clarahsu – Page 18

To Play with a Poem

To understand the construct of a poem is to dive into the form and play with it. Like Leggos, take individual pieces, put them together. If the result doesn’t please you, pull them apart and rearrange.

The good thing about writing daily is that you accumulate lots of materials. Half-baked poems, one liners, singular words; they may be useful sooner or later.

Amy Clampitt in the Paris Review said she revised a poem up to twenty-six times. Mary Oliver: forty to fifty drafts. Did they save every scrap of revision? Were they counting? How did a poem emerge and change through all the manipulations? Was the sense of play always present?

“Word Play” by Jill Ault.

A Special Day

Special because Dore offered his creamy oatmeal in the morning. Special because there was a stream of birthday wishes on Facebook. Special because Jack Foley took me to one of his favorite haunts (Binh Minh Quan) in Oakland for lunch and prepared a “Clara Box” filled with poetry books. Special because Vern brought flowers. Special because Lawrence and his girlfriend Corrine drove two hours (stuck in traffic) from the East Bay to have dinner with me. Special because Julia wrote a poem: a poem of memories, of laughter and tears, of growing pains and love. It’s the most beautiful poem that a mother can have.

Birthday. What a concept!

What I Got at 55

Has time fled? Well, not quite. There were times when I thought it had stopped, that life would be the same every day. Those were the hard times.

I like motion. I like how time works on me.

It is fine to plod along. We all do that to some degree, dragging our tails behind. Some days are more gloomy than others, but it’s OK as long as I have faith that they will pass.

Jeanne Lupton and I talk about tragedy and comedy. Tragedy is egocentric, focusing on the misery of oneself. Whereas comedy allows us to see situations in a larger context. We have to be able to laugh, most importantly, at ourselves. For me, it does take some fifty odd years to get it.

Ghost Fire

Duncan was skinny and tall with long greasy hair parted in the middle. His face had an angry outburst of pimples, making it impossible for him to shave between the swellings. The girls said he was weird. I didn’t know what they meant.

Like most personalities, his sidekick was Crystal, eighth grade, short like a mouse beside Duncan. They went everywhere together. When big Mavis moved into the dormitory, she started hanging out with them too.

The trio, odd as they were, never excluded anyone who showed an interest in being their friend. It was toward the end of the school year when I felt comfortable enough to be in their company that I understood what others meant by “weird”.

They were talking about someone that Duncan didn’t like.

“We finally put him to sleep,” Duncan said as a matter of fact.

I didn’t understand “put him to sleep”.

“It means he killed him,” Mavis explained.

“How?”

“Voodoo,” Duncan looked at me darkly, “I put a curse on him.”

Crystal with his big wide eyes nodded vigorously , “Yeah, he really did.”

“OK,” I said. It sounded like the right response.

When I was very little I saw the pilot light for the first time and someone said it was ghost fire. It scared the hell out of me.

Dream Messenger

My sister-in-law dreamed of my mother, whom she had never met. She knew instantly it was her, dead over forty years ago, a young woman of 39. She said my mother watched me walked away, turned around and hugged her. My sister-in-law expected a cold body and icy breaths, as a ghost would have. But instead the feeling was warm and loving. She got scared nonetheless, and her knowledge of my mother pulled her back into consciousness.

Ghosts have not been successful in visiting me. There might be some kind of barrier between us.

“Was there a message?” I asked my sister-in-law.

“Only that she loves you,” was her reply.

Heart and Mind

There are books that appeal to the senses, that produce emotional responses. There are books that appeal to the intellect, that require thinking. Is one more satisfying than the other?

I remember reading and sobbing over every romantic novel written by the Taiwanese writer Chiung-Yao. She had a formula that worked—beautiful people tangled in heart-wrenchingly poetic circumstances— elevated romanticism for a generation of Chinese.

And then there were the classics, written in a language that was no longer spoken. The pride of having finished reading books such as “The Three Kingdom” and “Dream of the Red Chamber” was immense.

It all depends on need. I still pull out a tissue paper to dab my eyes when I re-read those Chiung-Yao romance. (She is the best). I dive into the classics when I think of China and the armchair my father bought me, where I sat reading well into the night.

Reading a Thunder Word

It was my luck, just when I summoned enough courage to read out loud a page of Finnegans Wake at the reading group, to come upon a “Thunder Word”: “Bladyughfoulmoecklenburg-whurawhorascortastrumpapornanennykocksapastippata-ppatupperstrippuckputtanach, eh? You have it alright.”

This particular word was made up of words that had to do with “whore”.

There were ten Thunder Words in the book, each one was made up of 100 letters, except the last word, which had 101 letters. The total number of letters added up to 1001—which reminded us of the continuous stories in the Arabian Nights.

I wonder if Scheherazade reads Finnegans Wake to her husband whether her head would be on a plate the next morning…

The Energy Booster

Nothing beats having a deadline to get things done. Not that I need incentive to work, but without the red light flashing things will just rest quietly under the pile and soon will be forgotten.

Under pressure, almost anything is possible. Where does the energy come from? All of a sudden the mind is clear and focused and action action action!

Sprinting toward the finishing line I often swore that it would be the last time I procrastinate. A friend advised, “To be on time is to arrive early.” It is definitely wisdom, but the mind seems to need an extra shot of adrenalin from time to time. There is better way to get that than to have a deadline.

Photo from Shutterstock.

Imprints

The first impressions of my son and daughter when they were born are imprints that will stay with me forever. Babies represent new hopes, a better me, a second and third chance to get things right. It takes years to undo that kind of thinking. I have come to understand that as soon as the umbilical cord is cut, the child is a separate being.

Sometimes when I look at my children (now 24 and 26 and much taller than me) I still see two helpless crying infants. It seems Mother Duck is following the ducklings instead of the other way around. Learning to let go and turn the gaze back on myself, I have to remind my father to do the same. His 55-year old daughter doesn’t want to tell him about all her coming and going. Parental love from a distance is good love.

“Two Roads Diverged, and I—“

Decision is almost always affected by emotion. No matter how much I say I want to do something, if there is no action it is because I don’t want to. Blame the inaction on everything—internal and external stress, health, natural disasters, end of the world, etc.. Somehow the heart dictates over the mind and makes up all kinds of reasons to justify it.

Someone said to me once, “If you’re late, apologize for being late. There is no need to give reasons.” To be responsible for my own action/inaction has got to be one of the hardest things to come to terms with.

Passion is required to get things done. And oh, there are so many responsibilities and chores that I’m not passionate about!

Quotation from the Road Not Taken, by Robert Frost.