Hey y’all. I’ve been participating in National Poetry Month with a challenge through Writing Heights. And let me tell you, nothing humbles you more than being in the presence of such amazingly talented poets (especially when they all decry their lack of talent). We didn’t have any gentleman join us in the challenge, and I will say that I think the supportive structure of mature women in a safe environment really gave birth to vibrant and visceral work. It reminds me how powerful women are. How intelligent. How kind. How empathetic. Am I saying that men are not these things? No. I’m saying that for too long women in this weird patriarchal, capitalist, christian nationalist environment have been silenced, reduced to objects, and vilified for expressing themselves. It is grounding to know, despite the illusions spread to keep them subservient, women are in fact the creators.
That was a long intro to these poems. One, from a prompt this month. One I wrote as an exercise. Neither edited much. Enjoy, and if you were insulted by the previous paragraph…stop reading my blog.
I am sitting at home, on the south side of a once-small Colorado town I used to hear crickets, but now there are sirens The dog snores, unbothered, and my wristwatch patiently counts seconds I no longer own I can see the faint glow, of a nightlight down the hall
I used to hear crickets, but now there are only sirens There is a coldness where a warm love used to lie, beside me, tucked away I can see the faint glow of a nightlight down the hall Time has taken the children from the rooms, but I keep them plugged in
There is a coldness, where a warm love used to lie And I feel it, tucking away from me, lonely and quiet Time has taken the children from the rooms, but I keep them plugged in I’ll never sleep the way I used to, when I knew we were all safe
And I feel it, over and over, love tucking away from me lonely and quiet The dog snores unbothered, and the wristwatch ticks away the seconds I no longer own I’ll never sleep the way I used to, when they were down the hall I am sitting, up in bed, once a home, on the lonely side of a once-small Colorado town.
tom-boy rough and tumble the feral ruler of broken-down neighborhoods in dying mining towns knew no gender just the horsepower of my skinned-kneed legs and the unfettered mane more wild adherent to herd than human girl or boy wind-tossed and unmanageable out in sunlit days with any able-bodied child my height who could keep up invent dragons and build castles in trees uncategorized, unencumbered by expectations of bows or army men dolls or trucks why not both? why not all? aren’t our hearts really just wildings? in the beginning we were all unfettered dragons, able-bodied castles nurturing friends and fauna in trees alike we were all ‘them’
Disappointed I can’t find an image of the scene when John Gavin shouts this line while fumbling with a live chicken and coming out of a tranquilized haze.Apparently, the internet DOES NOT have everything.
I’m not immune to the fact that this blog has tripped around in the dark a bit lately. Let’s be honest, all of us are probably tripping in the dark. We’re in unprecedented times, facing stresses and noise that we’ve never dealt with before. It’s easy, in the dissonance, to lose our path.
So for the next three to four months, the first week of the month, I’ll be getting organized and coming back to a series I ran a few years back called the Beautiful Writer’s Workshop. I’ll probably skip around a bit, everything from how to submit your work to how to organize your series. No, I’m not going to make you deconstruct your sentences into diagrams, circling your subject, double scoring your gerunds, slashing through your adverbs (or will I? Could be a fun practice in the lost art of sentence diagramming AND tortuous. I’m a girl who likes it a little rough).
For the love of all that is good and holy…
I’ll be re-blogging in line with issues I’m seeing my students face, and those I’m facing myself. For as many classes as I’ve taken on any number of writing related topics, I always seem to glean something new. Hopefully these little once-a-month writing lessons can help you too. If you have specific issue you’ve been fighting with, contact me and I’ll try to run a post about it.
That’s not to say I won’t occasionally throw in a “stop being assholes to each other” rant. I like to keep it exciting after all.
It’s been a while since we dabbled in the lighter word count and heavier hand of poetry so I thought…why not start there? Especially since this is the first week of National Poetry Month.
(Hold on to your asses, she’s about to ADULT over here!)
Poetry used to be the sole conveyer of great stories, epic tales, and the meat and potatoes of religious creed. The first believed poem, author unknown, was called The Epic of Gilgamesh. Besides this epic, there was Rig Vedas of Hinduism, and The Song of The Harper from Egypt. Centuries before we first heard a Greek throw down an ode to an urn, people were writing poems.
Poetry was borne in the heart of burgeoning cultures and empires. As we move west across the world, we have The Iliad, Beowulf, 154 shout outs to Will Shakespeare’s best girl(s) (and possibly boys?), and eventually, on to the new world with works like The Song of Hiawatha.
From these epic and structured beginnings, poetry has evolved and moved, like a river around obstacles, constant but ever-changing. One of the reasons I love poetry is its ability to capture the heartbeat of time-periods through the use of its language and form, as well as the ideas that it holds.
Poetry records history. From the simplest nursery rhymes (“Mary, Mary Quite Contrary” was actually based on Queen Mary I, aka Bloody Mary, who tortured and killed hundreds of protestants. Silver Bells and Cockle Shells aren’t perennials, they’re torture devices.) to Walt Whitman’s descriptions of the horror and decimation from America’s Civil War (“O Captain, My Captain” was written about the assassination of Lincoln just before the close of the ‘storm’ of war) poetry is a powerful conveyer of humankind’s journey through time.
Poetry connects. It’s visceral and often uncomfortable. It paints pictures with the deepest hues of language. Poetry is vital to song writing, memory retention, and a host of other deep-seated neural mechanisms humans use to survive. (the ABC song, “Thirty days hath September…”, “I before E except after C–and about a dozen other exceptions because the English language is a bastardized torture device for anyone learning it”)
So how do you write a poem?
Well, that’s the beautiful thing. We are no longer shackled to the 15 line iambic pentameter, nor are we beholden to ends that rhyme. Poetry can be written in just about any form you can conceive. You can write it, you can rap it (rap=rhythm and poetry), you can sing it, you can paint it across a street in bold letters. There are no rules but one.
Poetry should be true to your soul.
It should never be half-way. It should fling open the shutters of your close-held heart and expose it to the light. Poetry should reflect the thoughts and the feelings, the commiseration and worry, the anger and peace, the joy or the sadness that fills your head and your community. The simplicity of a world rarely observed in detail. The shadows of what lingers in the memory of scents and phrases. The ignored, buried, and burned histories of forgotten and enslaved peoples.
When I think of poetry, I think of catharsis and a means to work through big and hard emotions (a girl’s favorite kind?) I think of finding meaning and perspective, shrinking down the large imposing impossibilities to moments I can do something with. To feelings I can direct towards change. I think of telling the truth, especially when it’s hard. I think of informing the world of a voice and perspective that once was silenced.
To write a poem is to be truthful about what hurts most in that moment. And what survives through the grit of human spirit.
I’m sure you can guess this week’s exercise. Write some poetry. In any form you want. Send it to me, let me know if you want it to have a little spot here on The Beautiful Stuff, or if you rather just share it with another soul. I don’t have a preference for form or length. Just get to the darkness, poke around in there, tickle the tender underbelly of what drives your biggest emotions and tug it out into the light.
If you’re looking for a group to join and a community to support you through the month with a light-hearted challenge, check out Writing Heights Writers Association Poetry Challenge (30 prompts, 30 days, Discord server check in, and a month free membership with WHWA: email newsletter@writingheights.com for more info, it’s okay to get a late start)
The week has been a full one with meetings and interviews, all manner of busy-making to keep myself…accountable? Distracted? In a false sense of purpose? Sometimes, in eras of encroaching depression, I find that making myself go through the motions is akin to treading water in the middle of the ocean. I’m not really getting anywhere, but I’m not sinking under either. All that to say, here’s some poetry. About quietness. And how loud it really can be.
In Quiet
the world is less complicated without the obligation of you
it is simple now in droning waves of sunshine and isn't that better?
no need to perk my ears to your words
no longer worrying my lips over where yours are residing
life is simpler here it's quiet like a ragged street in a forgotten city
trash caught in dead weeds and chainlink
its quiet like burnt olive carpet in funeral homes
ghosts of lilies blooming to fade in grief it's quiet
like a room with no children and a meadow with no breeze
silent like a catacomb stale and cold communion with death
I was trying to think up a topic today, within the sphere of writing, that might be new and interesting. It was then that I realized I like to fall back on my favorites. Character writing, dynamics of character interactions, emotion on the page, building tension. Or perhaps turn the microscope on myself and talk about burn out and creativity, progress without production, heart without hustle. But I feel a little bored with those topics and if you read my blog enough, you’ve probably read more than you wanted to.
So what do you write about when you’re toolkit feels a little… empty?
Well, maybe just that. I’ve long been at war with myself over the worthiness of a higher degree in the Literary Arts. Let me preface by saying in no uncertain terms: Every Degree You Get is Meaningful. Education is never a waste. And time spent learning and perfecting your art and voice and style is a worthy pursuit. But I have to add, that economically speaking, it doesn’t always give you an advantage. And…if you are at an economic disadvantage due to student loans, it can be harder to pursue a writing career.
So, what does a financially unstable writer do, when faced with the knowledge that she could certainly use a little more education and a freshening up of her skillset? Well, honestly, I could just rest on my laurels. I’ve published books and had work in different literary magazines. I’ve won some awards. I could argue I know enough.
But that would be short sighted and frankly pretty fucking egotistical. I don’t know everything. I could know more. I could experiment more. I could find a new mountain to climb, and shouldn’t we all? After all, what are we doing with this life if not learning? So, I’ll be looking for some affordable alternatives and, for any other writer who might be, like me, looking for a new challenge in their skills department, share some interesting options from down below.
Research new or unknown forms of poetry. This is my new favorite. I’m working on pantoums and cinquinta, and all kinds of weird little funness
Try an online course like MasterClass or a YouTube channel: Currently I’m taking Aaron Sorkin’s Screenwriting, and Roxanne Gay’s Writing for Social Change
Take a class or invest in a book, outside of your genre: I’m currently reading both a Screenplay book, and one called “Howdunit” all about how crimes are committed and solved.
Consider switching over to Fiction or Non-Fiction: whichever you don’t normally do
Attend a conference or workshop in your area: Despite the recent hubbub, (and it’s not in my area) I will be attending AWP with the hopes of taking some classes that can broaden both my poetic skill and my writing organization’s offerings.
Well, I hope those ideas have given you a little goose to the behind to get started on reclaiming your lifelong love of learning (or inspiring one if you lacked it).
I’ve been writing a lot of rage poetry and journal entries lately. It’s a method of processing, a safe space where my feelings won’t be chastised or be cautioned to calm down. To be told, with shrugs, that this is just the way it is. To be hounded with others’ convictions that I’m being the irrational one (or worse, the powerlessness, of ‘nothing can be done’). No wonder women go mad. No wonder we quit our jobs and our relationships in droves. I think someday we’ll all probably wander of the grid and go feral. I hope that someday our leaving destroys the grid completely. I hope ‘feral’ is a return to what we were always supposed to be. In ownership of our own bodies, part of an egalitarian community, taking care of the Earth that sustains us, protecting one another. I hope for this.
Today’s poem is part of a project I’m working on, tracing philosophically through the roots of my own rage, and the collective anger of my generation of women. Raised to believe we could be equal from a generation that was slowly learning it themselves. As such, this poem is an exploration and an ode to one of the most influential albums (and songs) of my teenage years. And to the seeds that she planted in my soul, that have found a fearsome bloom in current times.
The Jagged Little Pill (I can No Longer Swallow) (lyrical exploration of "All I Really Want" by Alanis Morissette)
All I really want is deliverance
from the maddening hold of the lesser sex’s self inflation
Do I stress you out?
to remind you that you came from a womb and still she chose to keep you even after all the repulsions she knew you would own and call power?
I am frightened by the corrupted ways of this land
when faced with pedophilic horrors and the butchering of innocence as if it were any other expendable resource men rape the land, why not us too? why not our daughters? our sons? we are fresh streams and teeming oceans gold mines and diamond fields all for the taking all for the discarding
Reel them in and spit them out
calm down there is nothing to be done let the broader shoulders shrug to end the matter
I am frustrated by your apathy
while you drink your martini and cast sunshine, between sips, that at least the stock market is finally up and I sit still, as prey praying in bushes might, cheap wine I feel guilty for and watch blood run in the gutters and remember my own, horrible 8-year-old truths while the news blares of babies being eaten or burned or buried by the ninth hole water hazard and sand trap thank fucking god the stock market is okay
the sound of pretenses falling
is louder to me but you were never listening anyway, were you? just for the sound of panties dropping be a good little girl for daddy sit on my lap and reassure me, I’m still a ‘nice guy’ right?
No.
I won't speak these lies any longer my lips have been sewn shut needles in and out the thread of anger trapping unsettled bees in my throat and handcuffed wrists bleeding as I fight against the radiator of the American Dream
why are you so petrified of silence?
does it make you hear the echoes of your own dissonance? A good man who still sometimes objectifies his high school students and calls it ‘American Beauty’
And all I really want is some peace a place to find a common ground
but we aren’t standing on even ground never was there equal footing from the day I spilled out of my mother my knees have been broken by the bat of masculine ‘protection’ my voice scalded with the shame this system gave me for a body that nature knew and named as more divine
A bit more Hallow’s Eve than New Year’s Eve…but this came from a poetry challenge a few years ago and I thought it was interesting.
Corvidae
Black oiled beauty needle claws to grip solid to my eye sockets no longer needed by me
I'd rather be your throne
and you can be my new eyes and continue on in this dark world light glinting and soul exposed in the off feather sheen and firelight behind your beaded eyes
ever higher, above the madness that ended me you will be my wings and I will be your resting stone your peaceful, calcified nest of respite
you will be my freedom from the fog of earth the stains of so many moments now rested in the dry and brittle grass
we are a pair dark wanderer above the grief of an impermanent world together in easy camaraderie until your bones rest atop mine
the world will go on, in wreck and ruin growing up through our silent jawed beaks until we are stones in the grass nothing and everything more
On this day you shouldn’t be checking your email. I hope, instead, you are watching holiday movies, and still in your pajamas, and drinking coffee, and finding joy, and calling your loved ones, and eating one more cinnamon roll, and picking up pieces of taped wrapping paper, stuck to the floor, and feeling…feeling…feeling, the light and warmth of the season. Feeling that you can finally settle down. Feeling that this is the day to rest and think about nothing in particular. I’m here with you.
On this day you might also be mourning, and seeped in a kind of loneliness that feel worse than on any other day. You may be trying to keep hurtful memories at bay, or separated and far from the people you love. You loved. Maybe this day you are begging for it to be swift and end quickly, because you cannot bear to be told to carry joy when pain is taking up all the space inside your chest. I’m here with you too.
And so, here’s a little poem, nothing your brain needs to work too hard at. Nothing as important as honoring where you are at, and being gentle to whatever is filling your heart. I am here with you.
Flight
a fallen feather is a piece of grounded soul aimless without a body to lift a reminder of once great heights no longer attainable
she is a sign from the gods that even the most perfect designs lose elemental fragments along the bumpy ride and every fragment shed is an updraft not caught
still, I think they’re pretty and I tuck them into books and pin them to walls and read in them messages in the timing of their arrival along my path on my right means yes, left is no even when a question hasn’t formed yet
maybe if I collect enough I can build my own wings someday maybe leave this place, a curtain of elemental fragments lost pieces of soul, to lift
Good morning. Wednesdays are what I affectionately call “Therapy Thunder Dome” (would have a better ring if it were “Therapy Thunder Dome Thursdays” but we work with what we have). So since my little peabrain will be too tired to blog well (as if my rested brain does it ‘well’) I’m recycling an old poem from a supposed former contributor. Here’s what I what once wrote:
“Today’s poetry comes to us from a former and continuing contributor to The Beautiful Stuff’s Poetry Anthology. Ms. Byrne has a knack for gripping the guts with her poetry and, as an almost graduated student at the University of Boulder, she is finding her way with a powerful voice in the world.
Elliana spends her days reading (sometimes for fun…most times for class), daydreaming, and writing. She studies English Lit and dabbles in short stories and poetry when possible. She enjoys life best curled up with a good book and her cat, Gil. You can read her work in last year’s anthology “No Small Things” (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1692331558/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1“
The truth is that I am Elliana Byrne. And I used the pen name because some of the poems I had written felt too visceral to put out into the world. But after having gone through this last year, I’ve realize life is nothing but visceral and I don’t have a problem trying to hide the gory truth of what it sometimes means to be human in all of our messy failings. So…please enjoy, and think about what masks you’ve worn, and if maybe, in light of these lives of ours being unbelievably short, if it’s time to take them off, and just be unapologetically you.
And now this:
Clean Slate
I want to wipe away the grievances of your skin and its heated strokes against mine and darken the unforgiving universes of your eyes that know and do not know me
But the treasonous mind casts wayward glances, over shoulders turned cold and the love and ache of wounds that should be healed over still echo in weakening heart beats
this disloyal heart casting out lines into currents that have battered the boards of my ship and sunk it deep, where it now lies desolate and quiet a tomb on the ocean floor waiting, in vain, for a tug of interest
treacherous and dissonant soul vibrating in time to the sound of yours even when the harmonic waves shake my teeth and dislodge my brain and seize my nerve endings
I will sit in this heavy deep and wait for reason or worse divinity to tell me how to clean you off by needle or by blade I will close my eyes, turn my back and huddle in to the shipwreck of me and cut lines until i bleed clean again
I don’t have much to say about this one. Today we’ll be in the hospital. Next week, a new world. In a month? Who knows. Every season feels like fall these day, minus the comfort of repose.
Confetti
Fall afternoon where asphalt splits the glory of some reticent nature apart and the contrived quaintness of our street twenty years-lived sits picturesque and soft
our voices are silent and our thoughts are loud and we are so alone, next to one another each a leaf fallen even as the confetti of mountain ash dances down like glitter the aftermath some big show we've just missed the end of a celebration we held no part in
Tomorrow we run more tests, tomorrow they measure you again to see the failure to thrive and the insistence of dying thin rather than living with anything over your bones but shivering skin
and the dark bark of trees reaches up to claw the blue skies and I hear you giggling from your stroller at the leaves of confetti just somewhere down our street
it echoes, this joy even as you stare sullen beside me, alone
Hey kids. My life has been a bit of a shipwreck these last couple of weeks. Transitions, seemingly impossible battles, lost luggage, and forgotten obligations. I am not feeling my best self, though I know I ought allow myself more grace for the days that are in a constant state of upheaval. So my grace today is in recycling an old poem. Because my mind is too on fire, and yet still disconnected, and I do not have the space for much else today.
My River
My river runs deep and walks shallow into the porous nature of bed-rocked layers the clay and sand and above to deer-perked ears silent hoof prints on banks sunk in
My river is the tumble of rock into sand and foamy puffs in swirling whirls quick eddies of frantic joy released and the unforgiving relentless call to keep moving
My river begs spotted trout slip through the icy fingers of its burbling caress wet swells against the willow banks and plays below the soft wings of mayflies dancing round poles of half-sunken timber
My river is the mirror a night of stars the giving dark splashed with milk and splattered with a forgiveness of perspective in light years of still thoughts and letting go things too far away, too long gone to be mine
My river is the blood hushing through veins the secrets in history the timeless genomes and photographs carrying ghosts with no remembered names but they have my eyes, the rise of cheekbone the propensity to carry all this grief in the generous swell of my hips
Sarah Reichert Author 