Welcome to another Poetry Friday Poetry Peeps Adventure!
Poetry Peeps! You’re invited to our challenge for the month of November! Here’s the scoop: We’re taking a line or theme plucked from Jane Hirschfield’s TWO VERSIONS, a poem that appears in her collection The Asking: New and Selected Poems (scroll to the second page to see the poem). Are you in? Good! You have a month to craft your creation and share it on November 29th in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals.
We laughed, when we met to talk about this poem… It sounded so easy. Just… build or take something apart. Deconstruct or construct something. Do it with detail. How hard could that be?
WHY DID THIS FEEL SO HARD????
Might have had something to do with the very busy month which included a multiplicity of medical appointments and running around with paperwork for various things, and finally getting around to voting (whoo!)? With all the noise, my poetic brain just didn’t seem to be beating in sync with me this month.
From Process…
The biggest issue I had with this wasn’t finding things to build and unbuild… I just felt like my attempts lacked any kind of poetic merit. Detail felt like the enemy of whimsy or beauty. I felt… mechanical, as I delved deeply into things. So, I tried to look at the natural world. I wrote whimsically of How To Build A Cluster (of Spiders). I wrote about ballooning – always a topic that inspires whimsical interpretation (because do I really know what it’s like to stick my bum in the air and trust my full body weight to the wind? No… I do not, and I never will). I attempted to write about building an attic extension, as I participated in that when I was in high school. I mudded drywall. I have built a dairy in Mexico, I smoothed cement stalls for the cows…
And somehow, none of that lent itself to poetry. It wasn’t the assignment, though. It was definitely ME. Maybe October just hasn’t been a poetical month?? Whatever my issue, I knew I was running out of time.
Fortunately, I wasn’t the only one who struggled – but my Poetry Sisters certainly pulled it together faster than I did! Liz’s post is here, and Mary Lee’s is here. Laura’s poem is here, and Tricia’s is here. Michelle K’s poem is here, Karen’s poem is here, Cousin Heidi’s maybe-her-rabbit is here. More Poetry Peeps may check in throughout the weekend, so stay tuned here for the full roundup, and thank you kindly, Carol V, for sharing her instructional trinet with us, and for rounding us up so beautifully this month!
…To Poetry
By last night, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to pull anything together in a timely manner, so I started looking at some of my previously abandoned attempts in an attempt to see what prompted me to quit writing on them. I know that poetic “feeling” is often in the eye/ear of the beholder, and hoped that I might be able to recapture something that went missing in subsequent lines. I… cannot honestly tell if I succeeded. Having begun and abandoned poetry about literal building projects, I began a rewrite in the metaphorical. Previously this had seemed like far too broad of an enterprise – how do you deconstruct an idea or a belief? It turned out that maybe you do the same things you do for a literal building – you get permits, and you begin demolition. What you do next is …up to you.
Construction/Deconstruction
to Everything there is a Season
and Now is the Time:
…but first, Permits.
The self demands Surety:
Do you know what you’re doing?
Once you cut the cables – Lights out –
You’re on your own, and –
Now is the Time to
Break up, break free, break through.
Your brain you’ve battered
Alone too long – take action.
Do you know what you’re doing?
Jackhammer your world into
Manageable pieces,
And haul the detritus away.
Because, Now is the Time
When order’s upended,
When baseboards are splintered,
Walls stripped down to studs…
Now your seeing’s believing –
Do you know what you’re doing?
Demolition debris cleared
reveals plain stone. Persistence:
And, Now is your Time
despite chaos and mess.
…a Life is built on nothing less.
If the answer to the question “Do you know what you’re doing?” continues to be “Um, no…” – in life, as well as in poetry, sometimes the answer is just… keep going. And once you’ve gotten down to your foundation, see where it needs shoring up, do the work, and rebuild. Honestly, a life – an idea – a dream – really is built on nothing less. We build by putting on brick atop another, pressing them in place, and going on to the next brick. And that is also how we persist – and succeed. In the words of Octavia Butler, So be it, see to it. You are the builder – so build it.
Happy Weekend, friends.
Tanita, I adore your poem (and always, always love reading about your process.) We were kind of feeling the same vibe about life, I think. 🙂
I really love the repetition of “Do you know what you’re doing?” (No, I don’t.) And I love the ending, with “Now is your time, despite chaos and mess.” Yes! If I ever waited for all the debris to clear, I’d still be waiting for life to begin.
P.S. Yes, the mentor poems had me stumbling, so I ended up disregarding them and went my own way. 🙂
It feels right, as you so admirably did, to question, Tanita, our life, our goals, what do we know how to do, or feel we do & are we ready for, first, the demolition? I had to give some support to a granddaughter recently, and wish I’d had some of your lines, but really some of what I said was “just start”, & your final lines, “Now is your Time/despite chaos and mess.”, then Octavia Butler’s, “see to it” fits. Thanks for sharing your early thoughts, and then, you did it! Thanks for the wisdom!
@lindabaie: Thank you – and what a lucky grandkid to get your advice. I didn’t feel like I did it, but looked up and was like, “Okay… it’s done!” Sometimes that’s enough.
I love that refrain because I feel like I’m constantly asking myself this when I’m writing. 🙂
@Marcie Flinchum Atkins: LOL – that’s my whole writing vibe, especially when drafting. Wait… was this where I wanted to go???
Hi Tanita, I think you hit that jackhammer plumb on the head! Love all these, “Do you know what you’re doing?” “Now is the time” And yes let’s keep going! Amazing what we accomplish under pressure… Time Perhaps is a privilege. Great graphics too, thanks for all. I’m fitting in my VOTE with
1 1/2 pages of looking-up judges today…
@Michelle K.: TIME IS A PRIVILEGE. What a brilliant insight — and here’s to pouring all we can into these last blue days.
Thank you for sharing your process. I often wonder if I know what I’m doing!
@rosecappelli: I have a feeling it’s humanity’s most frequent refrain… 😀
I agree… the assignment was hard, and I definitely didn’t follow it to the letter. But this is such a perfect, literal model — and I feel it completely. We ALWAYS seem to have some project going on. Those last three lines really bring it home…
@Liz Garton Scanlon: It cracked me up that I couldn’t pull replacing fence slats into any kind of poetic order, and we just started doing that!! But, literal seems to have at least let me finish – I’ll take it.
Everything about this poem is so dang…TRUE. Kudos for stepping away from literal into metaphorical. I need to read this poem over and over again in answer to the voice in my head that does indeed keep asking, “Do you know what you’re doing?” I need to tattoo Octavia Butler’s words on my heart.
Thank you for this beauty and wisdom.
@Cousin Mary Lee: I sometimes wonder what Octavia would think that so many of us taking courage from her words… she DID will herself to continue when she received no recognition, until… she got a MacArthur “Genius” Award. She started winning things. I’m not much of a believe-things-will-manifest person, but she kept her eyes clearly on herself as constructor and de-constructor, and, hammer in hand, saw to her dreams, and I’m here for that.
Gosh I love reading your process, Tanita. And methinks you may be too hard on yourself. Your wisdom comes through beautifully in the poem you constructed!
@pjnunz: You’re always so sweet! Thank you! I …rely so heavily on rhyme to feel like a poem is COMPLETED that I know it’s a crutch, so when I kick it away, I really flounder, so your kind words really help. Again, thanks.
It DID feel hard. To be fair, I didn’t care much for the mentor text poems someone suggested, either. Maybe the whole approach just doesn’t work for me. I wanted to go metaphorical, but then I kept drifting into recipe poem territory, which I DO love. Hm.
Anyway, I think you dredged up some loveliness here. The permits line made me laugh. And then:
Jackhammer your world into
Manageable pieces,
And haul the detritus away.
Wow. Yes. When everything falls apart, yes. Take the opportunity.
And that last line. It may’ve been hard to write, but I think you got splendid results. Also, if you ever DO try ballooning, I want a poem and pictures!
@laurasalas: YES! The mentor poems were WAY too long, we all agreed, and did not much to help! But, we got there in the end…