We Interrupt this Program

So, this weekend I finished getting certified in the Amherst Writers and Artists method of writing workshop facilitation. I went through the training because if I want to facilitate writing workshops with Voices from Inside, the organization that brings writing workshops to incarcerated women, I have to get certified in this method. But it was a good thing to do anyway, and now I feel much more confident to lead writing workshops in any context. Parts of the training were boring and monotonous, but it was an amazing group of women with whom I really bonded, and I learned a lot. We also spent a lot of time writing together, albeit very short writing sessions because we had to move onto more pertinent parts of the training, but it was nice to be disciplined to write again and to be inspired by others' work.

I wrote very few things I actually like, but there were a couple which I'll post here. The first was inspired by a Zora Neale Hurston quote, which I of course can't remember now:

Twenty-two years of questioning plus let's say approximately another seventy years of life expectancy equals ninety-two years' worth of questions. Altogether, about...oh, six of those years also consist of answers. So ninety-two minus six equals eighty-six, and if we subtract the first year and a half of life during which questions were wordless and therefore very difficult to measure, that leaves us with eighty-four and a half years of unanswered questions. It's amazing how those racked up, isn't it? And then, at the end, there's just...silence. Life ends, but the questions remain floating nebulously in some ether somewhere. Who picks up and starts again?

This is the result of an "experimental writing" exercise. We begin by writing for two minutes, and then every minute after that we go around the room and each person says a random word, which we have to somehow work into our piece. We then have another two minutes of silence to wrap up. It was actually kind of fun, and I ended up with something I'm at least slightly happy with. See if you can guess what the random words are.

The ocean was saltier than she'd ever remembered it being before. The water clung to her lips and stung her eyes. She sniffed a few times and then grimaced as the saltwater burned the back of her throat. She had jumped into the water with abandon, but now, as snowflakes began to fall more and more rapidly from the sky - she watched them land on the water's surface and disappear - she began to regret her course of action. The water was really taking wing now, the ocean filling up with snow, roiling and toiling around her as if at any moment it might overflow and fly away. She choked on a salty snowflake, gazing at the cluster of palm trees on the beach before her. The fronds and coconuts seemed strange and out of place here, and she found herself wishing she were among the maple leaves she'd grown accustomed to. She flattened her palms against her thighs and tried to remain afloat.


How odd that it was snowing here at all; how odd that the air was cold and the sea was warm. The setting sun reflected a pink glow on the surface of the water, and it briefly occurred to her that she must be in another world.


But she didn't want to be in another world, even though she'd initially dived into the ocean in a vain attempt to escape the world she knew. She thought of where she'd been, where in the kitchen the china would still be soaking in dishwater and the wedding guests were probably still dancing the cha-cha and eating the coconut bread she'd begged for the caterer to provide. And her new rapscallion husband, chatting idly with the bridesmaids, was most likely oblivious to her absence. That thought alone made her glad she'd climbed down the fire escape, hiking up the long, trailing train of her ruffled skirt, and stolen away into the night to come here. But where was here? Where was she?


Her dress became oppressively heavy with the weight of the salt, the cold air, and warm water. She fumbled for where she remembered the zipper being and, not finding it, ripped the dress from her body and felt herself begin to glide. Soon she was moving so quickly that the snow seemed to fall in slow motion and she realized she couldn't see the palm trees anymore. She closed her eyes, laughing and crying at the same time, and allowed herself to disappear. 

Lastly, this was brought about by another odd exercise, one that's a little too complicated to explain here, but also involves lists of somewhat-randomly generated words. One has the choice to use all, some, or none of them. I used some:

It felt weird to Harold, finding that baby's toy in the waves. It might have been something once, but now, soggy and dilapidated, he couldn't figure out what it was - only that someone had held it and then thrown it away. 


And where was the baby now? Harold wondered. There were millions of babies in the world. Which one of them had lost this toy? Was the baby even a baby anymore? Harold realized with alarm that maybe it had once been his. His fingers traced over the smooth plastic of whatever the thing was. He would definitely lose sleep over this. Something had been lost, found, and there was Harold in the middle, getting a sunburn and wondering where he was. 

The Beginning, or I'll Think of a More Creative Title Later

Here are the first six poems of my thesis! I would also like to note, in the most un-narcissistic way possible, that my poem "Axis I: Panic" was published in The Healing Muse, an annual journal published by SUNY Upstate Medical University. Click the link to learn more about the publication - it's very unique and it's a cause I fully support.


February 12, 1988

I was born
a month before
I should have been,
the only time I’ve ever been early
for anything.


Life According to Walt Disney

It’s hard not to wonder what she’s going to be like when she’s older,
the little girl who cried so hard during the credits of The Little Mermaidher face turned the color of Ariel’s hair.

Sobbing into the couch cushions, she can see it,
can see herself having to choose:
Love or her voice?Who’s going to play the octopus who steals everything she is?
Who will play the prince who loves everything she isn’t?

She gazes at the TV screen in wonder and can’t believe Ariel made the wrong choice –
How could she have left all of her friends in the ocean just to be with him? –
Life as a woman with legs is apparently going to be long and unpleasant.
I’m part of that world, she realizes at age three, and the seaweed isn’t looking very green.

A Calculated Move
There is not a single word
I don’t know how to spell,
so to find my weekly spelling words,
my teacher lets me flip through a dictionary
until I find something I don’t recognize.

I’ve never seen calculatedly before,
so for homework I write it out five times:
Calculatedly
calculatedly
CALCULATEDLY
CaLcUlAtEdLy
CALculATEdly.

When my teacher quizzes me, I spell it
perfectly.
I can’t work with the other kids on my spelling words
because they can’t read words that big, so
Mrs. R. is always my spelling partner.

It’s no wonder, then,
that two months later she notices
I’m having trouble making friends
and suggests I pick two girls to take
to the guidance counselor with me
each week to play games.
Spelling words never were great conversation starters.

At the end of the year,
those two girls are only kind of my friends
and I have no idea what calculatedly means.

Axis I: Panic

The air in the house smells like smoke.
It’s summer and the neighbors barbeque every night;
charcoal wafts through the windows while
hamburgers come in through the open door.
All I can smell is burning.
I’ve seen fires on television,
destroying houses and families and everything in between.
The air in the house smells like smoke.
I cover my ears, anticipating the fire alarm’s blaring.
Its red light stares back at me, one bloodshot eye,
taunting. It’s going to go off, loud and sharp, and
we won’t have enough time to take everything
we need from the house
before it’s nothing but heat and flames.
We are going to be destroyed,
our house and us and everything in between.

It appears that Anna is having panic attacks,which are recurrent and unexpected discrete periods of intense fear and discomfort

There are too many words, too many feelings –
Am I hot? I think it must be hotter than it was
a moment ago –
Was that haze in the air there before?
Is it dust? Is it smoke? It’s smoke, it must be.
FIRE.
There are too many words, too many feelings
I have
To
Scream!
FIRE!

which reach their peak within minutes and last for minutes.

I think my parents are in the room but I can hardly see them
anymore, through the cloud of smoke and fear.
They’re talking, but between the pounding in my temples and
the smoke alarm which must be ringing by now,
I barely hear them.
“Calm down, we’re safe, there’s no fire.
Stop screaming.”
I can’t stop. Screaming is all I have now.
My tears taste like burnt ashes.

Anna has more than the required four symptoms to meet diagnostic criteria.

I feel my heart everywhere in my body;
my pulse is everywhere and nowhere –
I am more alive than I have ever been but
I am dead to all hearing. My reason is all burned up.
I can’t breathe. Have I been inhaling smoke? I can’t breathe,
and I might throw up.
The back of my neck feels hot; I can imagine it searing red, singed by flame.
Somewhere there is a fire, and
it is burning me alive.

At the present time, it appears that the panic attacks represent Panic Disorder without Agoraphobia.

(It is also possible that these symptoms of anxiety are occurring within the context of a general medical condition. The fact that Anna has smelled smoke when no one else does, is a concern. It will be important to rule out a subclinical Seizure Disorder.)

I spend three hours with a neurologist.
After my trial by fire,
he says I’m normal.

Anna appears to be an intense child who feels deeply and thinks at a level which is advanced for her chronological age.

I think too much.
My brain is too big for my heart and
my heart is too big for my little body.
There’s too much furniture in
this tiny house.

Her cognitive development may surpass her emotional development, creating chronic tension.

I’m going to burn out.

It is possible that Anna may have Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorderas well as Anxiety Disorder(s).

This isn’t even the tip of the flame.
It’s only the beginning.


The Closet

It’s almost a relief when we get to Truth or Dare
at sleepovers. It’s easier this way,
not having to dread the inevitable. I hate playing,
but I hate waiting to play even more.

It’s the same question every time, worded differently.
Asking which boy I’d want to marry
is the same as asking who I think is cutest
or who I wish I could kiss.

I don’t want to kiss any of them.
Just the thought makes me gag.
I don’t say so.

Instead I decide on Charlie because he isn’t hideous,
Dan because he’s nice and has big eyes,
Nick because he makes me laugh,
Alexander because he’s already my friend anyway,
Pat because other girls seem to like him.

I don’t get what I’m supposed to see in them.
I don’t say so.

By the time I get married I’ll hopefully have figured it out.


Axis II: Deferral

The woman is like a hyena,
ready to pounce on me and devour
anything she can.
I can see her haunches as she sits
in her chair. She sits in a soft leather chair
with armrests and a cushioned back.
I sit in a stiff wooden one that never quite
holds my body the right way.

I can’t help but fidget.

Both eyes focused on me like
cat eyes on its prey,
she says I have Attention Deficit Disorder.

On Axis II, a diagnosis is deferred.

By age twelve, I’m given
Attention Deficit Disorder,
Generalized Anxiety Disorder,
Panic Disorder,
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder,
and occurrences of Depression.

She hands out diagnoses like candy
and I eat them up, desperate for answers
and someone who seems to understand.

Still, she watches and waits,
waits for me to slip
so she can draw back on those cat haunches,
lunge, pounce, and ravenously tear apart
my character so she can stick me
with a personality disorder.

Even though I nearly shatter
under the weight of her gaze
and even though I nearly burn up
from the rapid fire of her questioning,
I never falter, not once. Not ever.

On Axis II, a diagnosis is deferred.

Statements of Purpose

I suppose, by practical definition, that what I'm going to post is not actually a "statement of purpose" - although I did write one today as part of one of my grad school applications, and let me tell you, a simple prompt along the lines of "explain why you want to study writing at the graduate level...please also outline your writing experience and educational goals in 500 to 1000 words" is not really very simple at all. I mean, yeah, I could sit here and tell you everything you need to know, but when I actually have to write it down on a page and make it sound scholarly, impressive, and unique? I think I started the damn essay four separate times before I actually settled on something that sounded vaguely how I wanted it to, and even now, what I've got is just a draft.

Anyway, here begins the much-awaited (by someone, maybe) posting of my thesis. Because of its length, I'll be posting it in chunks, beginning here with the introduction. That in itself is quite lengthy, although it'll look longer here than it actually is because it's double-spaced. I also wrote a dedication/acknowledgements page, but I won't post that here because it identifies pretty much all of my family and friends, and I don't know that all of them would want that.

I'll let the rest speak for itself.

            A thesis, in a body of work, is a statement which asserts its purpose and meaning. It effectively and cohesively lays out the major points the work goes on to cover. My thesis, then, is my statement. This work is my assertion; this work is straightforward, raw, and honest. This work is me.

            My original goal was to create a short autobiographical novel in verse. I’d seen it done before, mostly in young adult fiction; I had Karen Hesse’s Out of the Dust and Meg Kearney’s The Secret of Me in mind. I wanted to write in one volume what was at the time scattered across journals and memories dating as far back as 1995, when I was seven. The longer I thought about it, the more grandiose the project became in my head. I was determined to write everything. I envisioned a chronological arrangement of essentially every moment I had deemed worthy of being written down at the time of its occurrence. I would pick out the major themes I found in my journals – my struggles with my mother, the emergence of my sexuality, mental health and therapy, and my feelings of loneliness and friendlessness – and revolve the work around them. Knowing that therapy had played a major part in my development, I planned to get copies of all of my various therapists’ notes and observations on me and work those into the piece.

            However, somewhere between a thirty-page limit, therapists not returning my phone calls, and sixteen credit hours, my work began to shift focus. I floundered for a little while, but I was determined to keep writing and see what came out on the page. Instead of writing my life – which, even at a young twenty-one years was an overwhelming undertaking, especially without any particular focus – I decided to write poetic “snapshots” of moments and memories from my past. I believe I became an adult at age eighteen, and I wanted to keep the work centered on what I deemed childhood and adolescence, so the poems in my thesis are written from my point of view at various ages between about seven and eighteen. I have tried to keep the integrity of the original project by keeping everything chronological and by paying attention to those same themes mentioned above; I put more emphasis on them than on the other “snapshots.”

            The piece evolved into something even more when I realized how deeply psychological it was. One of the first poems I wrote I titled “Bloodletting,” and it is about self-harm and cutting and the feelings I had at various stages during my struggle. Another poem is called “Axis I: Panic” and it intersperses notes from my psychiatrist’s initial assessment of me with what I can remember of a violent panic attack I had when I was about eight years old. (“Axis I” refers to the first of the five axes of diagnosis in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Illness.) As a psychology minor and a hopeful therapist in the making, this was too good of an opportunity to pass up.

            There is a school of psychotherapy known as Adlerian therapy (named for Alfred Adler, 1870-1937) which is particularly concerned with the development of people as unique individuals with subsequently unique perceptions of reality. “From the Adlerian perspective,” explains Gerald Corey in his textbook Theory and Practice of Counseling and Psychotherapy, “objective reality is less important than how we interpret reality and the meanings we attach to what we experience” (99). One aspect of the Adlerian modality of psychotherapy is the exploration of “private logic,” or “the concepts about self, others, and life that constitute the philosophy on which an individual’s lifestyle is based.” It “includes our convictions and beliefs that get in the way of social interest and that do not facilitate useful, constructive belonging” (Corey 106). A huge part of our private logic is based on things we were taught as children. An Adlerian psychotherapist implores the client to look back at early recollections, those memories that may have factored into the shaping of our personal logic and the “basic mistakes” with which we perceive the world now that we’re older:

Adler reasoned that out of the millions of early memories we might have we select those special memories that project the essential convictions and even the basic mistakes of our lives. Early recollections are a series of small mysteries that can be woven together and provide a tapestry that leads to an understanding of how we view ourselves, how we see the world…[they] cast light on the ‘story of our life’ because they represent metaphors for our current views. From a series of early recollections, it is possible to get a clear sense of our mistaken notions, present attitudes, social interests, and possible future behavior. (Corey 111)

While certainly not all of the “snapshots” in this body of work are particularly early recollections, they all still helped shape who I am today. Each moment of my life plays some role in determining other moments of my life later on. And furthermore, with the Adlerian ideas of “basic mistakes” and “early recollections” in mind, one can look at the poems written from my point of view at seven or eight and see how they influenced the moments I write about at sixteen or seventeen. In simple terms, each of the poems in this body of work provides some insight into why I am who I am.

            My process in writing this work has been hard to pin down. I have trouble simply sitting down and pounding out work in any discipline, and this was no exception. I am a shameless procrastinator – probably because I am also a terrified perfectionist – and sometimes I end up staring at the computer screen for a good fifteen minutes before I come far enough out of my head to write even a few words. What’s more, it’s hard to open up a notebook or a laptop and think, “I’m going to be creative now!” and hope for some poetic wisdom to fall onto the page. I had sudden bursts of inspiration that helped me write poems like “Bloodletting,” “Mazel Tov,” and “Sweet Sixteen.” Other times it would be three in the morning and I’d suddenly feel like writing after not having wanted to all day, and I would be pleasantly surprised by what I produced. Still other times I forced myself to sit and write, sometimes using exercises from books like Robin Behn’s The Practice of Poetry. On a more technical level, I generally write the way I “see” the poem in my head, and I edit as I write. For example, I knew “Mazel Tov” was going to be about how I came to see religion both in and out of the context of my family, but I didn’t know exactly what it was going to be about. Other lines existed in it at some point that I took out before the poem fully existed. Many times I chose to defy Word Processor and change the case of letters at the beginnings of lines to make them grammatically correct, but in this case I liked the look of each line starting with a capital letter. I decided to humor myself and see how it looked the “proper” way, but I didn’t like it. I saw and heard the poem the way it is on the page now. On the other hand, I knew from the start that “Bloodletting” was going to be a sestina, so I altered my process to adhere to its strict form.

            While I enjoy experimenting with poetic forms, almost all of the poems in this body of work are written in free verse. “Axis III: Neurology” is a sonnet and “Bloodletting” is a sestina, but those are the only exceptions. I felt that in order to keep the voices of each poem as close to authentic as possible, they should be written – and thus sound – the way I would speak. (Obviously “A Calculated Move” isn’t written exactly the way I would have spoken at age seven, but I believe the childlike mindset is there.) “Axis III: Neurology” was an experiment that I’ve decided to keep. I don’t know that I actually like the idea of describing a neurologist’s visit in sonnet form; I tend to prefer writing sonnets on more romantic topics, but I wrote a long version of the same poem in free verse. I decided I preferred the sonnet for its simplicity, and I hope that the ordeal and confusion of the situation described comes through. However, I consciously chose to make “Bloodletting” a sestina for a number of reasons. First of all, I set out to write a sestina primarily because Meg Kearney included a sestina in The Secret of Me. I didn’t realize until close to the end of her poem that it was written in any particular set form because it flowed so naturally and it sounded so conversational. I went back and read it again and saw that it was, indeed, a sestina. I decided then that I wanted to write one myself. I didn’t know right away what topic I wanted to explore, but I eventually settled on self-mutilation, knowing that it deserved a prominent poem (one at least) in my thesis. It was very hard to write, since it requires six stanzas of six lines each plus one shorter stanza of three lines at the end. Each line in each stanza must end in one of six words, in a different order in every stanza. The last short stanza must include all six of those words in a particular order as well. With that in mind, I had to choose words that would make sense to repeat throughout the whole length of the poem. Nearly all of the words I chose – “choice,” “wrist,” “blood,” “relieved,” and “lesson” – are strong words that evoke strong images, especially when repeated over and over. (The word “and” was a reward of sorts to myself for being able to use the other five words in a way that made sense.) A sestina lends itself nicely to subjects like the one I picked. Because of the repetitive nature of the poem and the six words that receive special attention again and again, a sestina is a good poem to write about an obsessive act like cutting oneself. By writing “Bloodletting” as a sestina, I was able to explore again and again the disturbing thoughts I harbored as I carried out an equally disturbing act I couldn’t seem to stop.

            Talking of form on a more general level, why poetry? Why couldn’t I have written prose; a collection of creative non-fiction essays or short stories and accomplished the same thing? Poetry forces me to be concise where I can get away with more verbosity in prose. Poetry requires a certain economy of language that I think lends itself particularly well to a work like this that encompasses raw emotion and stark honesty. Poetry has almost always been my means of self-expression, and it seemed fitting that this thesis – this statement of me – be written as such. While I could have easily written a short creative non-fiction essay on any one of the topics I chose to explore in verse, poetry clicked with me. William Wordsworth said that “poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” (Norton Anthology of English Literature 263). My poems are not exactly spontaneous, but I see each as a piece of my heart written onto the page, a strong emotion spun into words.

            Of course, as a conscientious poet, I read other poets. I’m always careful not to copy another poet’s style directly, but I do pay attention to how other authors get their points across. I am a big fan of Sylvia Plath, so I read some of her work simply to get inspired. I’ve read a lot of John Keats this year as part of my education in English, but I love his work so much that I read it outside of my classroom obligations. I connect with his poetry on a very visceral level, and sometimes after reading a Keats ode I feel more inclined to spill my emotion out into verse. My foremost inspiration, however, has been Meg Kearney. In addition to her two poetry collections, An Unkindness of Ravens and Home by Now, she is also the author of The Secret of Me, a short novel written in verse from the point of view of a fourteen-year-old girl. Throughout most of my work, I kept The Secret of Me in mind as a standard to which to hold myself. I really admired the young narrator’s frankness, and I appreciated Kearney’s attention to form, style, and flow. I hope I have achieved the same. I have had the honor of twice meeting her and discussing my work with her. She has been an incredible inspiration to me and she helped me answer that last niggling question in the back of my head: what in the world is all of this for?

            In the end, this work is about me. This is my story and it needs to be told. In many cases, these poems represent the first time I’ve talked about any of these topics outside of the confines of a journal I kept hidden in my bedroom. I call my work “No Apologies” because it is starkly honest and at times almost achingly emotional. These poems are purely me, with no mask and no shame. I make no apologies in my work because it isn’t for anyone else. People are welcome to read it, to connect with it, to enjoy it, but in the end this is my thesis: my definition.