In Which Carmen Has Feelings

[xaara]

You know, I used to think that people who said poetry was all about your feelings were kinda, well, entirely full of something that doesn't smell like roses.

Last semester, I revised that opinion to "almost entirely full of something that doesn't smell like roses."

Because it's like this: there's poetry. And poetry, for me, is something fundamental, something that's born more than created. Which is not to say that it's just writing down what you're feeling. It's not about that at all. When I write, it's from hundreds, thousands of points of view, from different times and places, through different senses, across different prejudices and mindsets. I'm not writing about me. I'm certainly not writing about how "i feel stuck sometimes/ like gum to the sole/ of the world's shoe."

Because I am not fourteen. But that is beside the point.

The point is: the poems are not about me. Most of them don't even say anything about my current mood, and at any rate, by the time they're revised enough to post or show to anyone (which is usually at least twice, and about two revisions before I pronounce them [temporarily] complete) they don't have any connection to my original frame of mind.

Every once in a while, though, one of the lines, or one of the images, or one of the quotes, will be so intensely about me that it will echo inside me for weeks afterwards.

The inchworm is proof of the existence of God, my brother said once, breaking an amiable silence that had folded like goosedown around us. He went on to explain why, how nothing that had evolved could possibly be that stupid-looking, how only a deity with a sense of humor could design something whose main function in life was to serrate the edges of leaves with its teeth and fold itself in half in order to move a few millimeters farther along. None of that made it into the poem. In fact, none of the context made it in at all; in the poem, it's something said by a "he" to an "I." The "I" is not me. The "he" is not my brother. Every time I read it, though, it means something to me that it means to no one else.

What brought on this sudden navel-gazing? you ask.

Two lines.

Bend an ear to the kettledrum heartbeat
of the pendant earth.

I wrote these a few weeks ago, scribbled in my notebook on the drive to Philly with my dad and brother. And I can't stop hearing them, listening to them beat out a tempo in the hollow where my ear meets my jawbone. They are possibly the most amazingly personal lines I have ever written, and I have yet to figure out why, since they do not relate to anything I can express. (Percussion, perhaps? Maybe I miss playing the tympani? Milton? The loss of paradise, the rushing void of the universe, something quivering and fragile and somehow as strong as the mountains?)

So I suppose my real question is: Is this a universal thing? Do you have anything you've written that feels very...I don't even know how to say it. Intimate? Are there aspects to writing that leave you wondering when you lost that layer of skin that kept the world from burning your fingertips?

Comments

[teaghlach.livejournal.com]

I didn't think anyone else was like this. My friends would write poems about themselves. They still do. I would think something was wrong with me because I never wrote about me. I'd write a million things that would be just as powerful but not something I felt or had experienced.

But sometimes, I go back and find pieces of myself scattered in my poem like ashes from a fire.

Most recently was some nonsense I was scribbling. In the middle, I found something that just fits where my mind is right now, even if it doesn't make sense to anyone else.

This was the bit:

the spindled hands of trees
gnarled and bare
clutching at white spells
unbalanced even odd and ends

I'm not even sure if I know what it means but it just feels like a piece of me that fell out into the words I was writing.

[xaara.livejournal.com]

But sometimes, I go back and find pieces of myself scattered in my poem like ashes from a fire.

That's a gorgeous way of putting it, and somehow summarizes all my rambling into an elegant, compact sentence. One day, I will be able to express ideas in short form like everyone else. One day.

Isn't it weird when that happens, though? Are you more protective of a verse that feels like it's part of you? Is it ever a rational feeling?

That's a lovely snippet, btw, sets a definite image and mood.

[bluesbell.livejournal.com]

"i feel stuck sometimes/ like gum to the sole/ of the world's shoe."

Inked ravens of despair claw holes in the arse of the world's mind. :)

(Sorry about the poor quality; there used to be a wonderful live version of this sketch on youtube- alas, it seems to have disappeared.
I'll get back to you on your actual question once I've finished my poetry assignment...)

[xaara.livejournal.com]

I love that sketch! I watch it all the time when my poetry makes me want to tear my hair out.