Click here to skip the preamble and jump straight to the sestina.
Ah, poetry. How do you guys feel about it? Let’s discuss.
Typically, I do not write poetry. For several reasons. The first being that fiction is simply more fun for me, both to read and to write. Probably I should try to get more into poetry, because as a busy mom it’s hard to find time to write whole novels anymore, and it’d be easier to focus on one single poem at a time. (Long ago, on day one of poetry 101 at my liberal arts college, the professor told our class that she used to be a novelist until she had kids – then she became a poet.) But fiction is just so much more fun, isn’t it?
The second reason being that poetry is so much easier to fail at – and the failure, vastly much more embarrassing. Mediocre prose is embarrassing, but easier to get away with if you have moments where it’s good. You can still salvage it. In poetry, one weak moment makes the whole thing shit.
And poetry as a medium is so much more honest and raw, like, there’s nowhere to hide, in poetry, so if you do it poorly, it’s just mortifying. Sharing a bad poem is like if you tried to sing a beautiful ballad but ended up just forcing everyone to watch you ugly-cry alone in the spotlight. If you were trying to act flirty and alluring for someone, and then farted. Just horrifying.
When I do read poetry, I prefer, with few exceptions, older poems – the kind with distinct rhyme, meter, and/or form. My all-time favorites are “Heaven-Haven” by Gerard Manley Hopkins and, of course, “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” by William Butler Yeats. Also a big fan of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
Generally, I have found that I really struggle to connect with the contemporary style of free verse – it just doesn’t make sense to me, unless it’s rhythmic enough to get stuck in your head like a catchy tune. (See: “Blue Poles” by Inger Christensen, “O Cheese” by Donald Hall.)
I dunno. Most poetry these days reads to me like prose with a bunch of arbitrary line breaks and a flippant disregard of basic grammar:
I went
to the grocery
Store
I needed to buy
oranges, but
they were
Out
of oranges, and so I
bought
Clementines
… this is how it sounds to me, lol. No offense to any free verse poets reading this! You guys clearly have a poetic sensibility that I’m lacking, is what I’m trying to say.
I guess I’m a very primitive and basic type of person. A cavewoman. I don’t care for all this artsy, highfalutin stuff. I like things that feel good in my body, and/or that make me go “oooh! neat!”
(And the truth is, I used to write free verse myself, back in my teens and early twenties – just pages of emotional vomit punctuated by a bunch of arbitrary line breaks that I thought made it sound “cool” and “artistic.” Then I realized how bad it was, and stopped writing it. Maybe that’s why I’m so allergic to this style of poetry – even the good stuff gives me secondhand embarrassment for the poet, because it reminds me of the embarrassing trash that I wrote when I was an angsty teen.)
Structure feels safer. Poetic form forgives a multitude of sins, imo, and it’s harder to be cringey if you’re following a set of preexisting rules. For the last thirteen-plus years, the only poems that I have written have been sestinas, and the occasional sonnet. I especially love sestinas. Was introduced to them in the aforementioned poetry class in college, and fell in love, and never looked back.
I don’t think I’m that great at them or anything, but they sure are fun, kind of like a little word puzzle — very addictive. I used to write one a week, back in the days of MiTHology 2.0, as you may remember. I just love them! It’s so cool to see how all the pieces fit together. It makes my idiot brain go “oooh, neat!”.
I don’t write them much anymore, but below you will find my most recent one. Full disclosure, I actually wrote this one in hopes of submitting it to a certain beautiful, esteemable journal of Catholic poetry. “It’s a journal for Catholic poems,” I thought – “how could this not be a good fit!” However, upon further digging, I learned that this journal does not want “devotional/inspirational” poems.
Huh. Okay. Well, I honestly don’t even think mine counts as “devotional” or “inspirational” … but, it does express awe and wonder at the Divine, in an overtly Catholic way, so, hmm… just to be sure, I went and looked at the kind of stuff they publish, to see if mine would fit well there.
And guess what. It was all, without exception, free verse. None of it made sense to me at all. Just, whoosh!, right over my head. Waves of secondhand embarrassment, and flashbacks to eighth grade. Plus none of it was actually explicitly Catholic. Too much subtlety for me!
All of which led me to believe that this little thing I made would not be a good fit for that particular publication. As usual, my stuff doesn’t quite fit anywhere. Womp womp.
So I’m putting it here, because frankly I spent a good amount of mental energy on it, and don’t want that to go to waste. I suppose I could have gone ahead and submitted it just in case, but to be honest with you, I recently received a form rejection on a novel manuscript from a different Catholic publisher, and I’m just not feeling resilient enough for another rejection right now. So, whatever. At risk of looking like I’m ugly-crying in the spotlight, or farting while flirting, I’m putting this thing here, on my little personal blog, for you to see. Hey, at least here no editor can reject me! Without further ado.
The Presentation: a mom prays the fourth joyful mystery
Nothing that was yours was really yours.
Some basic clothes, perhaps – really, nothing.
The consecrated virgin knows no “mine”
except whatever modest food she’s given
and space to live, though you never did belong –
a misfit among sinners, too like the Father,
to Whom so young by your mother and father
you were presented: your parents, no longer yours
now. In the temple, heaven's shadow, you belonged
from infancy, gentle hands holding nothing
but other hands, and prayers, all freely given
to God Who looked with love and called you Mine.
But didn't you ever desire something “mine”?
Was your pure heart ever tempted to ask the Father
because if you had asked He'd surely give
His favorite daughter one thing to be yours?
Or was the gift the clarity of nothing?
And was the home the nowhere-to-belong?
And then there's me. For years I longed and longed
and then, at last, she came, and she was mine
my very own, my treasure, as no thing
could be, even more mine than her father's.
How gravity and the flesh resist the “Yours”,
resent returning to Him what He has given.
Thy will be done, but still, please let me give
them everything on earth, for they belong
to me. Are me. The soul admits they're Yours
but all the while the flesh screams mine, mine, mine,
surrenders, then pulls them back – not yet, Father.
The last truth is that I will yield nothing.
But, a poor and simple girl possessed nothing
until the perfect Son Who was given
to her only, not even an earthly father
to share him with. At last: something belonged
to you. You could have said, This precious one is Mine
the Alpha and the Omega, entirely yours.
But from your Heavenly Father you withheld nothing.
“Here He is,” all yours, to Him freely given
to Whom He belonged, and Whom you could have called “mine.”
