I found this in one of my poetry portfolios tonight. Whenever I have wayyyy too much on my plate (three papers and a statistics test this week, kill me!) and I should be spending time studying, I usually find myself not writing papers and instead sifting through my desktop files. Tonight, I found this. It is from my Advanced Poetry Workshop last semester. Supposed to be one of those poems where you look through magazines and find interesting words and phrases and combine them in interesting ways. That's not what it is, though, because I hate those poems. I'm not very good at that sort of thing, so mine rarely come together in any sort of coherent way. So, this was a bunch of different phrases that came into my head all within a day or two. And anyway, I found it tonight and love the way it is pieced together. Sometimes, even when words mean nothing, they fill this strange hole inside of me that nothing else does. Like, even when the lines don't make sense, they do. A paradox of consonants and vowels that I get attached to. That's how I know I was always meant to be a writer.
P.S. I was reading a lot of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes around the time this was written... So, lots of second person addresses, short, punching moments, and an uncomfortable amount enjambment.
Preferring Things
A
cut-up poem
I’ve always preferred wildflowers
to dreams on the site of the battle
at Ghettysburg, and delayed construction
on I-15 has never thrilled me
the way I’d like to be thrilled
by you.
And watch me as I don’t
participate in playful banter
at the dinner table with
your dysfunctional family. Pay
attention to my hair when it
falls across the pages of
your novel, so fetchingly, as we
lie in a field of green memories
and Campbell’s Soup advertisements.
It’s sweet the way
you don’t like Shakespeare,
but you like to eat breakfast
with me.
K, though. Maybe it's because it's three in the morning and I just wrote 4 papers in two days and have to finish reading a novel tomorrow and work and take a French test the next day but this poem hit me hard. The flow here is astounding. I love how outside this is of the narrator and yet so close to them. That last stanza though. All the stanzas though. You're prefect.
ReplyDeleteOr perfect. However letters work at three AM.
ReplyDeleteI love the way you use the phrase, and anyway. And this:
ReplyDelete" Sometimes, even when words mean nothing, they fill this strange hole inside of me that nothing else does. Like, even when the lines don't make sense, they do. A paradox of consonants and vowels that I get attached to. That's how I know I was always meant to be a writer. "
I got so excited reading it because I know exactly what you mean. Even when it doesn't make sense, it does. It applies. And I hope to read more of your poetry one day.
Good luck with classes :)
I'm entirely obsessed with this. It's perfectly light and sweet with this mild undertone of darkness and anger. It begins and ends perfectly and flows wonderfully. Beautiful. Well done.
ReplyDeleteTyler
Trees of Tyler