The last time I was part of a solid, consistent group of writers was high school. Every Friday, my classmates and I would sit across from each other at a long, wide table in a long, narrow room at the edge of our red brick building in the Marigny, and we'd "workshop" each other's pieces. Workshop wasn't always fun. In fact, it was very often not fun. People's feelings would get hurt (I cried at least once) or boredom would stall the conversation. But every now and again, something ended up in our workshop packets that got us really excited.
I remember this girl who was in my class my senior year. Her name was Hallie, I think. She had this incredible voice and gift for imagery, and one time, she wrote a story in which the protagonist--a human--was molting. As he went about his normal day, his skin was literally peeling off. I'm sure there was more to it than that--I don't think it'd stick out so much in my memory were it a poorly executed premise--but I just remember being really jealous that she'd written the story. It was so good. I wanted to have written it.
Poetry was more my thing. For my final portfolio (our "thesis"), I requested an exception to the rule that both poetry and fiction had to be present among our work. I was (am) pretty insecure about my fiction writing, and I didn't have much in the way of options for something to include that I was really proud of. I'd found my niche as a narrative poet, and I wanted to keep fiction out of it.
It took me a while to get to the narrative poetry thing. When I started out in the writing program, most of my work was really long stories and really short poems. While I'm all for detail in fiction and efficient word choice in all writing, it was just inexperience at the core of my verbosity--or lack thereof. Over time, I started to realize that I loved to tell stories, but that my stories were better suited to the construct of a poem. They were more like short glimpses into the lives of others. Fiction required too much fore-thought and too much detail. I wanted it shorter. I wanted to reveal moments, not develop plots.
Our workshops were usually conducted by the class and one or more of the teachers, but occasionally, the staff would invite a local writer to come and lead the discussion. And the most dreaded guest workshopper of all was a wrinkly, old professor at Tulane named Peter Cooley. [I just googled him. Apparently, he's been appointed Louisiana's newest poet laureate. His pictures also make him look significantly less intimidating (or old) than I remember.] Anyway, this guy was brutal around that long rectangular table. He would, without fail, rip our poem to shreds every time he came. Nothing was ever good enough. We'd walk up to class on those days, saying "Well, get ready to be told how bad your poem is." We admitted defeat before he ever opened his mouth.
Except one day, that changed.
One day, I submitted the following poem for workshop (in a slightly less-revised form):
Captive
Passing through these halls,
we pull our collars closer
as winter streams in
through the corner vent.
On the white walls, shadows
seem more like reflections:
park benches on either side
of the hall, grass carpet.
Fluorescent tubes in lines above us,
hung close to the ceiling, hidden
behind blue glass;
they dim with dusk.
We whisper of home, the things
outside these halls, only loud enough
for the next ear to hear,
the next person
to remember the sundial,
draped in moss, the birds
framed by windowpanes, leaves,
whistling among themselves.
We walk closer for warmth,
straighten our scarves
in the mirroring walls.
And he loved it. I mean, loved it. For the first time ever, he said good things about a poem. My poem.
On break, everyone was talking about it and congratulating me. Oh my gosh, he liked your poem! I cannot believe it! We were floored. It had just never happened before. No one expected it would ever happen. We just assumed he was a mean old man who didn't like anything but his own poetry.
After the workshop was over, or maybe it was the next time he saw me, he gave me a signed copy of one of his books with a personal note that said something like "Your poem held me 'captive.'" I mean, it was a big deal. I might've slept next to that book that night.
The truth is, it's probably not even the best poem I've ever written, though I certainly found a knack for weird, slightly fantastic/science-fiction-y type poems. Here's another one the same Peter Cooley really liked, which--again--left everyone speechless.
Fountain Of
Then I left and went to that unmarked town,
without a name or place on the torn map
in my hands, past the metropolitan archipelago,
where one small shop is always closed
and locked, blinds drawn.
At night, bands of light seep through the venetian slats,
forming lines on the sidewalk like paper,
streaking faces with age.
I went to see for myself the Spaniards’
mistake, the bands and blinds
and paint above the door: Fountain of,
faded, unfinished, or washed away.
My body slunk down as the sun slid out of sight
and the light began to burn folds in the darkness.
The streets were empty, but the rays staggered
on the pavement, company enough for me
in the chilled night.
I stopped before the windows,
my chest singed by the latitudes of light running across.
That was enough for me, enough
that the age flooded my body like a sudden
storm surge, wind whipping water up
and throwing it down.
I went there and saw it and left,
told no one but the margins of my books,
thick and old. I took
to staring
at the thin men on the morning train,
their hands sunken and wrinkled,
like my face, a mirror of sagging skin.
But my favorite poem from that writing program was penned near the end of my senior year of high school. I had just finished a year-long independent study on Flannery O'Connor, and I wanted to write something as a nod to the time I'd spent in her figurative company. This is the poem of which I am most proud. Not necessarily because it's the best poem I've ever written (though these three are definitely in the top ten...considering that they are three of the only ten poems I still have a copy of). But because it was a summation of my senior year: plane trips to colleges, home-sickness, transition, uncertainty, Flannery.
Flight Home
The plane taxis toward the runway,
red and green wing-lights blinking
against the paling sky.
This flight takes me to a place
where the pea chickens pecked away
at the fig trees and my clothes
like the goats in the backyard,
between the barn and the field,
grinding hay between their teeth;
where the house leaned to one side
and the woods filled with shrieks,
each night, of cocks and hens, perched.
Will it all be the same when I return:
the peacock feathers scattered across the lawn,
white paint peeling off the fence?
My ears pop and the stinging ring
of the dinner bell sings through my head,
pressure building up between my eyes.
I stretch out my jaw, hear its click
like the door unlocking when I last left,
the dull resounding of the gate as it closed behind me.
No one sits on either side of me, and I can’t see
the ground below, the square fields of brown
and green, cars passing one another
on the road; or the aisle to its end,
attendants leaning against the wall.
The seatbelt sign flashes off,
but I keep my belt buckled tight.
I pull it tighter.
It wasn't until I started this month of writing--complete with emails to and from some of my favorite people and writers--that I realized how much I missed the Friday afternoons I spent in that half-lit room. It wasn't all sunshine and butterflies (none of that, actually--we were very serious teenage writers, after all), but it was community. And everything is better with community.
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