The Anxiety of Words

A Handmade Holiday Ornament By Me

I'm having flashbacks to my detested college literature course where, when reading poetry or a story, "the blue room" always had to have a deeper, more symbolic meaning than simply, "the blue room", and ruminating on why poetry, in particular, opens up a chasm of fears and anxiety? Why do some of us have a mental poetry block and just don't get it? What is so terrifying about writing it and reading it?

My first thoughts are that there is immense pressure after reading poetry to have brilliant insights into the imagery and historical content of the piece. Picture yourself in a modern art museum, where all the paintings look like blobs or scribbles, and everyone is saying how meaningful it is, but all you see are oily spots and random lines. When you study poetry in school, the professor inevitably expects a complex analysis of even the shortest works. It is easier to just avoid it, to hide from the joys of words as a self-protection mechanism. No one wants to be the dolt in the room, without a clue to the supposed deeper meaning of the lines.

When it comes to writing poetry, again, many people just don't do it because it invokes a nervousness of exposing oneself, even if the poem is purely imaginary. We think everyone will ready into the poem autobiographically, and even if it is abundantly clear the work is not based on personal experience; it is difficult to express the awe of nature, the power of lust, or worry of spiritual matters without getting too emotional ourselves. Some find themselves intimated by form and lost in how to convey a message, when it must be chopped up and compressed into a neat block where everything rhymes. Others are paralyzed by a blank page that demands to be filled up with something amazing.

Today's poem is a memory of a real life trip I took to the Canadian Rockies in high school. It might not be Robert Frost, but I found it therapeutic to contemplate the cycle of nature and something larger than myself. Fear not if you "don't get" poetry and try and read with the expectation of nothing other than enjoying the words.

On Sulfur Mountain

By Clare Corcoran

Wild goat darts from granite crag,
weaving through scrub pine, distant
the echo-ripple of cloven hooves
strikes a rocky ledge. Windblown
and bleating, wizened, paused-
for this moment, graybeard and swayback,
eyes wide and bullying the wind,
owner of a naked outcrop, staring down,
alone, where August snow falls silent.

Drowning in the Cascade air, soil
and ceadarmoss linger on the tongue-
the taste of felled logs rotting, forgotten.
Goat hooves clack and break the trance
of purple twilight dawning.
Cold moon rising, rough chasms glow
as silver moonlight filters, diffuse,
where cries of wild hooves echo
through a midnight summer snow.

A Winter Original Poem

What The Holidays Are Not About

This morning I snapped this photo of my neighbor's holiday decorations. It reminded me of my vow to not shop on Thanksgiving and not to buy any plastic crap this holiday season. Cherish your loved ones and support local and independent businesses, where you know your purchases will help families stay home and celebrate, versus slaving in corporate stores so we can consume more things made in China. The poem I am sharing today was written by me in college, about 12 years ago. It is pure fiction, as my grandma passed when I was very small, but it is one I enjoy and I hope you do, too. 

Midnight at Whitefish Dunes

By Clare Corcoran

Grandma brought me to the beach to meet the sky.
To become intimate with the stars, we drove away
from glare of city lights across frozen farms,
me wedged tight between my mother and her mother,

with Daddy's telescope in the backseat. The Leonid's
should be spectacular tonight, Grandma declared,
and knowing that I didn't know, Momma whispered low,
that's a meteor shower, shooting stars across the

snow. We unfurled the tripod on the frozen sand,
and I watched Grandma's bony hand pointing above
Michigan's shore, her small body shivering with
each static trail sparking from January sky.

We stood there, three silent generations, sipping
hot cider from steel thermos and listening as
stars crashed into waves, where heavens met water.
I said that I wished that Grandpa was here, but

Grandma took my small hand in her withered palm
and we reached out together in the starflare night,
with the texture of lake wind in our noses. A meteor
exploded, the brightest one yet, she squeezed my hand

and answered, He is still here with us, tonight.

The Art Form of the Twentieth Century

Shortly after my dad died last week, the phone rang. My mother answered and I could hear muffled crying coming from the device, mingled with an outburst of passionate words. That was my father's longtime friend, Dan, who had written a poem in honor of his passing and was reading it to my mother. Today, I would like to share with you this poem, written about my father when he was a young, and sometimes arrogant man. Thank you, Dan, for commemorating my Dad in poetry.

Tom Brooker and The Art Form of the Twentieth Century

By Dan Dahlquist

The occasional poem, usually weak as it is well-

intentioned, will not do, Tom, on this, the occasion

of your death three days ago from an abdominal

aortic aneurysm, but I must say something

to you, Tom, to you.

We met some forty-seven years ago, in Carbondale,

Illinois, a town homely and lovely and exciting

because we were young and everything was about

to happen.  I see the white classroom, white

ceiling, white linoleum, fluorescent lights, the multi-

colored chairs with the folding formica shelves

for writing, our teacher Jan Larsen standing

large, rouged, in peroxide and over-accessorized

at the front of the room, and you, Tom, are sitting

next to me, to my right, and the first thing I remember

you saying is "Film is the art form of the twentieth century."

Film is the art form of the twentieth century?

How did you know this?

You were nineteen or twenty years old.

You were assertive, Tom, you were the first person 

my age who owned his thought.

You were assertive, you said the words

with conviction, and whether or not film is

or was the art form of the twentieth century,

you turned out to be as brilliant as your brilliant

declaration, and as I look back over the span

of our years, I have your meaning, Tom,

the true meaning of the words you spoke

before our first teacher, a room of fifteen to twenty

eighteen to twenty-two year olds: "Art!"

"I believe in Art!"  "I want to be an artist."

                    Thus began a friendship--

a rare and amazing thing, a friendship--

perhaps less solipsistic than what passes

for friendship these days, perhaps but not

for certain, and if we were vain ours were big

vanities, and in everything we did together,

beautiful things like sitting on a slab of sandstone,

listening to frogs, carving a pumpkin at 302

South Poplar, sitting cross-legged on the floor,

smoking our briar pipes by lamp light, living back-

wards, listening to the 1919 Edison

with the thick bakelite records, and reading, Tom,

reading poems aloud--to one another

and to the universe.

                    Then the dispersal--

the dispersal that comes to everyone--

long stretches of years, your good marriage,

your children, my girling, my unfulfilled hunger

for children, your career in journalism, my try

for it, the art of poetry--Ah, the art of poetry!--

reuniting us decades after the frogs of Southern Illinois,

decades after pipe smoke and declarations of art,

it turns out, Tom, it turns out that we were artists

after all.  Because we kept writing.  And without

knowing a thing about confessional this

or that, we confessed.  We confessed laziness

and self-doubt and lust and infidelity and yes

occasional realism, bravery, tenacity, an un-

willingness to give in

and be like the others.

                    Tom no one writes a poem

three days after his friend's sudden death,

no one in his right mind.

But I am not in my right mind,

not in my mind at all, Tom, because you

are gone from me--the last man standing

as I called you just days ago, the last man,

and you said yes, yes, bowed and weak-

kneed, you said, the only reader

from the very beginning I said, the one

who has never abandoned me, never let go.

                    In a letter one week ago

now that a week is no week

now that there is no beginning or end, now

we're one with the design of the universe

that has, we are told, no beginning

or end, I toss to earth still warm

beneath the leaves of my cottonwood

this morning and up to the clouds to which

my grandmother believed we might travel

upon death, your words: "I am still struggling

with form and style, with finding a voice."

So am I, Tom, so am I.  Today,

this moment, I swear to you that a part

of your funny wise irreverent and yes

brilliant, loving voice--the one that got

the art form of the twentieth century

slightly wrong, is in me.  You are in me, for-

ever.  You said  "Let's rededicate our-

selves to our book project."

Okay, I will, more difficult now, to be sure,

because I am alone, but perhaps not

impossible, because this is the art form

of the twentieth century, and the next,

and the next:  Poetry!  I will finish it,

Tom, I will finish our book, and place it on a table

in a real room, where a young poet

may steal it, a young lover may gift it,

and in this room I will say your words, Tom,

and mine,

because our shared effort

keeps me going.

An Introduction To Grieving

A Tree In Late Fall

It's 3 in the afternoon and my head is throbbing. I just lost my dad 10 days ago, and I am fighting the urge to start up smoking again. Instead, I will grab a bowl of hearty chili from the crock pot and cope the only way I know how, savoring life and the memories of those departed, through art and writing. I feel no need to apologies for my lack of talent, because this place is my own to decorate the way I want.

Having witnessed the passing of my dear husband, Tim, 3 years ago to cancer, one might think I am a veteran to grief; however, the sad truth is, that I can offer nothing very profound. The one truth I realize is that time is a precious commodity and we ought not waste it worrying about what other's might think of how we live or what we do. Instead, I prefer to spend my time creating and trying to express my emotions, inadequate as my efforts seem.

My dad was a lifelong writer, and he did for a profession and hobby, that which makes me feel small and vulnerable, write, putting his soul out there, exposed for all to see and judge. Journalism, poetry, fiction, oh, how he loved it all! Once, Dad asked me why I stopped writing poetry, and I didn't want to admit it, but I was afraid. Fear to have my brain naked and stripped down for all to see had paralyzed me in a web of procrastination and inactivity. Today, I intend to embark of a voyage of celebrating life through words and art. I hope others can join me, too, as we struggle with the nagging fact that death waits for all of us, and choose not to dwell on that, but focus on what we have today, trite as that may seem.

Dad, Tim, and everyone who has gone, I don't know where you are now, or spiritually how to cope with death, but I miss you, even the souls I have never met. I miss your joys, and tragedies, the things you built, the love, and the darkness, surrounding you. I am not perfect, and neither were you, nor anyone on this earth, but together, let us enjoy the moment and the power we have to create.

-Clare Corcoran
Nov. 24th 2013