The Virtues of Verse

When I was in grade school, poetry was one of my favorite forms of literature. Ever since reading Emily Dickinson’s “Hope” is the thing with feathers years ago, her name has stuck in my memory. I devoured Edgar Allen Poe’s The Raven and committed Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Swing to memory. These three, along with Robert Frost, Shel Silverstein, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, enchanted me with their words. Something about the language and rhythm of these poets’ works captured my heart. When I saw Dickinson’s name listed as the author of 377 (949), which is titled Under the Light, yet under, it was like coming home. After reading many poems previously unfamiliar to me, the ease of Dickinson’s verses and meter greeted me like an old friend.

It is easy to read Under the lights, yet under aloud. Other poems I have read have had such varied lengths of line that it was difficult to keep the constant beat I enjoy in poetry. With this poem, Dickinson stuck to a fairly uniform number of syllables for each line. In the first and third stanza, the number of syllables per line goes seven, seven, seven, six. Stanzas two and four are a bit more varied (six, five, six, five and seven, six, eight, seven respectively), but still easily read together. For me, Dickinson’s consistency makes it easier to move past deciphering the rhythm and into comprehension of the meaning of her poem.

The overall tone of Under the light, yet under is gloomy. In the first stanza, Dickinson gives a sense of claustrophobia: “Under the Light,…the Grass and the Dirt,…the Beetle’s Cellar…the Clover’s Root.” When reading those lines, I feel buried deep, almost suffocating. She contrasted this subterranean feeling with one of soaring, light as a feather into clouds. “Over the Light,…the Arc of the Bird,…the Comet’s chimney…the Cubit’s Head.” This juxtaposition, coupled with the final line of the poem “Between Ourselves and the Dead!” evokes the image of a grave and heaven.

After someone dies, the distance between his or her spirit and us seems to be the most hopeless emotional chasm to cross.  Death is irreversible, cold and unfeeling, leaving those still alive to mourn the loss alone. The body of the deceased is buried under the earth in a grave; his or her spirit is above, watching over us from heaven. Both are out of reach no matter how hard we try. 

Remember to "Let Yourself Write"

What is it about a blank page that zaps any coherent thoughts once floating about in my head, turning them into fog and fluff? Julia Cameron hits the nail on the head in an excerpt from her book, The Right to Write; as she says, “the blank page creates a sense of seriousness.…We forget the term ‘rough draft’ and want everything to emerge as well-polished gems.” I have struggled with this for a long time; writing always seems to draw out the perfectionist side of me. Cameron stresses that writing is not intended as a cause of stress. It should give us joy, not be the means “to self-doubt, to self-scrutiny in the place of self-expression.”

According to Cameron, we were all born with the ability to write well, savoring the power of words. However, academic aspects of writing crush this spirit in many of us. The second an English paper is assigned there is a collective groan. With a specific audience in mind, it is important to watch the sneaky semi-colon and ellipses to make sure they do not find a way into the middle of a sentence. Suddenly every sentence fragment is glaring up from the paper, nearly shouting, “I’m missing my subject!” Or, “Where’s the verb?” When confronted with paper, it is sometimes difficult to remember what the difference is between “there” and “their” or whether “i” comes before or after “e” when following a “c”. Before academia, it did not matter whether everybody ate grandma (“Let us eat grandma!”) because a pesky comma went missing. Now the pressure is on to save all the grandmas out there: “Let us eat, grandma!”

Papers returned with red marks all over ruin the pride felt at completing an assignment. Instead, it becomes important to follow the many confusing grammar rules to a T, follow standard Modern Language Association (MLA) formatting, and keep that oh-so-important 4.0 grade point average. This squelches the creativity out of students and soon they replace belief in themselves with the belief that writing is painful and impossible. “As a result, most of us try to write too carefully. We try to do it ‘right.’ We try to sound smart.” This is the problem: it is impossible to write well when trying too hard. It just does not flow. The title of Cameron’s second chapter says it all: “Let Yourself Write.”

This short phrase is, for me, the best advice Cameron gives on the subject of writing. The times when I force myself to let go and just write are when some of my best pieces of work result. My freshman year of high school, I had this one teacher who assigned journal prompts each week. She would set us strict time limits for each of three prompts, usually ten, fifteen, and twenty minutes. In so little time, I had to keep writing constantly to complete the prompt. Ever since then, I have tried to apply similar time constraints to my academic writing. When I stick to these time limits, it is always much easier to write. I suddenly have to get something down on paper and the spontaneity produces more interesting work, without the stress usually associated with a paper.

Well, I actually let myself free write, conquering the blank page. And I must admit, it feels pretty good. 

Poetry: Expressively Equivocal

Poetry is one of the equivocal forms of writing, yet also one of the most expressive. When reading poetry, it is often hard to draw a poet’s meaning from his words. Each line can be interpreted in so many ways. It takes many read-throughs to fully comprehend the genius of a poem’s language and imagery, and the impeccable details within. But once those are grasped, poems show a depth of expression which other genres are unable to portray.

The title of the poem Lens immediately caught my eye; it led me to the conclusion that the author, Reginald Shepherd, was describing the lens of a camera. The first time reading it through, it did not make any sense to me.  What does the phrase “where the blue meets blue, where sky meets the sky” have to do with photography?

Once I examined the language of the poem more thoroughly, the “lens” being described seemed to be not that of a camera, but the lens of a human’s eye. With this definition of the word, the poem took on a new meaning for me. It told the all too familiar story of love and heartbreak. The blue meeting blue suddenly appeared in my mind as two blue-eyed people, looking into each other’s eyes, each hiding things: conflicted feelings and tears.

Many of the other poems in the packet were equally as hard to read and the meanings of them remain elusive. The part of me that is hanging on to grammar rules is irritated by the lack of punctuation and capitalization, the run-on sentences and odd word usage. By far the most difficult part of reading poetry is the creative words choice. It is hard to get my mind past the common meaning of a word and embrace the more unusual definition. One such example was the word “summer” in Lens. I could not make sense of the line “where silence becomes summer, there where summer wouldn’t wait” until I discovered “summer” can also be defined as a period of maturing powers. Despite poetry’s ambiguity, it is still a beautiful style of communication.

Elements of Writing

Being an avid reader has enabled me to recognize well-written works. However, I do not know the qualities that define “good writing.” For most of my life, if anyone asked me about liking writing, my answer would have been an emphatic “no.” From a young age, I enjoyed writing poetry; I would come up with a sudden inspiration and soon would have a stanza of a poem mentally jotted down. However, I never considered this “writing.” It was always fun and rarely for school. When I was in eighth grade, I reconnected with a friend of mine who is an enthusiastic creative writer. It did not take me long to catch the writing bug once she suggested co-writing a fiction series. It was at that moment my love of creative writing was born.

We attended a local summer camp on Eastern Michigan University’s campus, called Inkstains. It is a camp designed to help young writers flourish in their creative talents. This camp provided me with a spark for writing, but in a one-week session, it is difficult to capture the essence of creative writing. I have never taken a formal creative writing course and still have many questions. What elements are crucial to a riveting story? How is it possible to capture a reader’s attention in one sentence? How does a writer add unexpected plot twists? What causes a piece to evoke a vivid image or emotion in a reader’s mind? What are the many different rhythms, meters, and scansions of poems?

While I am not as experienced in poetry and creating a well-written story, I have a thorough background in prose. I have taken three composition courses in high school, each of which introduced me to new aspects of the written language. I thought academic writing would be tedious, but in those classes, I discovered that there is room for interpretation and creativity in even a standard, 5-paragraph essay. From that first moment of realization, I have ceased dreading a formal paper; instead, I challenge myself to try and make it enjoyable while still fulfilling the assignment. While I do not prefer prose to poetry or vice versa, I believe the element of creative writing is my passion.

Howdy!

Hello everyone! My name is Shelby Lubienski. I am seventeen and have many (too many) interests; it always seems as though there is not enough time in a day for all of them. Outside of school, I enjoy swing and Irish dance, snowboarding, sleeping, reading, playing with my dog (a border collie mix named Kayley), and watching all the latest episodes of ABC's show, Castle. In school, it is a toss-up between science, math, and English as far as which would be labeled my “favorite subject.” I seem to enjoy them all for different reasons. While I am undeclared, I am leaning towards a major in some field of science (possibly meteorology). Between school and extracurricular, I could really use a 48-hour day! ;) I am looking forward to class this semester and meeting you all!