Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Stillpoint and Mom

I went to another poetry reading tonight, and this one was inspiring as well, though in a different way. This was the presentation of the undergrad literary magazine, Stillpoint. Several of the poets and storyists (I made that up, but I don't know the word for those that don't write poems and don't write novels and don't write essays...) got up and read. Though I didn't like some of their work, it was strange to think that these people not much older than I was were getting up and reading their thoughts with such confidence. One day I want to have the confidence to do that. And the poetry to back up that confidence.
The other day I saw a poster saying something about "home is where the mother is" and since then I've been missing my mother, and missing home. So after tonight I put together a list (I guess it could be called a poem, if you'd like) of things I learned from my mother. I'll record it here:

Things I learned from my Mother:

Don’t run your knits with your jeans

Keep the counters clean

Life is made of windows and doors… be careful closing them

Shoulders back, chin up

To be a teacher is a noble thing.

Marry a man who is good with power tools.

You’re the cutest one up there.

Be proud, you’re a Franks.

Be passionate about your work: do what you love, love what you do.

Walk quickly.

Video games kill your brain.

It doesn’t matter whose fault it is, it’s your responsibility.

Love is watching HGTV on a Friday night and kissing at the dinner table.

Call back home every so often.

Cry when it hurts, then get up and move on.

Always keep a calendar.

Don’t ever put your name on something that’s less than your best.

Insecurity is not an excuse- you can do it, if you want to.

Reading makes you smarter.

Some things in life are worth fighting tooth and claw for.

That attitude is unbecoming on you.

Sometimes, you just need to be babied.

If you sew it inside out and then flip it, it hides the seams.

You’ve got something to offer, even if you think you don’t.

When it’s sunny, get outside and play.

Don’t wear jeans to church… but get out of bed and go to church.

Mean what you say. Say what you mean.

Everyone doesn’t need to know everything, but have someone who does.

No, you don’t know, and you don’t get it. Hush and listen.

Be a woman, even in a twisted world.

Thursday, April 16, 2009

"when you're dreaming with a broken heart
the waking up is the hardest part
you roll outta bed and down on your knees
and for the moment you can hardly breathe
wondering was she really here?
is she standing in my room?
no she's not, 'cause she's gone, gone, gone, gone, gone....

when you're dreaming with a broken heart
the giving up is the hardest part
she takes you in with your crying eyes
then all at once you have to say goodbye
wondering could you stay my love?
will you wake up by my side?
no she can't, 'cause she's gone, gone, gone, gone, gone."
-"dreaming with a broken heart" john mayer

i'm struggling with a lot in my life right now. i just have so many things that all seem to be colliding and i'm just helplessly being buffeted back and forth between them and not knowing where to go. i'm just clutching at straws trying to keep my head up.

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Sestina

For my intro to poetry class I was given the chance to write a sestina for extra credit. A sestina is one of the most complex poetic forms... ever. It's composed of six sestets (6 line stanzas) and a tercet (a 3 line stanza.) That's the easy part. Each of the six lines in the stanza end in the same six words. If the first stanza is numbered 123456, then the second stanza is 615243, the third is 364125, the fourth is 532614, the fifth is 451362, and the sixth is 246531. Then the tercet contains all six words, usually with a sort of caesura in the middle after the first word, with the first line containing 1 and 2, the second 3 and 4, and the third 5 and 6. Now, if that isn't difficult enough, we chose as a class the six words we had to use. The words that we came up with (randomly chosen off the tops of our heads) were detergent, sauce, bridge, man, time, and chair. I'll first give the example we read in class, one by Elizabeth Bishop entitled 'Sestina' and then my feeble attempt, which I haven't named.

Sestina
By: Elizabeth Bishop

September rain falls on the house.
In the failing light, the old grandmother
sits in the kitchen with the child
beside the Little Marvel Stove,
reading the jokes from the almanac,
laughing and talking to hide her tears.

She thinks that her equinoctial tears
and the rain that beats on the roof of the house
were both foretold by the almanac,
but only known to a grandmother.
The iron kettle sings on the stove.
She cuts some bread and says to the child,

It's time for tea now; but the child
is watching the teakettle's small hard tears
dance like mad on the hot black stove,
the way the rain must dance on the house.
Tidying up, the old grandmother
hangs up the clever almanac

on its string. Birdlike, the almanac
hovers half open above the child,
hovers above the old grandmother
and her teacup full of dark brown tears.
She shivers and says she thinks the house
feels chilly, and puts more wood in the stove.

It was to be, says the Marvel Stove.
I know what I know, says the almanac.
With crayons the child draws a rigid house
and a winding pathway. Then the child
puts in a man with buttons like tears
and shows it proudly to the grandmother.

But secretly, while the grandmother
busies herself about the stove,
the little moons fall down like tears
from between the pages of the almanac
into the flower bed the child
has carefully placed in the front of the house.

Time to plant tears, says the almanac.
The grandmother sings to the marvelous stove
and the child draws another inscrutable house.


Bishop's words were, obviously, tears, almanac, grandmother, stove, child, and house. Now for mine. Again, a disclaimer, I make no claims as to the quality of my poetry. If you don't like it, I'm very sorry. Direct thy web browser elsewhere.


Sestina

Caroline Franks


His rolled-up shirtsleeves smell of stale tobacco and fresh detergent

“you make things interestin’” he says… calls it “bringin’ sauce”

The roaring pickup stops, the heat cranks up on the Jackson Bridge

I never felt as wild as that, a girl in the muscled arms of a man.

2 AM, tugging on my dress and he’s laying on the gas, we lost track of time

Sneaking in the back door, the floorboard squeals. Daddy’s in the kitchen chair.


I’ve stood all day- the belt marks smart against the chair

But I can still smell his sweet masculine tobacco-and-detergent

Countin’ the clicking clock above the stove, ticking measured time

Wiping palm sweat on a stained apron, stirring the sauce

Tonight the open window will release me to my man

The road will open back to Jackson Bridge.


Mama’s friends around a table, griping about men and playing bridge

Meaty bulk in faded calico draped over either side of the protesting chair

Daddy’s at Sam’s for the beer, “just like a man…”

Conversation runs to the price hike on detergent

Mrs. Landes compliments me on the sauce

I smile and nod and slip out; escape time.

~~~

Hours creep, drag along. It’s always fighting me, time.

Tonight’s the women’s night for bridge.

He mutters somethin’ when he walks past- already on the sauce.

Creak, creak, creak. Damn creakin’ rockin’ chair.

It smells of mud in here. Mud and detergent.

Gold glints dully on my knotted hand, the last tie to that man.


He’s got a bottle in his fist, just like a man.

The arms that so entranced me as a girl felt the passing time

He smells of sour beer and sweat instead of tobacco and detergent

I was seventeen the last time I saw Jackson Bridge

I knit, I wash, I think, I wish from this creakin’ chair

Still wipin’ palm sweat on an apron, still stirring the sauce.


Sue made the gravy, she makes a mean sauce

But there’s black marks round her arm- married a mean man.

Hefty bulk, a workin woman’s weight on a tired chair

Proof, it could be worse. Could be worse than just my painful wear of time.

Sunday: complainin about men over casserole and a hand of bridge

The feminine mystique- a hovering cloud of scrubbing bleach and cheap detergent


Hands bleached by detergent, burned by a stove of sauce

Women playin bridge, a beer-soaked sleeping man

The eternal creak of time and a worn-out rocking chair.

Thursday, April 2, 2009

"Sing, Heavenly Muse, that on the secret top
Of Oreb or of Sinai didst inspire
That shepherd who first taught the chosen seed
In the beginning how the how the heavens and earth
rose out of Chaos; or, if Sion hill
delight thee more, and Siloa's brook that flowed
fast by the oracle of God, I thence
Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song"
-Paradise Lost, Book 1 Lines 6-13

So my first try at blogging; I've never been much of a journal-writer, I haven't got the consistency. I've also never been really good at public writing, I haven't got the confidence. However, I need a place to put inspired things and the notebook on my top shelf just doesn't seem enough. There will be no theme, therefore. Just inspired things, things I wrote or things I liked or things that made me think. I have no gift of my own, but I've been gifted with an appreciation for the writings of the giants that went before me, so I intend to exercise that here.
Tonight I went to a reading by Yusef Komunyakaa, a Pulitzer Prize winning poet who has been hailed as "arguably the most important and accomplished living African-American writer" (Ed Pavlic, Director of Creative Writing, University of Georgia.) He writes very accessible, raw sorts of things, always colored by a well-developed, consistent tone. He is also highly influenced- I think- by his experiences in Vietnam. His voice, also, reminded me of James Earl Jones (listen here!)
Upon coming home I, inspired, tried my hand at a verse or three. I'll record the results here, but hold me to no standards. I have no misconceived vision of myself as a poet.

I am young.
Supple.
Lithe.
The picture I paint is of a girlish woman,
slender, snapping willowy
crowned with golden mane untamed
eyes- windows to a stormy soul
passion tempered with frail humanity.

I will make the most of my youth.
Fearless.
Vibrant.
There is no fear in love
There will be no fear in me.
He will ask, there is no answer in me but Yes.
The sun will be my muse, He my glorious audience.
I'll perform my youth for my Lover.

I will not be young forever.
Morphing.
Altering.
The colors will never be this shade again.
Chord structures that compose me will change and
this melody will never be heard again.
My summer will drift into my fall,
it will never drift back again.