Response to Evie Shockley’s poetry reading 4/12/12

            First of all, I found going to a poetry reading was a lot more lively at 4:40 than it was in the Foster Auditorium at 7:30. I think purely because it was generally before dinner time, the sun was still out, and afterwards I had more time to think about what Evie said and do research on her poetry. Where as 7:30 reading I have to do other homework and find it difficult to stay focused.

            But I digress… Evie does a lot of experimentation with form which I really could relate to. I am a very visual personal so not only do the words matter deeply to me when writing poetry but the way it looks on the page I think can really add the poem and its meaning. I wrote a poem for another class about something at the time I was really struggling with – the idea of plastic surgery. Essentially plastic surgery is about remodeling, sculpting, and shaping so I had the idea of morphing my poem into a shape.

Underneath It All

I

was

14 the

first time

I realized that

I didn't have boobs

and when I saw a third

grader wearing a training bra.

And she needed it. I was never

told that my breasts were non-existent,

I was never even tormented by boys who

teased I was flat. Well, that's because Vicki

has a secret for that. I’d look at other girls with

fun bags and boys drooling over their bountiful

body parts but I never felt that I was lacking some

crucial perky problem or missing some marvelous

milkshake that brought all the boys to the yard

because no boy is going to be wishing for

someone with bigger tits if he is  lucky

enough to get me topless. But my

sister, who has been told she

is my twin does not feel

the same way about

her twins and has

a date set for

when she will

go under the

lights and

under the

knife to

be stuffed

with plastic

goo and I

can’t tell

her that

there is no

way I am

letting her

go through

with it. How

can I instead

implant my

thoughts

into her?

Shockley mentioned that she meditated a lot about how race affects her, how it molded her, and what it is going to be like for a new generation, like her nieces, to live in a world that claims racism is dead. She shows this in her poems “ode to my blackness” and “post white”.

            My favorite poem that she read was called “celestial”. It was about the friendship between Marilyn Monroe and Ella Fitzgerald. She writes about things they have in common, even if at first glance you wouldn’t be able to find one similarity. I am very fascinated with what seems to be a new appreciation for Marilyn. That is with the movie “My Week With Marilyn” that came out, the TV show “Smash” which is about making a musical about Marilyn, Megan Fox’s tattoo on her forearm of Marilyn’s face, and of course by being in college I come across countless posters in apartments with quotes and famous photographs of her. Her poem was just a completely different way of looking at her.

            Another poem that I really liked out of Evie’s collection was “Post White”. She incorporated music lyrics and was even brave enough to actually sing the lyrics when reading her poem, which I found very brave and very captivating. And she read a prose poem called “Never After” that used references of Disney princesses and see’s their image in a negative light the way I experimented with one of my own poems I put up for workshop. She quotes Haryette Mullen  “was she enchanted or was she dragged?” in the begging of the prose poem, which I thought was really interesting.

            She also mentioned that she revises her poems constantly, even ones that are published. Like her poem “In Property Behavior” she added the killing of the young boy, from Florida, who was shot because he was black and wearing a hoodie and cops thought his iced tea and skittles were weapons. This really inspired me to return to my older poems and work out a couple of lines or take out some things. 

Nichole Cooley and Julia Kasdorf poetry reading

The poets called themselves “poetry pals” and sometimes even “poetry sisters.” I found this really comforting because sometimes when I am writing I feel so self conscious of my work that I isolate myself. Whereas these two very well established American poet’s shared that they love having partners to revise their work, to inspire them, to keep them going, and to cheer them on when they accomplish something as well. It’s always nice to make that one friend in class who I can always just send over my work to over facebook and will just tell me that it’s really vague and give me great critique. Nichole read older work of hers that stemmed mostly from her experience with Hurrican Katrina. Her parents were stuck in it and her poetry has very clear language with low diction. Julia’s was a lot about small towns, Bellefont to be exact, but her language had a little more flair to it, a little more finesse and irony. Julia mentioned that tomorrow is the first day of Passover and also Good Friday. This doesn't happen often at all and in face one of her poems she read was called “Prospect Park Holy Week”. Both women were extremely inspirational and made me want to go read some Yates and write reflective poetry.  

Protect

       It’s been three days but it feels like 4 weeks have gone by without her.  The last time I saw those big brown eyes and scruffy, mud blonde hair that reminds me of the whole wheat pasta my mom makes me eat, was her waiting by the back door to go out and pee. She had just been fully trained, which was amazing because I wouldn’t be able to smell if he had an accident until my mom complained or I stepped in it. If only I had closed the gate or just gone outside with her, this would have never happened.

            A year after the fire my mom and Nan decided that a puppy would be the perfect solution to all of our fears. I would be able to have a responsibility ally my own and they wouldn’t have to worry about me starting fires because Lyla would be able to smell something burning and bark for warning. “500 dollar reward if found!” I put on top of the signs with a picture of me and Lyla in the center. I printed at least 5 dozen copies and put them all over town. The 500 dollars are all I have saved up, but I’d do anything to get her back. “She’ll show up eventually, Sage. She’s gotta. She loves more than life itself” Tyler tries to tell me to cheer me up by wrapping his arms around me. “I just can’t believe I left the fence open like that. How could I be so careless?” I hide my face in his in his chest. After trying to comfort me for a while, Tyler heads home for dinner. He invites me to come with him but I tell him I wouldn’t be much of a guest. When he leaves I get so anxious that I grab the flashlight and decide to go to the park, hoping maybe she wandered there after I took her a couple of times over the months. I whistle for her and sing her name, “Lyyyyyylaaa.” There is no sign of life at all at the park but I shine the flash light a little further back to the woods and figured maybe she thought it was a fun place to go. I try to stick as close to the trail as possible, but how would a dog know how to do that? It’s starting to get dark out and I am sure my mom is home from work wondering where I am. But poor Lyla is probably more worried about where she is. So I continue to go in deeper. “Come on girl, time to go home!” I scream and throw down my arms. “Where’s home?” I hear a voice say from behind me, a jump and turn the flashlight right towards the direction I heard it from. “Oh my goodness, you just scared the life out of me!” I say with a huge exhale with my left hand holding my heart and my right still on the man’s face. “I am sorry miss, I didn’t mean to frighten you, are you lost?” I tell him that I am not lost but that my puppy is. “She’s been missing for three, going on four days now. But I guess I should be heading home now.” I say walking past the man. “Did you say a puppy? What kind?” “She is a mutt, but mostly a blondish colored coat.” “Oh why didn’t you say so?” The man pulls out from behind his back a blood soaked carcass of what used to be my beautiful ball of life. Tears innately flood down my face and I open my mouth to scream at the horrible image that would scare the rest of my life. My life that I knew would be coming to an abrupt halt when the man dropped Lyla on the ground to cover my mouth and puncture my left lung with a chiseled tree branch. I lie there cold next to Lyla’s mangled body. “I should have closed the fence.” I manage to whisper to her.