Lay Down

Early this week I sorted through a file box, trying to organize various pieces of paperwork that I don't yet trust to digital. In the file box is one slim folder that holds a few memories - "Personal Mementos" is scrawled on the curling tab of the manila folder.  Inside this folder is a print out of an email sent to me in 2000 by a woman who I had worked with on a  summer missions project. That this scrap of paper has survived three cross-country moves is a testament to why it is in a battered "memento" folder.

The email begins with an epigraph.

"But the God that sometimes can't be found will wrap Himself around you. So lay down, sister, lay down." - B. Norman

The internet tells me that these words are from the song "Rita" by Bebo Norman - It's a sad song, about the death of a friend. I don't think I ever knew that before this week.   I just knew that this week, as they did 14 years ago, those words filled my soul in some way that made me take a deep, cleansing, breath.

Those words have resonated through my head countless times in the past 14 years. If not the words themselves,  then the simple truth of them has been there even when I couldn't remember them exactly or where I heard them first.

This is the beauty of poetry to me - that words become life - take on shape and have meaning. It is not just a sentence - it is imbued with something more. The poet (or songwriter) has chosen words carefully, caring about more than syntax. .

In the many years since those words first appeared on a computer screen and prompted me to hit print - one constant thing about God in my life is that even when he can't be found (or, frankly, when I didn't want to find him) - that somehow he was wrapped around me. There was a thread tangled and wrapped somewhere around my wrist, or an ankle, or a tiny corner of my soul, sometimes tugging with force, sometimes barely perceptible, but always there. I can remember describing the feeling as "God won't let go" in the midst of feeling like God could not be found. It is a paradox - but what in this faith is not?

For my Lenten practice - I have been journaling lament and this little phrase fits well into this experience. Lament is about sorrow and pain and loss - - things that if you spend enough time focusing on, your only recourse is to lay down, lay down. And the truth of these words written into my soul 14 years ago prove true again - that I find God wrapped around me. I'm pretty new to observing anything liturgical like Lent. I've never done an Ash Wednesday service - never had the cross smudged onto my forehead - but this year I am seeing anew that God who wraps himself around me, giving beauty for ashes I didn't even know I still carried around. Strengthening areas that are too-often governed by fear.  Putting firm foundation under the my feet and lighting a path. It is not what I expected from my Lenten journey of lament. I think I expected more sadness. But I am finding that when I mourn and dare to question God about the pain and brokenness in this world, in my life, that I find the God who wraps himself around me.

There. I Fixed It. {Found Poetry}

I'm working on my final paper this semester. It's on the damage done by diet devotionals and why they are dangerous to individual Christians and the church as the Body of Christ.

This means that for research I am reading a few diet devotionals.

One that I picked up at a thrift store is Gwen Shamblin's Rise Above, the follow-up to her best-selling Weigh Down Diet.  

Rise Above is a horrid book and spiritually abusive. It was emotionally draining to read. So, I decided to redeem it a little bit and complete a "found poetry" activity I've been wanting to do for a while. I opened to a random page, made sure I had any notes I needed from it for my paper, and then got to work trying to use her own words to offer an opposite message. A message that critiques the fat-shaming that is found all throughout the book and celebrates the way that God made us diverse bodies - and part of the beauty of our bodies is that multiple times a day, if we are so blessed, we get to eat, and we get to do it with friends and family. Throwing on food and weight and body judgments ruins that community and ruins that chance we have to find communion with the incarnated triune God.

The final art project isn't perfects, it's the first one I've ever done. But I'm happy with it. And when I'm flipping through the book over the next few weeks as I finish up this paper, it will be a nice reminder of what God really thinks about my body.

Before

And, After

Struggle

You think Obesity consumes light.

your heart

your desire

cycles to God

appetite gives back to you - Christ.

digest

learning to love

Ten years into learning to love

my body someone asked,

What don't you like?

What don't you like
about your body?

My mind traced the curves I know
from lotion slathered on, slowly,
and looking into mirrors until
I saw beauty. Nothing there in the
curves and sags not to love.

I once fell backwards
into a bank of snow with a laugh.
cheeks flushed from two hours
of clearing fluffy white from sidewalks.
Heart and arms strong for the task.

When I run, I feel like I"m gliding -
my feet above the track my body soars,
less swiftly than it feels for sure,
but I soar on these  legs that resemble trunks
with their muscles toned from years of carrying this
well curved body of mine across the face of the earth

My eyes have earned me long gazes
from admirers who could not seem to pull
their eyes away from mine. They are my vain pride,
but I allow them that for they are the part of me
I've never hated.

Genetics, a propensity to have my nose
buried in a book or a computer screen.
My eyes need help. Fifteen years of contacts.
They beg for a break. The budget agrees.
I switch to glasses.The cheap kind.

I perch them atop my nose and cringe
a little at their prominence with their dark
black frames and the way they seem to cast
shadows over and into  my eyes.

And here I must learn to love my eyes
as they are - deep blue (but sometimes green),
flawed and imperfect like the rest of me.
I have spent a decade learning to listen to my body
and to give her what she needs.

So, here too, I listen to the cherished
voice of my body, I listen to the voice that says
she's more, that her flaws do not deem her
unworthy, that there is something to still
to love in these eyes that see this world.

My Voice Has Always Been Strong

standing on shaky legs
my childish
voice spoke
into the microphone,
words echoing
through the auditorium.

my voice
was clear,
I was told -
though sometimes hurried,
the criticism goes.

I should be on radio
to speak my clear
understandable
voice
across invisible waves

a professor, a poet,
commented on the power
of my voice -
the literary,
self-embodied,
written Voice.
a compliment buried
in notes about needing
to elaborate,
dig deeper,
unpack meaning.

my voice has always been strong

and yet I feel the words catch
at the back of my throat,
lack the power to push through
my lips or find their ways
out of my fingers
when it is
anger
fear
or passion.


rhythmic strength
and control
have no rules
for these reckless things

Beach

One of my favorite things about living in Chicagoland is by far Lake Michigan. I'm blessed to live close enough that a stroll to the beach is an easy thing to do. Swim season has begun and I've enjoyed my time in the sun and sand, soaking up these last couple of months of beautiful Chicago before I move to Pennsylvania in the fall.

I know poetry isn't everyone's cup of tea, but sometimes I enjoy scribbling out lines of poetry rather than prose and I did just that when I returned from the beach the other day. I thought I would share it here.


my body moves
with the tides
and the waves
even while I arch
my arms over my head,
propelling forward
in
one
determined
direction -
against the current.


I look out
at the never ending water,
contemplating
the vastness,
and yet
knowing
there is another
shore
where perhaps
another woman
looks my way

Supported
I bend, stretch, dive.
Lean back and let my body
rest,
bobbing
with my face
to the sun.

I am
floating
a million miles
above the surface
of the earth.
Yet,
a kick down
is all it takes
to find myself
anchored
to the sandy floor.

The heavy weight
of the water
that supported me,
allowed me to move
effortlessly,
now gives me resistance
as I walk to the shore.

The sun shines,
the breeze blows,
the sand beneath
my towel is the perfect
contoured bed,
adjusting
to my every curve.

Gulls call
waves crash.
My body absorbs
the rays, converting the light
to nutrients.

I praise the God of Creation.

The water
for beauty and play and more.

The sun
for warmth and nutrients and light.

My body
for it's strength and grace and function.

I feel the ebbs and flows
of the Spirit
as tides pull
and waves crash over my head.
Feel the vastness
of the questions,
and the connections
of the distant shores.


Give thanks
for days
of sun and water.
For the gift
of relaxing on the sand.
For reminders
that the Holy Spirit
is ever present,
speaking in still small voices
and whispers of creation.

One Art

A link to a poem about loss - small things, big things, and convincing yourself to move on. 

One Art by Elizabeth Bishop

Vacation to the Country

Just got back from a quick impromptu vacation. I was going to update the blog from my phone to keep up with poetry month - but it seems the mobile version of the blogger website is a bit buggy. So, oh well.

Back later with pictures of and a thankful list inspired by the trip. :)

But for now - here's an animated poem by one of my favorite poets, Billy Collins. It's called "The Country" - but it's not all that much about the country. I like when poetry does something different besides just being words on a page. :)

Latinate and Anglo-Saxon Words

In the last post I mentioned the idea of using big words in poetry and how they often have the very opposite effect of the intended result.

When I was an English teacher one of my favorite things to teach was the history of the English language - how it grew and changed over the years as old "Angle Land" was invaded and/or controlled by Germanic tribes, the Roman Empire, and invaders from Normandy among others. Not to mention the words that were added to the American English vocabulary as it moved across the ocean and mixed with languages of the Native Americans and immigrants from all over the world.

In poetry we often classify words as "Latin" or "Anglo-Saxon" 

For the most part - in the history of English - the Latin/Romance words were the words of the ruling and wealthy class - - the government, royalty, the leaders of the church. By contrast - the Anglo-Saxon, or Germanic, words were the words of the poor and the lower class - the everyday farmers and tradesmen and people who lived in the country.

The fact that both of these language influences were part of the history of English has left us with many synonyms in contemporary English - one word Germanic in its root, the other Romantic.  (And by Romantic I  mean the languages derived from Rome  - Latin, French, etc) By nature - the Germanic words tend to be short, bold, with a hard sound. The Latinate words tend to be multi-syllabic with a "pretty" sound.


And while there is much beauty to poems written in the Latinate style - it is the poems full of Germanic words that I find appealing. They often feel raw, honest, to the point.

A few examples of these types of words:

Anger/wrath = rage/ire
Bodily = corporal
Brotherly = fraternal
Leave = exit/depart
Thinking = pensive
Dog = canine
Come = arrive
Ask = inquire 


For the sake of poetry and the "raw, honest, to the point" feel - the words don't actually have to be Anglo-Saxon in origin - but we're going for that idea of the shorter, harsher, words rather than the flowy pretty ones. And, obviously - not every word will be short and harsh - but in general, that's the feel you get.

Here are a couple of poems I love by Theodore Roethke (1908-1963) that I think have a lot of good usage of Germanic-sounding words.

Root Cellar
Theodore Roethke

Nothing would sleep in that cellar, dank as a ditch,
Bulbs broke out of boxes hunting for chinks in the dark,
Shoots dangled and drooped,
Lolling obscenely from mildewed crates,
Hung down long yellow evil necks, like tropical snakes.
And what a congress of stinks!--
Roots ripe as old bait,
Pulpy stems, rank, silo-rich,
Leaf-mold, manure, lime, piled against slippery planks.
Nothing would give up life:
Even the dirt kept breathing a small breath.

A poem about rotting food and plants in a dark cellar would just not work with Latinate words. 

 and I'm pretty sure everyone read this in at least one English class during school

My Papa's Waltz
Theodore Roethke

The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.

We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother's countenance
Could not unfrown itself.

The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.

You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.

Even though waltzes are short steps they are supposed to be elegant - you'd expect flowy words in a poem about a waltz. But - not in this poem, not this waltz.


I'll try to stop my geeky ramblings soon and just post some great poems :)

The Good and The Bad

I took a creative writing course my senior year of college. The class was educational and challenging as creative writing classes should be and still stands as one of my favorite courses in my educational history.

In this class I learned about bad poetry. That is, that poetry can be bad. There is something in us that says that if someone writes poetry from the heart, if it expresses an emotion, if it uses figurative language of some sort then who is anyone to say that a poem can be bad?  While bad poetry can be meaningful to the author and perhaps even others - I still think that we can call poetry bad when we're talking about an art form.

The truth is - there is a lot of bad poetry in the world. Just check out poetry.com - - if you submit something and they offer to publish it in a book - it's not because it's good. I cannot count how many times I had that conversation with students. Just call me a dream crusher.

Among other things, bad poetry begs the audience to feel something, it uses metaphors that don't make sense - even abstractly, it uses big words for the sake of using big words, it is predictable, expected, and sometimes it just lacks the gift of a poet.

I did learn much about good poetry in that class though - and the lesson that stuck with me the most about good poetry is from the poet Adam Zagajewski - the beginning of his poem, "A River."

Poems from poems, songs
from songs, paintings from paintings,
always this friendly
impregnation

In other words - art inspires, gives birth to, art. I love how he used the spacing in the poem to show how inter-connected it all is. If you read the two lines together from left to right you see, "Poems from songs", "from poems paintings", and "songs from paintings."

Just as people study real money in order to detect the counterfeit - - those who study good poetry - know when they read a bad one. And, those who study true art - will produce good art. One of the most beneficial disciplines I learned from that class was to take the work of a known poet and "copy" it to a degree. I'd find a poem I loved - count out syllables and rhyme scheme and rhythm and then write my own poem - filling in my words but using the devices of the original poet. These poems didn't always turn out good - mostly they didn't - but when I started writing poems completely on my own - I found that my poetry started to develop a rhythm and a flow.

And as I've found often in my life - poetry relates well to life. When I copy greatness I find that I create greatness. When I try to give an emotional plea - I find that it usually falls flat. When I use big words in hopes of appearing intelligent and thoughtful - I end up sounding fake and without a human connection. Poetry - both good and bad -  has taught me to search life for greatness and inspiration - and for that I am grateful.

National Poetry Month

April is National Poetry Month. Every year around April 15th I remember that it is and think, "Man, I wish I would've remembered earlier and done a month-long blogging project on poetry!"  And , finally, 2011 is the year I remembered early enough!

So - the goal for the next 30 days: something about poetry in the blog every day.

I first thought it would be fun to travel through the month with poems I've loved in the order I've loved them - but my brain does not remember chronologically - so you'll just have to settle for scattered memories and new finds.

This first poem I share is one that made me love the use of rich words in poetry. I was in high school when I read this poem and as I discovered the denotations and connotations of unfamiliar words the poem became more and more meaningful. I read this poem so many times as a teenager I practically memorized it.

Holy Sonnet, Number 14
John Donne  (1572-1631)

Batter my heart, three-person’d God; for you

As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;

That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend

Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.

I, like an usurp’d town, to another due,

Labour to admit you, but oh, to no end,

Reason your viceroy in me, me should defend,

but is captiv’d, and proves weak or untrue.

Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,

But am bethroth’d unto your enemy:

Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,

Take me to you, imprison me, for I

Except you enthral me, never shall be free,

Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

It was that last part that got me. "never shall be free, / Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me."  It's startling imagery - when you consider the word ravish. Ravish is destruction. Earlier in the poem the speaker uses the simile of a town - and ravished towns are destroyed. The coastal towns of Japan that were hit with a tsunami have been ravished. Towns throughout history that were subject to the forceful invasion of military forces have been ravished. These towns are not free - they are broken and destroyed and humbled.

But even beyond the image of a town - there is the other comparison in this poem. A person betrothed to one and desiring another. There is image of a lover - a human - claiming that being ravished will lead to being chaste - pure.

A person who is ravished? That means rape. And while I am blessedly not qualified to discuss the horrors of rape - and the 2011 version of myself  challenges the word choice and authority of the 17th century author to use ravish and chaste in the  same line and brings a whole host of modern culturally sensitive issues to the table when reading this poem - in 2000 when I read this poem I just thought the dichotomy was startling, powerful, and poetic. It made me love words and their layered meanings and the way we as humans can express ourselves in beautiful ways that will carry messages that last for centuries.

(side note: I just looked up ravish in the etymology dictionary and it seems that at the time the poem was written there could have also been another meaning to ravish: in the sense of "enchanting" it is attested from early 15c., from notion of "carrying off from earth to heaven" (early 14c.).    It is an interesting addition to the many layers of this word. )

A Poem for you

Today I ran across a poem that I first read about six years ago. I remember when I first read it and just liking the rhythm and the feel. As I read it again today I understood it a different level. Today it made me smile as it described to me the reality of becoming at peace with yourself - your past self, present, and future.

Love After Love
Derek Walcott

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

The line "you will love again the stranger who was yourself" really resonates with me. I guess so many times I've kind of struggled with this idea that I know these two versions of me. And the past version of me has certainly felt like "the stranger who was myself" at many times. I think though - that I've finally started to greet her welcome with a smile and enjoyed the fact that I can sit and feast on my life. It is a good one - - desperate notes and all.