The Everything Writing Poetry Book (32 page)

I'm drifting in the clouds racing past
the blue square and red stripes,
maple and sycamore leaves like flames swirling our feet.
It's eighth grade again, that fall rainy afternoon
when Jesse Gallegos and I sit in social studies,
the teacher flexing against us asked,
“Who can tell us about Mexicans in California?”
Then he points a finger like a gun at Jesse
and pops, “And I don't want to hear from you.”
We sit through the timelines that look like arrows,
lame talk of missions, of land grants, of Mexican
cowboys
—vaqueros,
Jesse whispers—our
history the moments of conquest.
These weren't the Mexicans I knew
.

Reprinted with the permission of the author
.

To write a personal history like the one in Knorr's poem, take a look at two cultures that are living side by side. What tensions exist between them? How have those tensions surfaced in the community? What personal involvement have you had in those tensions? Write out your answers to these questions in as much detail as you can before working with a poetic form.

Traditions

Another way to look at culture is through the traditions you carry forth within your family, community, or nation. Comparing the different holidays that separate countries celebrate is one way to look at traditions. For example, though England, Canada, and America are all English-speaking countries, they don't all celebrate the same holidays. England and Canada celebrate Boxing Day on December 26, and Americans don't celebrate it at all. Similarly, Americans celebrate Thanksgiving in November, but Canadians celebrate it in October.

One idea for a poem would be to research one of these different holidays to find out why it is celebrated. For example, have you ever heard of Guy Fawkes Day? This is an actual holiday celebrated every year in England on November 5. You could write a poem about the man, the events surrounding his life, and the traditional celebrations held in his memory.

Another idea would be to look at how one of your own celebrations has changed over the years. For example, if you have seen the movie
Meet Me in St. Louis
, you may remember that on Halloween, the children don't go trick-or-treating. Instead, they build bonfires and play pranks all through the town. Do you celebrate this holiday differently? Likewise, does your family do something unique to celebrate a certain holiday or people's birthdays? Use these special details to create an interesting poem.

Traditions at Home

Home life is filled with traditions that would make interesting topics for poems, too. For instance, your mother may always use the best china, silver, and linen for Sunday dinner. Perhaps your family vacations at a secluded beach every August. Or maybe your father and uncle go deer hunting every winter. If you don't know the reasons and stories behind these events, ask! These are the details that will add color to your poetry.

Once you have learned the details about a particular family tradition, write a poem about it. Perhaps your mother uses the fine dinnerware on Sundays to continue her own mother's tradition. Maybe your mother and father choose the same beach each year because it is the place where they spent their honeymoon. And your father and uncle might hunt every year because their father took them hunting when they were younger.

War and Warriors

Unfortunately, as long as there have been cultures, there have been wars. And as long as there have been wars, writers have written about them. Nearly 2,500 years ago, Aeschylus, in his play
Agamemnon
, portrayed the joy one soldier felt upon his return home from the Trojan War. He also described the harsh conditions under which the common soldiers lived. If you have fought in a war or lived through wartime, you probably have a wealth of memories charged with strong emotion and imagery.

The Honor of Fighting

Many poets over the centuries have written about the honor of fighting well, even if it leads to the death of the warrior. Alfred, Lord Tennyson's famous poem “The Charge of the Light Brigade” describes the charge of 600 horsemen armed with sabers into a position defended by guns and cannon. Many of the horsemen fell, but Tennyson emphasizes the glory, not the slaughter, in the last stanza of this poem:

When can their glory fade?
o the wild charge they made!
    All the world wonder'd.
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the Light Brigade,
    Noble six hundred!

The Horror of War

Wilfred Owen, a soldier in World War I, described war differently from Tennyson in his poem “Dulce et Decorum Est.” Note the detail with which he portrays the weariness and the raggedness of the retreating men. Note also how the scene changes when the gas explodes in their ranks:

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind
.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime…
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning
.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning
.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitteras the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
¹

1
It is sweet and fitting to die for one's country

Whatever your judgment of war, you cannot simply state your opinion in your poetry. The result will be passionate but not necessarily poetic. If you have personal experiences to draw from, then do so. Like Tennyson and Owen, you must find details that re-create the experience for your reader.

The Subject of Faith

Faith is another strong part of many cultures. Over the centuries, poets have created countless verses in honor and praise of their deities. Whether in supplication, prayer, or reflection, many have centered their poetry on the heavenly being they feel guides their lives. The speakers of these poems have usually encountered a challenge or problem in their lives that they cannot overcome alone. This is the point at which they turn to faith.

Communication

George Herbert's poem “Easter Wings” is one such poem that deals with faith. Because the speaker feels unworthy of God's love and attention, he asks for God's help. Note the form of the poem, which was originally printed sideways to look like a pair of wings:

Lord, who createdst man in wealth and stor,
Though foolishly he lost the same,
Decaying more and more,
Till he became
Most poore:
With thee
o let me rise
As larks, harmoniously,
And sing this day thy victories:
Then shall the fall further the flight in me
.

My tender age in sorrow did beginne:
And still with sicknesses and shame
Thou didst so punish sinne,
That I became
Most thinne.
With thee
Let me combine,
And feel this day thy victorie:
For, if I imp my wing on thine,
Affliction shall advance the flight in me
.

Searching

Some poets and mystics aren't content to pray or meditate to talk to God. Many will go on a quest to seek their deities. The poems that result can be narratives in the form of a quest, they can be lyrics that describe how the writer feels when he or she finds God, or they can be desperate searches for reasons for their failure.

Two symbols that will appear frequently in poems about faith are the mountain and the tree. Sometimes a related image will appear—a ladder, a rope, a stair, a pole, a column—but these derive from the two main symbols. The mountain and the tree represent a pathway between cosmic zones—upper, middle, and lower—that the mystic travels. The journey on the path is always dangerous, with many obstacles and forces bent on turning him or her back.

A very famous poem of the Middle Ages, Dante Alighieris
The Divine Comedy
, features a hero who veers from the pathway to heaven. When he tries to climb the Mount of Joy, three beasts chase him away. He is then forced to travel a longer mountain route through hell and purgatory to reach his final destination. Echoes of the mountain and the tree appear in many secular works, too. The images, however, are derived from the spiritual journeys that gave them birth.

Visions and Spirits

Praying to or otherwise communicating with a deity is not the only way to experience the realms of faith and belief in poetry. Some poems are filled with very spiritual moments that do not involve God at all. Perhaps you will see something so wonderful and awe-inspiring that the vision takes on the feeling of a religious experience. The speaker of your poem can impart this experience to your reader.

The Fantastic

A famous visionary poem, Samuel Taylor Coleridge's “Kubla Khan,” borrows the name of the Mongol emperor and describes a fantastic pleasure-dome. Coleridge's poem seems to be about the imagination itself. The imagination gives rise to amazing constructs like the pleasure-dome, but like the river, it can disappear again, taking inspiration with it.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
    Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And here were gardens bright with sinuous rills
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery
.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! As holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced;
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
    The shadow of the dome of pleasure
    Floated midway on the waves:
    Where was heard the mingled measure
    From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!