Poetry Practice Pieces 2.25.15

Five Not-So-Easy Pieces

My head hurt in my effort to complete these assignments. Ils contestaient missions! And so, I'm still working on the Dickinson one. Enjoy!

1.Five Liner

Stiff knotty hands misshapen by age
Sculpts earthy tators with black steel blade
Practicing the presence of God, he says
Can I tempt you to rest your gnarled aching grip
His neck stretches, recoils, bent on his sacred toil


2.  Sound and Sense (A la Peyton Manning -"Nationwide is on Your Side")

I picked this line from one of Barry Manilow's popular hit, I Write the Song:

I write the songs that make the whole world sing..

I uploaded to SoundCloud the recording of me humming to the tune to get the rhythm in my head and heart. Tried Vocaroo and it didn't work so well for this purpose.

Based on that tune, I ad libbed these words -- depicting sensory images -- to fit the rhythm, or as Randy calls it, "the sonic footprint." Seriously, Peyton Manning makes it look too easy! I'm learning that poetry writing is a discipline that trains the mind to become more precise and concise. One must be willing to put up with the frustration of not finding the right word at the time one needs it.

Down coats in winter feel so snug and warm

Space heaters roar and drown Queen's melodies

Hot soups banish bone-chilling bitter cold

Fresh made popcorn smells tart and heavenly

A Saab zips by and wrecks her pristine Dior  



3. Dickinson Inspiration (c. 1862)

The clouds blocked out the sun --
They did not think I cared --
The smiling sun displeased the clouds
And five sullen days was had

And then, the snow came down
The waters in the sky --
Frozen into ice, pelted earth a foot high
Lunar New Year hit town with no glad cry

The plans to huddle, cook and eat
Were threatened and subdued
No firecrackers, steamboat feasts or greets
I wrote my friends, celebrate we ought


[Sorry, Randy, unfinished, still under construction]

I'll go and try redrafting the older pieces now.

March 2, 2015 Update:

This is an original old draft where we were instructed to translate an idea into an image, which I didn't do so well at. It was too abstract and Randy wanted more specific details.

February 18, 2015

What is Self
A lonely, single figure
Huddled up on an island
With no complications
Free of interwoven dependencies
No part in a tapestry of complexity
And conspiracy
Self is at liberty to worship
Kneel, express,
Move in thankfulness
For gratitude

Bidart Lipsynch and Imagery

[This post is still under construction.]

The last few weeks have been a blur of activities. Does your brain hurt from non-stop mentation? Mine does and did. As Countess Dowager [Dame Maggie Smith] spouts in Downton Abbey,

"All this endless thinking, it's very over-rated!" 

But poetic imagination is not. To the uninformed, I'm learning to use metaphors in poetry writing, hence this Bidart draft. To Randy and my poetry friends, here are my practice drafts:

1) Here's my Bidart lipsynching draft 1. [Homonym: Lamp/Lamb]

Candle with  short wick

The Poem is a Lamp

L A M P - radiating light in petrifying darkness, erratic

In its glow. As wispy candle burns into stumpy wick,
Or raging campfire the sacrifice of sweet wooden smoke
Gulps, swallows, the black night

Earnest, ardent, the promise of hope, victorious, breaks the hold of the unknown

March 2, 2015 Try:

The Poem is a Maze

M A Z E – as if a tangle that one must unsnarl diligently
Meandering routes, wicked hedges, loopy grids conceal veiled routes to bliss
Real traps, imagined wanderings, criss-crossing this labyrinth

2) Images Draft 1

Young Love at the Cafe 

Pale frostbitten faces
Lean young bodies
Swathed in thick coats - black, grey, and more black
Layers shed, as young dates sit
At gleaming square tables
Knee-high socks in leather boots
Flannel shirts fight with flimsy cotton lace
And chiffon, whips past me
A cold stream slithers down my aching shoulders
Down to my parched finger tips

"Brown sugar coffee!"
The barista shouts, not once, but thrice
Five thirty-five, the monstrous black clock declares
With its stark white hands
Diners, flushed in intimate chatter
Screaming rock music
Piped in, drowns out the java maker. No one
Claims the hot brew
It waits on the steel counter

Searching for a number
Etched in folded steel tags
Will it match mine, or yours
Taut necks stretch, yearning
"Cometbus," "Patterson"?
On round flat metal plates they arrive
Whetting appetites, real and imagined
An au lait all drunk up
The elderly couple stands, screeching metal stools against concrete
Layers up, and departs into the cold

Collaborative Learning Activity: Poetry Writing

We sat around a table with interesting objects we had brought from home. A community of poet wannabes. Or poetry machines, Randy Marshall our chief instigator cheekily called us. He led us to write poems inspired by the stories we shared about the items. A good activity that I could use one day with my students, if Randy doesn't mind.

Poetry writing sharpens our minds and writing. I like the opportunity it provides for us to be precise and playful with words. It is a great learning activity to try in classes. I recommend it highly, not just in literature classes.

Here is mine, slightly edited from the first draft written on Feb 4 evening.

Some of the objects of inspiration: jade cat, brass bell, seagull feather, my red macrame knot

Objects of Interest

A friendship in Beijing
Solidified by a dark green jade cat
"An exotic city," R professed
Her love for that Forbidden City
Swiftly the gemstone transported me to my unspoken grief

"The first one was damaged
The second one stolen"
So a third ring her mother offered
A sparkling aquamarine set in silver
A symbol of T's childhood in Japan

Where has this bottle roamed
Whose lips have pursed against this rim
A chipped whiskey bottle top
Plucked from the grounds of Rappahannock Station
A decade and a half in L's keeping

A brown seagull's feather
From the shores of a Polly Island Beach
She recalled the loudness of the placidity
Life had become too big and clamorous
The ocean could swallow H
Like a hushed hiccup no one knows
Everything will be okay

Soft crystal clear peals
Of a miniature brass bell
With claws and etched with flowers
A gem found at Paul's Place of timeworn treasures
A renewed friendship from M's years in graduate school

I unveiled my dad's prosperity-red macrame knot
Don't weep, I will be brave
"My dad used it as a key-holder"
Words slow and deliberate, I uttered
Him who I can no longer hold
His effects, his assets, my objects of affection

Hodge Podge of Thoughts on Inclusive Teaching Institute

 

Looking down at Shockoe Valley from Richmond Hill Retreat Center

I thought of you 
In the land of plenty
Disconnected from the rest of Richmond city
Riding in a car
Someone pointed out
"This school's roof leaked. 
The ceiling tile hit a child!"
What went through the minds of young students
To be broken up and bused to different strange schools?
Further the car took me 
To another school sited next to the city jail
Hope sits adjacent to despair
City planning gone awry
Or a deliberate act of marginalization
In the four Courts silence pervaded
There were no children skipping in backyards
Nor grownups in congenial chatter
A police car, no, two, circled these housing projects
Turns in the road
Led me back to my rustic retreat
Cast down by the privilege of knowing

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A girl received a scholarship offer to go to college but did not have $12 to pay for a required transcript for her application. When she finally found the money to do so, the scholarship fund had largely been depleted. 

A man was offered a job. He couldn't accept it because he couldn't get to work. City buses do not ply the roads of his neighborhood. 

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My learning experience at the 2014 Summer Institute for Inclusive Teaching was thrilling and disturbing. Since the close of the Institute, I have found it difficult to write about the week's experience. I lost my "voice." I couldn't muster strength nor heart to blog or tweet. These activities seemed frivolous to me when poverty and injustice had stared at me so blatantly. I had never considered if I had been raised in circumstances of privilege. Yet listening to the speakers on all five days, I couldn't help but wonder if my education and hence privilege of knowing had led me to adequate action for the public good.

At the Institute, I was like a sponge soaking up new concepts. Having been raised in the island-state of multiracial Singapore, appreciation for and support of diversity has been a natural part of my life. But back there, I didn't think, or maybe more aptly, didn't have to think, about stereotype threats, gender inclusion or other forms of marginalization. I was a member of the dominant race. I was surrounded by friends of different racial and linguistic groups. Educated in a girls' school (Like bell hooks of Teaching to Transgress), I received empowering education. In the USA, I am or became part of a minority group -- an oft-perceived model minority group. I have often been told in the face that I'm over-motivated and that I need to "slow down." It seems in the USA people see me and read "privilege" or "always looking for number 1" (which couldn't be further from the truth). I frequently let these remarks pass. What are these names when I've been called worse things in the USA? These terms have no meaning to me. I'm having fun as I learn and do what other people perceive is "difficult" or too accelerated a pace for me. Yet, these remarks occur far too often the longer I've been in the USA and particularly when I encounter people who have limited cross-cultural awareness and experience.

"How did you find the strength to respond to such ignorance?" I was asked.

The short answer is, I didn't know my own strength. (Go check Whitney Houston's song)

As disturbing as the week's events have been, I relished my time of learning and the camaraderie that has developed among the participants and our Faculty Learning Community (which served as a planning committee for the Institute). We were as different and diverse as an inclusive FLC could possibly be within the constraints of a higher ed institution. Working with them was affirming and comforting. They understood my struggles. I am not alone with the misperceptions and sometimes coercion by other people to make me become more like them. For instance, when I'm not as noisy as some people want me to be, Lisa Webb, my disability work buddy understands it's because I'm comfortable with another language, a world without sounds. I'm at ease with Deaf people and that in the visual poetry of gestures and ASL, "voice" is realized a different way. I don't need to use sounds to draw attention to myself. More accurately, I dislike drawing attention to myself. I'd rather people look at my work and appreciate my ideas. [Yes, it's hard to separate the individual from the idea, but think Terence Malick of Tree of Life whose films I admire.] Chinese expresses it best for me: 不爱出风头。 Even when other people think I'm "silent," I'm not without voice. Most people don't cross as many "worlds" as I do in one setting - English, Chinese, Cantonese and signing. Lara dos Passos Coggin, one of my FLC members who is bilingual (or maybe more) expressed the multilingual person's struggles in a compelling way for me (not exact words):

"Some people who are monolingual do not understand the multiplicity of resources (and thus, interference) a multilingual person has access to and are processing as they seek to express themselves."

Something else she said continues to ring in my mind,

"Diversity nourishes and feeds my soul. I need it to flourish."

She captured a dominant desire of mine.

My plea to people who are experts in one language and focuses on only one: have patience and to not think you need to help multilingual speakers find the words they need to elegantly and eloquently express themselves. They have an abundance of symbolic conventions and knowledge domains to mash up into creative expressions.

It has been hard to write this post but I want to capture some of these memories before they fade from my mind. I might reword or add more thoughts later. Writing is one of my loves so it is a struggle to want to do your best at being clear, parsimonious (in the tradition of Howard Becker, inspired by my advisor) and thoughtful when your thoughts are half-formed. But this will do for now.

A Reflection on Tribes the Play

"Tribes" by Nina Raine at Barrow Street Theatre

Source: http://barrowstreettheatre.com/whats-on/tribes.asp

I didn't know what to expect from the play. I went with one goal: to watch border-crossing enact in hybrid spaces when a Deaf actor works with non-Deaf actors and to do "research" for my dissertation. So here's my short reflective poem about the play:

Clamor
Of sound and silence
Language
Signed or spoken
By them
We live, love
Or not

Tell me
Don't leave me
Out
Speak my language
Understand me
By
Whose terms?

Two paths
Onward we trod
Center or edge
Will we meet
At some point?

"Until
I stopped
Talking
You didn't
Hear me
I can't
Be here
Any longer"

Try
Tell me
Sign me
Love me
I love, love, love you
Sound not needed
For admission

yin wah kreher
copyright, dec 28, 2012

Haiku for the day

Words and worlds at war
Hope deferred, vexes, galls
Yearning prolonged gnaws 

ywk, June 28, 2011

Modern Cuneiform

[Image source: fact-o-tron.com]

i stare

oblivious to the glare

paper mountains

scaled, as yet in vain

there is no respite

thoughts they desist

word strings, one and then a few

in caprice, halts and spews

solitude incubates

this industry of zeal and rage

~ author, ywk, jan 17, 2010