ModPo 2013 #63 Exercises in Defamiliarization: On Mayer's Writing Experiments

For a list of Bernadette Mayer's writing experiment recommendations, check here.

I tried one of her prescribed experiments.
My original poem is here.

Here is the result:

A Writer of Poems to a Writer of Poems

I think of the whiteness of snow
on a postcard from an aunt.
Props in a play.
I have seen it is ice on halo-halo.
Why do I end up speaking
of this?
But this is how I speak:
with a flavor, in essence a blend.
I think of how you must have
shivered in the snow,
words in heart.
I wonder if you dreamt.
Perhaps we dreamt
the dream.
We were born in a land
unused to and awed by:
autumn, winter, spring.
I think of snow and
how it melts,
how these words
will melt.
But I think we wear
our costumes well.
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I thought the paring down was very worthy of the imagist movement! My poem is defamiliarized but, I think, strangely potent in its condensed state.

Mayer's list reminds me of what I wrote regarding Baraka's "Incident." I talked about the left hand (and right brain) of language: poetry. It is poetry that can create the gaps and bridge the gaps in ways that no other kind of language can.

In the course of reading Chapter 9.2's chance poets, I would find myself writing some chance phrases as well that stemmed from my right brain:

I woke up already soaped.
I follow the curve of her surprise.

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The "chance" method, stemming from existing text, processed through constraint and continuing through the reader serves its purpose: exposing the narrative, exposing the ego, exposing the "naturalized" / "socialized" way that we read and write. But is that it? I doubt it. Aleatory poetry is in a continuum of poetry but poetry continues to evolve.

The thing is, there is no end to this. I've seen my notions of poetry rocked and split to its core in this course. For as long as there is poetry, new writers and movements will redefine it. The only thing that's stable so far is its instability. All throughout 9.2, I've heard the phrase: "This is NOT anything goes." It's a defense of poetry. What's not being said is: poetry is effort-ful. The methods may change but poetry as "wrought/ well wrought" remains. At least as it's taught in this course. I'm still thinking this through and its implications on my own writing. In the meantime, it's worth working on Mayer's other writing experiments.

ModPo 2013 #52 Time Of One's Own and The Time To Live: On Mayer's "Invasion Of The Body Snatchers"

Image of Sylvia Plath as a new mother from mahmag.org.

Poem from UPenn.

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I really liked this poem. It reminded me of the time that I was a new mother as well. I craved adult conversation so much, I actually contemplated going to the office just to talk to people! Not only that, I was suffering postpartum blues (crying every day!) and I was terrible at breastfeeding because I never really learned how (yes, it's learned, it's not natural and you don't get it by looking at a poster). I was desperate and logging every breastfeeding session in a journal including what breast and how many minutes. It was terrible. Indeed, I didn't feel like my life belonged to me. I was actually alienated by my life. Don't get me wrong: I love my kids to bits. But the thing is: new motherhood really does feel like an alien invasion. 

I totally get the time distortion that Mayer talks about in the poem. Time really does get distorted for a new mother. These things kept occurring to me: "Didn't I just feed the baby?" "When did I last take a shower?" "Why does this have to hurt so much?" "Will I ever feel normal again?" "Why is the baby crying again?"

It's true that so much literature and images of new motherhood look picture-perfect, emotionally fuzzy, and joy-ful. But it's actually not. Especially with a first child. It's a time of great confusion, dazed activity, and tears. I couldn't drive while recovering from my Caesarian section and I felt so closed in, locked out of the rest of the world. It got to a point where I begged for something to do like deposit money in a neighborhood bank just so I could get out of the house. I find Mayer's "I-do-this-I-do-that" description of time spot on in that it's confused and arbitrary and decidedly non-narrative. 

I do see the turning point of "it's time to die." It reminds the speaker to live, to read, to not suppress the fantasy of having her baby getting raised by wolves. 

I see it as a refusal of the automaton's life. At some point during my maternity leave I started to paint. In a way, I saw it as my own refusal to be so domesticated and chained, without blaming anyone, really. Feeling domesticated and chained is a choice. No one imposed it on me. My circumstances and hormonal state of mind made me feel isolated but I didn't have to give in to it. Like Berrigan's "3 Pages," choices needed to be made. One needs to open the windows to let in the good cold air, wake up, drink some champagne, and maintain that aesthetic life, time that is no one else's but one's own. Recognizing the time to die is also recognizing the time to live.