He looked at me like he wondered why I hadn’t asked that question long before. Then he tipped his imaginary hat and said, “Ovid, Ovid Jones, sir. At your service.”
Then he just turned and walked away.
Love Poem
When she heard his poem in workshop that morning something opened, suddenly, inside her. The feeling was like that of a door she had been clawing at, groping for the latch that magically offered itself to her, swinging wide with a breath of air.
Astonishment following astonishment. She wasn’t sure she’d even be in this place, novice that she was. But when she saw the ad for the Provincetown Poetry Workshops and the stellar panel of renowned poets who would lead the writing she knew immediately - in that way that knowledge visits unbidden sometimes, certain of its message - this opportunity was hers, exactly the right thing for her and she will absolutely, positively be there.
Behind her confidence was the harsh reality she‘d published only a few small poems in obscure literary magazines and no book, not even a manuscript she could call her own, yet she was proud of at least three poems that had allowed themselves to be written by her. Now, as part of her application process, she was to have them read by the Pulitzer Prize winning workshop director, Alistair Johnston. God! How often does an unknown poet have that opportunity?
When the letter came she could feel the shape and content of its message even before she opened it. Breaking the seal was just an exercise to confirm what she already knew: it was destiny. She, the young poet just graduated from Swarthmore, would be among the poetry stars this summer in Provincetown.
At the introductory meeting the first evening, people were asked to say a sentence about themselves. Some listed achievements, others gave reasons they found to write poems, others confessed their angst being there. She simply said, “I’m Melissa from Nashville” and sat back down.
Next to her was a man named Christopher. He had said something about being there for the third time. She had noticed that whereas many of the other poets were dressed rather nicely, he was already in relaxed gear: shorts, tee shirt with unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt over, sandals. Formality skipped. Already zoned in. As she finished her statement he leaned over to her. “Newbe?” he said.
“And terrified,” she added.
“You’ll get used to terror,” he said, “it’s part of the creative process here.”
She shivered. “I’m up to it,” she said. “I guess.”
She spent the first three days being totally intimidated by the work of the other poets. To write a new poem each day might seem like easy work, poems being so short and all, but she knew that when you lay your burnt offering at the feet of the gods of poetry, it’s a goddamned pressure cooker.
As the week progressed she reached deeper inside herself for the courageous subjects she’d been afraid to write about before. This morning, with Alistair Johnston assigned to be the workshop leader, she had decided to go for the “big,” to tackle the tragic death of her younger brother. But she found it difficult to get inside the subject, kept away by some terrible force... pain or anguish, she couldn’t tell. Her poem garnered good responses from the participants, more than she might have imagined, but the whole experience was curiously unsatisfying and as she sat there trembling inside, consumed by a sense of failure, she contemplated giving up entirely and going back to Nashville.
Then came Christopher’s poem:
Mohawk Valley
I come to this wide valley
gouged in the earth by the rasp
of glaciers, where
the tall pine presses its talons
between boulders.
Here the fallen tree
opens it bark
releasing the moisture of life,
its ribboned interior
now quiet, now still.
I see my father lying
in his death, his slow decay
bringing him to that same dryness
while I stayed away
locked in cowardice.
I bring my words, the only language
I have known and utter them
to the harshness of this air
asking the undulating grace of grasses
to transform them, to tell me
the magnitude of my sorrow,
to lead me to those lichens and mosses
that slow this terrible seeping.
The participants made noises of appreciation, offered a few comments, noted the use of implied similie, the use of nature as a scaffolding to house the strong human emotions, suggested adding something to indicate why the words might be thought of as useful and then it was over. Except for the last comment of the leader, Alistair.
“Good poems this morning,” he said. “Nice work.” He looked around the circle at twelve exhausted poets and nodded. “It is the gift of a poem to show us the quiet dignity of human suffering,”
Then it was over.
People gathered their things, made a few friendly comments to each other and began walking out the door. She caught up with Christopher just as Alistair was speaking to him. She overheard the last of their conversation.
“Thanks for the spiritual moment of this morning’s poem,” he said, and then walked away.
Christopher stood a moment in silence.
She came alongside him. “You must feel pretty happy about the way things went this morning.”
He looked up and smiled. “I don’t think it’s hit me just yet.”
“It was a beautiful poem.”
“Thanks. It was really... ” He took a deep breath... “really hard to write.”
She touched his shoulder. “You wrote the poem I wanted to write,” she said.
He laughed. “That means we’re on the same page,” he said.
“Almost,” she said.
He examined her with his eyes, took in her disappointment. “I liked your poem,” he said.
She sighed. “It was all right, but I wanted to go deeper. You showed sorrow, guilt, loss and did so so beautifully. How did... ?”
He had unconsciously begun walking but now stopped and looked at her. “I guess when you’re down in the pit you have to write what’s there or it’s going to bite you.” He laughed.
“You’re going to have to explain that.”
He took a deep breath and smiled. Have you got a lifetime?”
“Absolutely,” she said.
They found a bench near Conference Headquarters and sat down. Other poets stood or sat in small groups chatting about whatever aspect of writing humored or troubled them at the moment.
“What I want to know is... ” she paused searching for the right words... “I mean, it takes great courage to face what you faced today and do it so honestly. How did you do that?”
He laughed. “You have to get destroyed,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
He rebuckled his sandal, brushed a leaf off his knee and said, “All week I’ve been trying to write the deep stuff, that stuff, you know, that we all should be writing about but don’t usually have the time or the courage to do so. So it sits unattended and, I believe, smolders there nagging at you from its unseen somewhere. It’s mysterious and bothersome. I’ve been writing about my son, my divorce, my anger, my frustration... I became emptied out. Completely.”
It looked to Michelle that he was about to tear up. A muscle flickered in his jaw. He looked away and he continued. “As I sat down last night to write today’s poem I didn’t have anything to say.”
She nodded and closed her eyes.
“I had nothing. I knew this was going to be Mr. Pulitzer guy’s workshop and it was a big deal for me, but I had nothing. Then from somewhere out of that morass I remembered my father. And his death. And I re
alized, for the first time, that I had never written the poem I needed to write about all that. That astonished me.”
“Scary,” she said.
“Absolutely scary! More so because I knew the subject but not the words. I sat for hours and nothing came. I was throwing things around the room, walking out in the moonlight, pounding the walls of my bedroom but nothing. Nothing.”
Michelle nodded and smiled. A light chill of recognition passed over her skin.
“So I gave up. I decided I wasn’t going to have a poem today. Two o’clock and I went to bed. It killed me to admit that I would be empty-handed because I had wanted to impress mister Pulitzer, you know.”
“Don’t tell me you dashed off this poem on the way to workshop this morning.”
He smiled. “Not quite that bad,” he said. “I woke up at 4 a.m. and the poem was filling my head. I had to get out of bed, find a pen and paper quick and start writing or it was going to be lost. I could feel it wanting to slip away. To this moment I don’t know what I have in this poem or if it even belongs to me.” He paused, turned and looked into her eyes. He shrugged. “But it is what it is.”
She turned away, squeezed her writs between her thighs and rocked back and forth a little. “I wish I’d had that experience,” she said.
“You can. You will. It’s just sticking with it. Staying open for whatever happens and not shutting down. At least that’s what I think.”
Lunch bell rang and poets were lazily gathering into a rough approximation of a line. Christopher and Michelle stayed where they were. Something was unfinished.
Michelle thought about her poem. She had tried to capture her emotions. What resulted was more like telling someone she was sad than actually showing them. She laughed to herself. A violation of the first rule in the craft of poetry.
“How did you get far enough away from the emotions... ? ” She stopped. “I’m not being clear,” she said.
“But I know what you mean. Distance but not disengagement. Something like that.”
“Yes.”
“In my case I anchored it in nature.”
“I tried that.”
“Maybe something else then. Something to work as a crucible strong enough to hold the emotions.” He thought for a moment. “How about this? There’s a Bill Matthews poem in which he writes about the death of his father. He was able to avoid the paralysis of emotion by not writing about his father, per se, but by writing about his father’s body. The body of my father was... whatever. Placing that object between him and the soul of the father worked for him. What he got was an amazing poem. I tried but couldn’t do it. Maybe you can.”
“I don’t know.”
“Pick some object, maybe something in your brother’s room, something that reflects aspects of his personality, maybe, something like that. Just give it a shot. My guess is the emotions will come into the poem through the images you chose, not the other way around.” He realized something. “I don’t mean to be giving you an assignment.”
“Oh god, please do. I could use a little help. I’m tied up. Besides, I’m getting interested.” She paused, looked directly in his eyes and said, “I accept,” she said.
They laughed.
He allowed her time to mull over possibilities. He watched her eyes flit about from the trees to cottage to rocks to the ocean horizon way off in the distance. Something was shaping itself inside her spirit, trying to.
She turned from her reverie. “When can I show it to you?”
“Ah,” he said. He thought a moment. “Are you taking the boat trip tomorrow afternoon?”
“I could go either way.”
“I’ve been on that boat before and don’t need to do it again. Maybe you’d like to go but I thought I’d just sit and cool my jets instead.”
“Sounds good.”
“I think my roommates are all going so the house I’m staying in will be quiet. There’s a nice living room with a table where we could work.”
“I’ll be there,” she said.
She stood. “I think I’ve just gotten myself into something,” she said.
They were sitting at the dining room table, a salty ocean breeze slipping in the window, the lazy grip of summer’s afternoon pulling their bodies down to stillness. He smiled at her. “I’m anxious to see what you’ve done,” he said.
She nodded. “So am I,” she said, and brought out the poem. “Would you like to read it?”
“I’d like to hear it in your voice. Maybe you should read it to me.” Then he added, “If you don’t mind.”
She shifted in her chair and tucked an errant strand of hair behind her ear. “I’m still so close to it I don’t know what to predict but I think I can get through it okay.”
“Great. If you can’t, I’ll finish it for you.”
She reached into her backpack, opened her writing book, leaned on her elbows and started reading.
My Brother’s Room
To begin with
it’s too orderly
no clothes
on the floor
no cluttered
desk
and the bed
has never been
hotel fresh
looking newly made
like that
it misses
what is missing
from the room
because of that
and I don’t like
the Metalica
poster
how it hangs
loudly on the
wall who
could help
but feel the vibrations
in your body
as you approach
the stage and
it bothers me
that I can’t hear
anything coming
from this room
no door slamming
no Skype conversations
the screeching riffs
on the Fender Starcaster
are vibrating
without sound
in the reluctant strings
this room
is disgusting
this room
will never
get over
what has been lost
from it
the largest thing in
this room
is absence.
As she finished reading she closed the book and placed her hands over it. Her eyes were down, her body curled over the table as if awaiting instructions.
“Lovely,” he said. He rubbed his face and leaned on his hand. The motion drew his face close to hers. “Interesting isn’t it, how the room substitutes for you? It stands in for your feelings so they can have their cloak removed and naked, to come forth.” He paused. “How do you feel about it?”
“Shocked,” she said.
He laughed.
“I mean, who would have guessed?’ she said. “Not me. I was blocked behind a huge wall but letting the room come in allowed me to project some of my feelings on it avoiding the block. I’m not sure it’s there quite yet but it’s a start.” She leaned back in her chair. “Shall we take it apart?”
“Pretty brave at this tender stage of infancy, don’t you think?”
“Let’s do it,” she said flashing her eyes at him, “I’m feeling brave.”
“Well, there are a couple of places where you might remove something. Less is more, if you know what I mean. Usually we overwrite the first time around. And the ending might be pumped up some.”
Together they worked at the poem as artists might with pencils flashing, markings appearing on the page, a few words circled and cut here and there, pasting in others... they
leaned over the poem as if it were a newborn washed and caressed and oiled and dressed and as they did so their own bodies leaned into each other not minding the incidental touching that connected them briefly, their arms upon the table, their legs under the table, not minding the exposures of the body that come like little blessings, the blouse falling briefly open, the short shorts drifting the waistline downward with the bending of the body. “Now for the ending,” she said.
“Yes.”
“What does it need?”
“Well, I think... I think that the ending has to go into the heart of the poem, has to have the courage to say out loud what the poem is diving deep to discover. What... what is that critical piece this poem is trying to get at?”
“Oh, I know what that is,” she said
He looked directly into her eyes. His own eyes were filled with hurt, her hurt, that which he could feel but had not come into words. He sighed “Then cut away your protection and say it,” he said.
She took the pencil, found a corner of the page and wrote:
Oh, I know
deep inside me
why I hate this room
I can do nothing
to fix
what is missing.
She turned the page and read it to herself. A chill ran through her. She turned her misty eyes to him and said. “Look at what we have made.”
He read it, nodded and smiled.
It seemed only natural that as they rose to the epiphany of the finished poem that they should hug each other and that that hug would not want to finish as those casual hugs at end of workshops do, but to stay locked in itself, the two holding on as if to turn loose after so much had been shared between them would be a loss adding to all the other losses they had endured.
So they held each other a long time.
And that holding slipped into hands moving, hers, behind his shoulders, his, stroking her waist and back, nor did they want it to finish until it had finished itself wherever it would take them.
And finally the kiss came, the one their bodies knew would come before they were willing to acknowledge it, the one that waiting all that long made so tense that to open it’s reality caused a passion to erupt forth fully developed. In that way it lasted, breaking off only intermittently as they rose to the stairs locked into each other, their sorrows intermixing.
The Taste of a Woman Page 10