Poetry as Water ( What is Poetry?)

Poetry as Water

In every poetry class over the last three years, I encountered the same question, “What is poetry?” I have the ability to name a dozen of my favorite poets off the top of my head and I can even struggle to compose the occasional poem, but attempting to define what poetry is exactly, frustrates me. I recognize a poem when I see it, most of the time, yet how do I explain it to someone else? Trying to define poetry is like playing the game Taboo. You have to make the other person guess your word using other words except for a select few. For example, I might get the word “Teacher.” I could not say “apple” or “school” while attempting to get my partner to guess my “Teacher.” For poetry, these “Taboo” words might be rhyming, meter, sonnet, and so on. I feel that poetry is a big game of Taboo because I cannot say a poem always rhymes, or has a strict form. While many do, many more do not. My description also cannot be too vague, because then no one will understand what I am trying to say. Poetry is not just any type of art, because then there would not be the word “poetry” in our vocabulary, it would just be “art.”

The definition of poetry has to be water; shifting shape over and over, but there has to be a way to explain poetry without giving up and saying, “It just is what it is.” After many hours, and perhaps years, of pondering and yearning for a simple answer, I finally reached a workable explanation, that by no means is perfect, but I feel I am the closes to the truth then I was this time last year as I tried to express what lyrical poetry is for another class. Poetry is the concise, intentional manipulation of figurative and imagery-centric language to express emotion for a personal experience.

Figurative Language is a universal quality of poetry. Poets such as Emily Dickinson, Shakespeare, Robert Frost and modern poet Sherman Alexie utilize metaphors, colors, and imagery to convey their messages. In Rainer Maria Rilke’s “Panther,” the image of a large, majestic beast, trapped behind unbreakable bars becomes Rilke’s metaphor for the human condition. He does not just write that humans are trapped in life. Instead Rilke uses an extended metaphor, “/It seems to him there are/ a thousand bars; and behind the bars, no world./” The entire essence of figurative language is to replace people, things, abstract ideas, and emotions in a way that emphasizes an authors point. Not only does figurative language highlight a message, but more often than not, the use of metaphors, simile, personification, calls upon the audience to visualize a poem.

Nearly every poet I read uses words to paint a picture on the canvas of imagination. Some poets, such as Sherman Alexie in his poem “One Stick Song” and Sylvia Plath in many of her poems including “Tulips” use colors to illustrate their poems. In “Tulips,” Plath focuses on the color red to connect to pain. With the line “/Their redness talks to my wounds, it corresponds./” a reader can picture vibrant flowers, gifts from the speakers family intended for good, conversing with the wounds of a miscarriage, thus adding to the speakers already anguished state. Sherman Alexie writes, “I will sing of my uncle/ and the vein that burst in his head// o, bright explosion, crimson and magenta/o, kind uncle, brown skin and white T-shirt/” in “One Stick Song.” The colors in his poem also hold meaning as well as a powerful image of a vein bursting in the head. The usage of “brown” in connection with a person wearing the color of innocence, “white” may also guide an audience to Alexie’s meaning. Unlike novels and other works, poetry’s figurative language is concise, even in what we consider longer pieces.

When language is used in poetry, it packs a punch with small fists. Some poets have the ability to divulge a tantalizing tale in a few lines whereas it might take novelist 40,000 words or more to say the same thing. Neither the poet nor the novelist lack in value, it is only their mode of communication that differs.  “The Tyger” by William Blake is only 25 lines, but with the allusion to “the Lamb” in the “/Did he who made the Lamb make thee?” Blake creates a story of questioning God and his intentions. Are good and evil of the same creator? Even the prose poetry of Walt Whitman is concise in comparison to many other works. Whitman uses lines such as “/Unscrew the locks from the doors!// Unscrew the doors from themselves from their jambs!/” in part 24 of  “Song of Myself” to express his feelings on free love and sexual freedom without writing an essay on it.  Poetry, for the most part, does not use language in a way to be snobbish or elitist, but figurative language, imagery, and brevity all contribute to what I find to be the most important, and principal signature of poetry; emotion.

Over the course of my relationship with poetry, I never came across any poem not rooted in emotion. No matter the type of poetry be it political, love, confessional, inspirational, nature or what-have-you, it all connects to sensations, feelings, and passions. Sherman Alexie’s political poems are often brimming with anger stemming from his identify crises. In his “An American Artificial Limb Company,” he ends with the word “fuck” nine times in a row. Emily Dickinson’s intrapersonal poems range from sexual sentiments such as in “My life had stood—A Loaded Gun,” to depression in, “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain.” Even Robert Frost’s poetry lush with natural imagery, often contains observations of death and feelings of regret. In Frost’s, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” frost uses the notion of a dark, peaceful, and snow-filled woods to explore the speaker’s relationship to death. The speaker assures himself at the end that he is not ready to die with the repetition of “/And miles to go before I sleep,/” Emotion, while not the only component of poetry, is the easiest to observe.

Emotion is not found just in published poetry, it is perhaps more apparent in community poetry. The Larimer County Detention Center’s “SpeakOut! Journal,” contains poem after poem from new poets using words and phrases such as “love,” “I feel,” “I regret,” “My heart bleeds,” all denoting strong feelings. “Beyond,” by Clair L. claims, “/I am formless/.” Vampyre expresses, “/Lost without my love/” in her poem “My Mind & Heart.” Sometimes, the emotion appears to originate from anger such as D’s poem “Learn from your Mistakes” beginning with “/I hate fake bitches/.” Although unrefined, poetry like Clair’s, D’s, Vampyre’s, and other poets in the journal show the core of poetry derives from emotion. Maybe poetry is purely a manifestation or emotion, but then again, a large part of poetry comes from the experience an individual has both writing it, and reading it.

Composing poetry is an enormously personal endeavor. Sylvia Plath was a well known confessional poet. Although she wrote for money, she also wrote for herself. Most of her work developed from her own life experiences and emotions. She often said that poetry allowed her to interpret and then manipulate her life on to paper. Her poem “Tulips” illustrates a troubling situation in which the speaker is dealing with possible infertility and motherhood. Although Sylvia was not hospitalized for her miscarriage, it can be argued that “Tulips” is a direct reflection on the impression such an event left. For Sylvia and many other poets such as Rainer Maria Rilke, who tended to lock himself up to write, poetry is not a group sport, and that is reflected in its creation. Poetry is also an individual experience on the side of the audience.

Poetry is unique as far as audience interpretation goes. Although anyone can sit in a class, in a poetry group, or among friends and discuss a poem, it is very unlikely that everyone will walk away with identical interpretations of the poem. Poetry is exclusive in a way other mediums of the written and spoken word cannot be, because poetry’s core is emotion. As varied as human phenotypes are, so are their relations to emotions. Sylvia Plath alludes to the Holocaust in a few of her poems in the collection Ariel, yet the take-away meaning of this usage is not set in stone. One reader might connect anger and hate while another may infer pain and despair. Poetry takes the place of beauty in the cliché line, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” when it comes to interpretation.

As I mentioned before, poetry is like water, and although I have made a point thus far to illuminate a possible definition of it, poetry cannot be stuffed into a box. For every aspect describing what a poem is, there is a counter example. One could say that “all poetry strives to create meaning with their reader,” but someone could come back and point out that Dada Surrealist poets wrote poetry for art’s sake and not to declare anything.  Another could claim that poetry has to be in a stanza-line form, but I would challenge them to consider Sherman Alexie’s “Warriors” or “The Unauthorized Autobiography of Me.” Poetry takes on the shape the creator chooses but quickly reforms for each person that takes the time to experience it. We can put all the words we want into a definition of poetry, but somehow, we will always find a problem with our definition.

Poetry posses an unnamable quality, or maybe just a mere feeling, that makes it “poetry.” Poets and audiences alike can attest to the way poetry “feels.”  A poet recently told me that although she agrees that the essence of poetry derives from brilliant words, “Poetry is rooted in the human soul. It is something you recognize because it tickles the heart as it announces itself to the brain. Poetry is the human experience, experienced through life.” Even though her conclusion is a bit on the cheesy side, it strikes me as true. Most poetry guards DNA I do not know how to code just yet. Maybe the intent of poetry with the relation to villanelles or Patrician Sonnets was not the fluid characterization I see now, but I think that poetry is better off as a mystery; as something indefinable.

To date, I have participated in three poetry groups, taken three poetry classes, joined one poetry workshop group, and witnessed many poetry readings; I still cannot clearly define poetry. My inability to do so, does not lessen my enjoyment, but instead provokes my curiosity. I crave to read, hear, write, and discuss more poems and their poets to formulate a hypothesis. As of May 2012, my definition stands as “Poetry is the concise, intentional manipulation of figurative and imagery-centric language to express emotion for a personal experience.” I know the root of poetry is emotion, and I realize that all the poems I can remember used some form of figurative language. I am also fairly certain that poetry, both the process of writing and reading or hearing, is a personal and individual experience. Beyond that, I can only acknowledge that I do not know how to tell someone what poetry “is,” because practically all descriptions I can prescribe are canceled out by something I know is poetry. I also admit that poetry retains an attribute I do not know a word for.

If a stranger asks me tomorrow what poetry is, I will share with them one of my favorite definitions by poet Ezra Pound, “[poetry is] what poets write,” because trying to explore what poetry really is might just take a life time.

What is poetry?

For my final paper in my poetry class I have to answer the daunting question of, “What is poetry” in a six page essay.

I don’t even know where and with what to begin. All I know is, six pages is not enough. Poetry is so much more than figurative langue, meter, and form. It is all those things, but can be none of them at all.

I could say it derives from emotion or passion, but what about Dada Poetry?

Every definition I find and try to cement falls a part as I try to think in through. There seems like an exception to every rule, especially in contemporary poetry.

On the flip side, my definition can not be so vague as poetry could be anything. If poetry was any form of art, there would not be a separate word of “poetry.”

Dictionary definitions don’t help either. They talk about rhyme, meter, verse and say something along the lines of having poetic qualities. If you can’t define “poetry,” how do you define “poetic.” By using one in the definition of the other just looks like circular thinking to me.

How do we know something is poetry?

So I ask you to help me on this a bit… What is poetry? What is it not?

Rig 128

*From my senior ethnography*

Rig 128. Jan 2010.

Drill in Greeley, Colorado from KUNC.org

The world seems peacefully still at six in the morning, on the snowy Greeley countryside. Few cars travel the weathered roads as the sun makes its sleepy ascent into the sky. The temperature slowly coasts to an even two degrees but with a slight breeze it feels almost sub-zero. Off in the distance, the drilling sounds of oil Rig 128 breaks the serenity of the scene. Even then, the world does not stir, and the eight men on the rig continue their harvest of finite resources.

I arrive at Rig 128 puffy-eyed and sleep deprived on a very early Sunday morning. Jack Frost kept the air so cold the night before that the ground I walk on is as hard as granite, but more dangerous. I work hard to keep my footing on the scattered ice moats everywhere. Rig 128 looks like a collection of five, navy blue, cargo containers I often see upon trains, all connected to a white drill that reaches into the heavens and its accompanying hull.  I suppose if everything on the gig were new it would have a metallic glisten in the sunrise, for it is all made of metal, but a thin coat of grime depletes any chance of shine. Atop the drill are two red blinking lights to signal its presence to any low-flying plains. The lights seemed to playfully wink at me as my guide takes me into the hull and get a full view of 128.

To enter the hull, I have to first hike up a steep set of metal, grated, stairs. I believe the grated part is an attempt to prevent slippery conditions, but the packed winter ice ignored the effort. The first thing I notice, once inside the hull, is the sharp contrast in temperature. Outside is an icebox, inside, an oven. Taking a good look around, I notice the entire hull is metal. In the counter is a small, triangular shelf of abnormal height. Upon it sat a black, dusty, coffee pot full of, from the smell of it, strong coffee. I observe that the source of the heat is from a small, but powerful, heater attached to the underneath of the coffee counter. Towards the door sits a large, double-door, steel cabinet housing a variety of harnesses and jumpsuits I do not understand.  There is a second entrance to the hull directly across from the cabinet leading directly onto the rig. Over the course of my time on 128, I would watch in fascination as men in varying degrees of grime would strut in and out that door.

At one point during my stay, a young man by the name of Tommy swaggers through the Rig door towards the far end of the hull. At this point I sight a large, bay-type, window looking out onto the drill. Directly below the window, lies a table length, control panel. As I scrutinize the fairly clean board, I note buttons in an array of colors, meters telling of some-unknown data, and red joy-stick like bar jutting out from the gray surface.  Tommy fiddles with a few buttons as he watches the scene play out the bay window, but from my position, all I can see was the rising steam clouds made by the drill. Adjacent to the control panel, rests the cleanest thing on the entire rig; a boxed like computer screen. The screen displays numbers, specific pressures and other essential data all in a bright green, yellow, red, white, and black format. By this time I am toasty warm, but my quest to see the entire rig is incomplete.

My guide grudgingly steers me out the door we had entered, but I do not follow his speedy footsteps eagerly. As I step out of the warm hull, I noticed the valley below, the direction in which we will be traveling, is laden with pipes and other such contraptions everywhere, not to mention that ice moats are more apparent at that moment than ever. In short, I am afraid to trip, slip, or anything involving my face and/or behind landing painfully on the solid earth.

After successfully fighting off my panic and stepping into the crisp air, I instantly react to the loud, earth crunching sound surrounding me. Inside the hull I never noticed the obnoxious sound or the intense, dirty gasoline smell. My guide, somehow, does not flinch at the distressing situation, but leads me to what he entitles, “The Mud Tank.” After climbing the steps unto one of the blue-white containers, I am instantly surprised by the site. I start walking on the metal grated surface again. Below me is a vat of pulsing, fresh, water. From the grates, come many black, tall, handles with a use beyond to me.  On the far end of this tank, is the “Skull Shaker,” so dubbed by the men around. I can vaguely tell the machinery in front of me is orange under a deep layer of black grime. When my guide turns the contraption on, the noise becomes even greater and completely unbearable to my sensitive ears. The use of this object, he informs me, is for a bi-product removable system, but I luckily, did not get to see it operate.

After two hours of venturing around the other four containers and learning too much about the drilling process of Rig 128, I gladly return to my vehicle. Tommy and my guide bid me a goodbye as my car shuffled back onto the dirt road to lead me back home. As I look back I take a mental picture of the dirty rig against a brilliant blue sky. I would return to my tranquil Sunday routine, as would the rest of Greeley’s inhabits, but the men of Rig 128 would work hard on that craggy, little, rig, enduring the loud drill and overpowering smell. They would work despite the rest of the world, until their twelve hour shift was over.

 

Surviving Dumpage

Below is an essay I wrote for my first college comp class 2009. As I was still developing my style, it is rough, but soon I will be sharing my current work and it is always nice to see where a writer was and where they are now.

Surviving Dumpage

“Jordan, I love you, but I can’t do this anymore. This is what is best for you,” he whispered as he graced my tear streaked face with one last kiss. Ryan Spencer Haligas was my forever, the love of my life, or so I believed. For nine wondrous months our worlds revolved around each other in a complicated, long distance relationship. Then, for countless days and weeks I pined over my loss, concluding nothing could ever be complete nor good again without him. He seemed imbedded into every fiber of my life. Then reality hit and I needed to move on. I had to relearn life without Ryan and the single life I had known for years before him. Fortunately, breaking up does not equate the loss of anyone’s ability to love, nor the death of capable happiness, I am quite positive. Anyone can survive losing the comfort of a serious relationship, even when she is the one “dumped,” by moving forward in small, but significant steps.

During the course of any serious courtship, most people tend to drop their friends; therefore, the first step to finding happiness is to find a way back to those friends. Right after I was dumped, my best friend rushed over to coach me through that first night of wailing and throwing everything in my room into my closet. She made me realize how much eight months had changed my friendships.  Before Ryan, I had a many friends. I was that teenager who only came home to sleep because I was always out with friends. However, like most people “in love,” I spent every moment I could with my significant other, dropping my friends. The amazing truth about most friends is they gave forgiveness easily. All I had to do was call a few up and ask to go to lunch. When I started mending my friendships, I started smiling again. Alone I was still a train wreck over the break up, but with my friends I started to ease back into a solid and healthy existence, even if they did get a little tired of me cursing the name of my wrenched ex-boyfriend. Friends are great, but sadly, they alone cannot fill the hole in any heart.

Ryan and I had a “song,” a special “place,” and all those little, corny, celebrations couples claim, but when it is over, it is best not to relate everything back to the past.  For the first month after tragedy struck my perfect world, I couldn’t listen to the radio, drive around town, eat out, or even go to King Soopers because the memory of my beloved would haunt me. In reality, I did this to myself. It was detrimental behavior. One day while listening to a giddy love song, I thought, “Why am I torturing myself?” Just because I make every song about him does not mean he will return.” And that is the truth. It does not matter how many times I would visit “our” park or how many memories I would think about, it is over. The memories will haunt and put a blockage to all possibility of moving on. Every time I would be reminded of him, I would stop and find some other memory in the same place minus Ryan. Sometimes, I could not remember anything other than Ryan so, it was best to create new memories to that song, or that park, or even that grocery store. Hopefully, better memories! It is not so much forgetting, but laying the past to rest. As one remakes the memories, sometimes the real person comes back.

At some point, the ex-significant other comes back, for reasons beyond our control. The trick here is to not fall back into that trap. Life is not a romantic comedy. A week after Ryan broke my heart, I saw him at a concert. I was walking out of the bathroom when I saw him approaching me quickly. He grabbed me, whisked me off to the side, and held me close. He told me everything would be okay; he loved me, and then cursed me with a kiss before he ran off. All the progress I had made shattered when he texted me later that night about how we just couldn’t work. I had to promise myself not to go back; obviously we broke up for a reason. Oh boy, did I miss him. Even with my friends around me, I found holes he left behind and I wanted to go back. So, I allowed a friendship to form, at his request. I called and texted, yet it was worse. Every time I got off the phone after saying, “I love you,” back I felt just as I had when he dumped me again, because I knew his mind was made up. The moment I deleted his number and all contact with him I felt better. Of course I wanted to stay friends, but I could not do that and move on. It is a rarity anyone can. After a break up, one should avoid going back, at all costs because it is not going to change anything. The heart can break a million times, but it can only break once for one person. The day will come where there is no need or desire to go back.

Post break up is the best time to find one’s self; all anyone has to do is embrace the single life once the shock and pain of the initial loss wears off.  Getting back out into the world is not something to rush, but is necessary. I hate the saying, “there are many fish in the sea,” but it is true. Ryan is one guy out of how many billion out there?  Every day I have to remind myself to pick my head up and see what is in front of me. Going out and meeting new people is one way to embrace the single life. Another way is to do things alone, like taking a road trip. I took the first of the two and started hanging out with people from work and their friends. Then I started flirting with new guys. My flirting is frivolous and easy-going, but a major boost for both my self-esteem and confidence that Ryan is not the last.

Ryan did not die, but to me it felt like he did because our relationship died. And yet, I did not die in any manner. It was a struggle to move on. Some days, I still feel down about the whole situation, but I do not let myself dwell on it. To get to this point I had to mend a few friendships, make new memories, delete his number, and flirt with new guys. In the end, it is worth it because I am no longer in my bed craving ice cream and tissues. Lesson learned: breaking up does not kill; it strengthens and teaches. No one has to be broken forever; they just have to get back on their feet somehow, and these steps are just some of many ways.

Erika Nava

Below is the essay I wrote for my college applications. Sadly, I haven’t seen or spoken to Erika in over a year, but I am still proud of this piece

Erika (my sister) Nava

I call her Erika “Blank” Nava, not because her middle name is really “Blank,” but because her parents left the place for a middle name vacant on her birth certificate. When yelling at her I will, occasionally, substitute a descriptive, but not deemed “appropriate,” word in place of the blank. Ninety percent of those times are in good humor. One-hundred percent of those occasions, she never fails to mention that my last name, Cox, sounds like male genitalia. I believe that you are not always born into the complete family you are supposed to have, and as a consequence you must find the people missing. I found my long lost sister in Erika. In the past six years, I held close to her and she held on to me, for laughter, support, note taking/passing, and above all else, the kind of friendship which mimics sisterhood.

I would not call our first encounter special in any form. We both attended the same middle school for the seventh grade and both happened to be in an advance language arts class. On that first day of school, as we went around introducing ourselves, I did not have a moment of immense clarity from the heaven; saying, “This is your future best friend” when she said her name.  Truth be told, she was nothing more to me than the other three hundred or so students in the same building. Even after the first few weeks of that semester, I felt nothing more for Erika than mild annoyance.  Her thick, black hair was always in a high pony-tale and she did not look at any one when she talked. She seemed pretentious, and always had a look about her that she would not waste her time on a mere mortal like me.  Eventually, I joined the cross-country running team and began to eat my lunches with a petite girl name Bridget, who happened to also sit by Erika during our short break.  The details of how we actually began talking, or even got past our initial dislike for each other, are slightly fuzzy, but by my thirteenth birthday, we were calling each other “best friend.”

To call Erika unique would be an understatement. She is the type of girl that seems forever quiet in the class room, but outside of any educational institution, she transforms into the “loud one” as I once deemed her.  I will always be fascinated by the quick wit by which her mind operates.  Somehow, she possesses the ability to make anyone laugh by saying something completely unexpected. During late night cruising, she would suddenly turn down the radio; tilt her head, and say something such as,  ” How do boys wear skinny jeans; do they have to, you know, squish their parts? Isn’t that bad for them?”  Speechless, I looked at her and proceeded to burst out laughing. My laughter transformed into our laughter until both our stomachs shook with pain.

In the last year of high school, she stunned the entire senior class with her reinvented version of Beowulf, entitled, “Chaniquiwa Norris,” who not only was multi-racial, could help everyone on their homework, but also brought the almighty, invincible Chuck Norris into the world. I recall her standing up in class and presenting her creation with a serious face, yet I saw the familiar mischievous glimmer in her eye. Mentioning her presentation of Mrs. Norris still brings on numerous stifled giggles from anyone in the know.

Beyond laughter, Erika has an uncanny ability to see into a person’s soul. A person’s outer appearance does not matter; she gives almost everyone a chance. The prime example of her gracious gift is me.  Although she believed me to be a “know-it-all,” somehow she was the first person to genuinely take an interest in me when I was the “new girl.” My mom answered the phone one night and said it was for me. I must have stared at her for eons before she said, “Jordan do you want me to say you aren’t here?” It was Erika on the other end, inviting me to my first sleepover, ever. Even though we lived in a town racially divided, she invited this “peculiar” (a nice way of calling me weird) white girl to a sleep over otherwise attended by Hispanics.

Every person in my life has had some sort of impact on me, but in many ways, Erika’s contribution to the person I am today is astounding.  Erika convinced me of myself.  When I felt the slap of rejection from boys, or was too scared to pursue something she knew would result in my happiness, Erika would be there with a kind, but firm hand, aiding me. Some days I needed tough love, others just a shoulder to lean on. After my first heartbreak she was the one to get me the Kleenex, but then the one to lecture me on how the guy was awful for me when I wanted to call him.  I could always count on Erika to be in the audience during one of the school plays, just because I was in it. She would be there cheering for me, even if I had one line, or in one case, only stood in the background. I realize now how fortunate I am to know Erika. Without her, I would not have attended Union Colony, a college prep high school. Without her, I would have never applied to Puget Sound. She gave me confidence, but even more she taught me what it is to be loved.

I could write a novel about my un-biological sister. She deserves a heroic epic of her own greater than the works of Homer or that unknown person who wrote Beowulf.  Now, we are at different colleges and still little has changed. Just yesterday, she called to yell at me for procrastinating on my essay even though she was in a similar boat. Over the last six years I gained an unexpected sister.  Her quirks softened my insecurity, while her unfaltering friendship pushed me on. She tells me every day that I have the capability to take on the world, but she does not know it is only because of her that I believe it.  We became friends while I was a mere child dealing with the adult world and now we are sisters taking the globe by storm.