{fiction, instead of lies}

The Poetry Sisters’ recent pantoum project reminded me of how much I have disliked repeating poetry forms – but the pantoum was fine. However, I recently compared the pantoum to the villanelle. For a rigid topic, a villanelle works SO well – short lines, direct ideas. It’s good for inescapable truths. A pantoum sometimes leaves more wiggle room…

Pivoting back to my examination this month of those “deeper, unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being,” that T.S. Eliot mentions, I started thinking about growing up poor. Talk about an inescapable truth. I remember seeing an hourly pay stub of my mother’s when I was in the seventh grade, and being …afraid. I remember murmured, late night conversations that were probably my parents trying to figure out what to do, what not to pay, how to stretch what we had. That they owned their home was their sole saving grace.

My life is so different! I don’t own my house. I don’t own much. Yet, am I better off?

inescapable

Couch cushions never hid cash
We winkled every last cent
Never allowed to buy “trash.”

Squirreling away in a cache,
So youth could not be ‘misspent.’
Couch cushions never hid cash.

Washed and pressed – neat, not slapdash.
“Who do you girls represent?”
No one could call us poor trash.

Concocted “cures” for a rash.
A doctor’s care? Infrequent.
Couch cushions never hid cash.

In school we read of the Crash,
Kids worked in fields for the rent
They even reused their trash.

Treats – cash and candy – I stashed
Where I hid my discontent.
Couch cushions never hid cash,
We were never allowed to buy trash.

How’s that for not “evading,” my truths, Mr. Eliot?

Every single year, I think of nineteen National Poetry Month projects, and every single year, the first of April catches me wholly unprepared to enact said projects.

I’d say “Why am I like this?!” except… I know why. Reasons. This is who I am – over-thinky, wildly creative, too many zipping thoughts, colliding midair, and too scattered to actually settle on one. Right now, I’m still behind on rewriting my manuscript (one more month to catch up!) trying to be supportive as my family goes through various woes, as Himself job hunts through month six (uggggh) and striving to surface from the worst bits of Spring with my sinuses intact. As there is in every life, there’s a lot going on.

And, that’s why I’m here. That’s why I deliberately force myself to engage in poetry for a solid month …to tackle this idea of praxxis and practice. Making poetry forces me to stop, to look, and to listen… to both others, and to myself. As T.S. Eliot said, in his book The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism (1933), “Poetry may make us from time to time a little more aware of the deeper, unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being, to which we rarely penetrate; for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves.” Dear April, let me not evade. Let me step out in other shoes, onto other paths, into others’ footsteps, and …find a new way.

beginning

first, step off the porch
make the adventure begin –
the other shoe drops

P.S. – One project that is actually quite prepared is the PROGRESSIVE POEM, which I’m taking part in for the first time this year. Check out the progress: