E9 Poetry Antholgy post #1

Response to Marge Piercy's "The Spring Offensive of the Snail"

Living someplace else is wrong
in Jerusalem the golden
floating over New England smog,
above paper company forests,

deserted brick textile mills
square brooders on the rotten rivers,
developer-chewed mountains.

Living out of time is wrong.
The future drained us thin as paper.
We were tools scraping.
After the revolution
we would be good, love one another
and bake fruitcakes.
In the meantime eat your ulcer.

Living upside down is wrong,
roots in the air
mouths filled with sand.
Only what might be sang.
I cannot live crackling
with electric rage always.

The journey is too long
to run, cursing those
who can't keep up.

Give me your hand.
Talk quietly to everyone you meet.
It is going on.
We are moving again
with our houses on our backs.
This time we have to remember
to sing and make soup.
Pack the Kapital and the vitamin E,
the basil plant for the sill,
Apache tears you
picked up in the desert.

But remember to bury
all old quarrels
behind the garage for compost.
Forgive who insulted you.
Forgive yourself for being wrong.
You will do it again
for nothing living
resembles a straight line,
certainly not this journey
to and fro, zigzagging
you there and me here
making our own road onward
as the snail does.

Yes, for some time we might contemplate
not the tiger, not the eagle or grizzly
but the snail who always remembers
that wherever you find yourself eating
is home, the center
where you must make your love,
and wherever you wake up
is here, the right place to be
where we start again.

 Freedam, Mike. "Calmunist." Calmunist. N.p., 25 June 2008. Web. 14 Mar. 2015. http://calmunist.com/2008/06/spring-offensive-of-snail.html

The purpose of Marge Piercy's poem is to remind humans what we can learn from snails, such as how to slow down and appreciate the love we carry with us.  Like the snail after winter, I too feel "drained as thin as paper," while I wait for the "revolution" of spring (stanza 2).  In the cold and dark of winter, I've put off my exercising, and have replaced it with eating sugar and fat and sugar, and I make a promise, that once the spring revolution comes, I will transform into a beautiful size 6 butterfly who runs marathons daily.  But Marge Piercy's poem mocks this New-Year's-Resolution-type attitude, especially with the sarcasm in the lines, "After the revolution / we would be good, love one another / and bake fruitcakes." Here, "fruitcake" is a metaphor for the superficial improvements we attempt to make in our lives, while avoiding to make genuine changes. Who likes fruitcake anyway?  It's usually something you find in late January that was forgotten for Christmas, still wrapped and hidden in the closet. So you slice it up, and it sits, stale with its ruby red and green gems of "fruit" congealing into the Tupperware at the back of the fridge. And instead of truly reaching towards self-actualization, as the snail does with its innocent and slow life, humans would rather over-chew on their present worries, anxieties, and other stresses by "eat[ing]...ulcer[s]." I know that I am guilty of this, particularly with my procrastination and habits of complaining about things that aren't't going my way.  Thus, us humans have a lot to learn from snails, who already know "wherever you find yourself eating / is home, the center/ where you must make your love" (stanza 6). 

Ms. Utphall's Creative Writing Portfolio (2 prose, 1 poem)

Piece #1 After Cisneros' "Four Skinny Trees" (pp. 74-75) 

          She is the one who understands me.  One old, smooth lamp, chiseled and chipped and cratered in places. She’s been around for a while.  Even though she doesn't belong, she has made her place, always lingering nearby. Sometimes she hides.  But in time, I look back up and she is posed all sassy, her hands resting on her hips, her chest high and bright.  I barely catch her before she slinks away. She is that one hope, that one regret, the one last apology I will keep waiting for.

From my room I wake to her blazing--  her ghostliness as loud as metal. The rest of the house hiccups, then creaks itself back to sleep.

           But her reliability? That's something else. She keeps a schedule until the last minute.  Calendars and clocks don't confine her. Appointments she's made are easily broken, and for her in this instant, time and pleasure unlock.  She shines. She is both familiar and strange, like a an old friend you don’t understand much anymore.

She reaches down toward me in my bed, her gauzy skin streaming through my window, striping first the fields, then sidewalk, and finally my own wrinkled sheets. 

She can melt or simply vanish. She is fickle and righteous. She bosses around the tides. Even the sun can’t keep himself from her. She whispers to me. Her lips don't move, but I listen.

           When I am too tired and restless, when I am gray and lost in earth's static, that is when I want to look up and find her. And sometimes, when it’s already a perfectly clear day, blue and bright and annoying enough to give me a headache, there she is, an ashen blemish etched into the sky.  She who shines for no one but herself. She who beams but never just to please.  She whose only words: listen, listen, listen. 

Piece #2 "Where I'm From" after George Ella Lyon

I am from the sandy litter that sticks

to the linoleum and then

to the bottom of my  feet and 
wet whiskery kisses (don't bite!) at three a.m.

I am from the salt of the icy streets

the absurd cold

whose welcome wore out long before
lost memory of clear sidewalks.

I’m from the Knapp Hill and Wichita Falls,

potatoes served at every meal 
          and sometimes spicy chili.

From my granddad’s flat feet 
          and my mother’s worry,

and the insanity my father pleads to keep from going hungry.

I’m from TV dinners and thick bifocals.

I’m from Roald Dahl’s giant peach,

and Rowling’s School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

I’m from audio books and paperbacks

and pictures books and chapter books.
From fiction, biography, action and adventure, 
     and philosophy.
I'm from hard covers and library fines and

dog-eared corners and tissues marking the page

because just like food nourishes the body, 

stories nourish my soul.

I used to have an old saxophone.

Now, somewhere, she rests in a case, 
scattered with dry, brittle reeds,

in her a mausoleum of sound,
her growling blue notes muted and impatient.

I am from pieces that fit—

and pieces that strike against each other

to make fire, and warmth 
and destruction and memory. 



Piece #3 "My Name" after "My Name" by Sandra Cisneros 

     My mom lost. No, my father would not agree to name me Lucy. That was a name for a Peanuts character and later our first dog, a runty beagle who left warm yellow spots in each corner of the kitchen and who we eventually returned to the pound.  As a teenager, there were definitely times I wished I  could have been just as easily been returned and therefore freed from my family, but instead, my name has always shackled me, more so than most, to my father.  I hve received duplicates of his AARP cards in the mail since I was 19.
      But still, my mother argues,  JamieAnna, my full name, my true given birth-certificate certified two-part name staring with a 'J' is an homage to my granny, JimmyJoy.
   JimmyJoy grew up in Oklahoma, out of tumbleweed and dust, where she left behind an older sister, Wanda, for a secretary job in Texas. She shut the door behind her with only a suitcase and an itchy ring finger.
    And the story goes that the first of JimmyJoy's four marriages was maybe for love, or was it the second, to my mom's father, the handsome blind trumpet player? Definitely not the third, a scraggly drunk of a guy who sent a shotgun bullet into the headboard of the heirloom bedframe  my mom still sleeps under today.  And finally, my granny's final last name, froze on number 4, Content, the surname of a colonel. And today, at 88, Granny's just plain old granny and thank God husbandless, and she tells me that about marriage, you must be coldblooded.
     Today it's rare to find woman a woman carrying  two first names. You don't see any PollyAnnas or MaryBeths running business meetings or directing films. And over time and convenience, my own name's slimmed down  to  Jamie, and my full first name remains intimate, spoken to me only by cousins best known during childhood and of course, old grannies who know what I ought to be doing with my life. 

Response to "Rafaela Who Drinks Coconut & Papaya Juice on Tuesdays"

          In "Rafaela Who Drinks Coconut & Papaya Juice on Tuesdays" Esperanza describes in her childlike way her empathy for Rafaela, a victim of spousal abuse.  While Esperanza does not have the words for "abuse" or "domineering husband," she does notice that "Rafaela's husband comes home late...and  Rafaela, who is still young but getting old from leaning out the window so much, gets locked indoors because her husband is afraid Rafaela will run away since she is too beautiful to look at" (79).  This image of Rafaela leaning out the window, yearning for escape, reminds me of how Esperanza describes her great-grandma "look[ing] out the window her whole life, the way so many women sit with their sadness on an elbow" in the vignette "My Name" (11).  This connection shows that Esperanza notices women who are held prisoner in marriage, and perhaps indicates that Esperanza wishes for something different in her own future. 

          Another interesting element of this vignette is its allusion to the fairy tale Rapunzel.  Esperanza describes Rafaela "lean[ing] out the window and lean[ing] on her elbow and dreams her hair is like Rapunzel's. On the corner there is music from the bar, and Rafaela wishes she could go there and dance before she gets old" (79).  This connection to Rapunzel helps capture Esperanza's childlike voice and mind, but it also mixes fantasy with reality when Esperanza notices that Rafaela isn't allowed to even go out and dance. Even if Esperanza does not achieve her dream of owning her own house, I hope she does achieve her dream of living her life for herself.

Response to "Born Bad"

Actress Joan Crawford, 1935

          In the vignette "Born Bad," Esperanza captures her guilt, grief, and mourning for her Aunt Lupe who died from disease.  Esperanza begins the vignette, "Most likely I will go to hell and most likely I deserve to be there. My mother says I was born on an evil day and prays for me...because of what we did to Aunt Lupe" (58).  Esperanza then quickly jumps to describing the admiration she felt for her aunt when was healthy, "she was pretty like my mother. Dark. Good to look at. In her Joan Crawford dress and swimmer's legs," but then shifts to describe the impact of her sickness, "her legs bunched under the yellow sheets, the bones gone limp as worms. The yellow pill, the yellow smell, the bottles and the spoons." Esperanza continues to build this description and her connection with her aunt, and the reader is confused what Esperanza meant by "because of what we did," until she mentions "the game" (59).  The game seems to be an afternoon when the girls imitated their sick aunt while playing house: "It was a game we played every afternoon...you had to pick somebody...I don't know why we picked her. Maybe we were bored...tired. We liked my aunt. She listened to our stories (59-60).  To me, the girls were simply trying to understand her sickness through the game, similar to how children try to understand domesticity through 'playing house.' However, Esperanza becomes guilty with grief for playing the "game," which mixes with her sadness of her aunt's death: "We talked the way she talked, the way blind people talk without moving their head. we imitated the way you had to lift her head a little so she could drink water, she sucked it up slow out of a green tin cup...It was easy" (61). From an adult's perspective, it's easy to call what the girls did in imitating their sick aunt disrespectful or cruel, but as children simply playing, I think they were honoring Aunt Lupe's life even in sickness, when many others had probably already considered her dead.