbler of whiskey next to it.
His dark hair is tousled and his shirt is open.  It is income tax time, and his clients do not care that he has to work all night to finish their returns.

When I say “Dad?” he turns and looks at me.  “Son, why on earth are you up?”
His voice is gentle.
I am comforted that nothing is wrong, and I trudge back upstairs to bed.

I enjoy the detail in this poem and the way we take the scene is as the young boy would have:  the lighting, father at the table, what father is doing, sound, more action, visuals (the ashtray, whiskey).  It is a lovely moment when the boy recognizes that nothing is wrong, because his dad’s voice is gentle.  The moment rings true both of childhood when we could be comforted in these ways and adulthood when we know the true cost of our parents’ work on our behalf.  Yet, even in adulthood, nothing is wrong. It is the rightness of the lesson, the love of it that has passed down.

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Sam Turner also sent a poem about his father.  He used the anaphora technique in praising him:

IN PRAISE OF MY FATHER

I praise him for hiding candy under Chinese lion bookends to surprise my mother and me. And again in the Pullman car, when we least expected it, out would come a box of See’s Candy.

I praise him for his sense of humor exploding spoons, juggling eggs.  For teaching by example the joy of reading . For his quiet but firm way of keeping peace in the family.

I praise him for early morning walks down the tracks to throw the switch for the Grand Canyon Limited  – for telling me of his childhood, working the wagons harvesting wheat in Kansas, for teaching me responsible work ethics.

I praise him for trusting me to drive our family car with my first girlfriend those five miles back home to get the ice cream.
I praise him for how he could always answer a question with a question.  For hiding his financial records in hopes that neither my mother nor I would worry.

I praise him for teaching me the night sky. Ursa Major, Cassiopeia, Scorpios, the difference between Jupiter and Venus.  For learning to understand the whisper of pine trees and the silence of the desert.

I praise him for finally including me in his visit to the safety deposit box – for believing in me.

Did he know he was going to die so soon?

I love the details in this poet’s praise and I love the sounds of the words about the night sky and “For learning to understand the whisper of pine trees and the silence of the desert.”  In fact, I love that sound so much, I am not prepared for the more pedestrian “including me ins his visit to the safety deposit box.”

And so the Three-step Response Method:

Velcro Words
Hiding candy under Chinese lion book ends, early morning walks, throw the switch for the Grand Canyon Limited, working the wagons, juggling eggs, those five miles back home.

Feelings
a)  I like having the feeling that this boy has looked closely at his dad and feels so included in his dad’s thoughts and actions.  I like feeling the old fashioned life depicted.

b)  I feel distanced by not seeing how the spoons could explode and by not hearing the questions the dad would answer with a question and how he did this. I feel left out not knowing what he would have shown if he would have shown his finances.  And I wish to be more fully at the railroad yard throwing switches.

I also feel like lingering with the landscape and secret, quiet life the father taught his boy rather than going so soon to the safety deposit box and death.  I feel greedy for this, but want to hang around with this father and son a little bit longer, the way memory allows.

Curiosity
Yes, I’d like to know how exploding spoons look.  I’d like to read some of those questions and some of those answers in the form of questions.  I’d even like to see the mom a bit more–did she come to the night skies with the boy and dad? Was there a way she smiled at the candy?  A way the father greeted her at the end of the day?  I’d like to know what the father would have shown if he was going to show his finances–a ledger, bank account? I’d like to eventually know more about the safety deposit box trip. How was the invitation worded? How old was the speaker? What did the speaker find or dread finding or what did the speaker think of what he saw in the box?

I think by providing more detail that matches the specificity of the details that have formed Velcro words for me, the poet can not only re-live the admiration and love he has for his father but more fully evoke (even answer) the mystery he lives with concerning whether his father knew or didn’t know he’d soon die.

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Reading poetry is a physical act that allows spirit to thrive.  What can I say in the presence of these wonderful words except thank you, thank you because feeling our spirits grow is the transport of poetry.