Poetry as a Vessel of Transformation and Communion by Amylia Grace
Slipstream is a culmination of my studies in poetics, a lyric rendering of my dogged obsessions and the conscious indulgence thereof. Working in service of the collection necessitated a call to action. It took me a long time to say the most important things. For the past year, the poetry I’ve studied and written has been a surrogate partner for me. My goal in this essay is to illumine the chief influences and aesthetic preferences behind the choices I've made in the process of writing and revising Slipstream. It is not a stretch to say that dedicating myself to the craft of poetry has saved me from traveling too far down the well-worn road of despair. Turning the lonesomeness and sorrow to poem has helped me come through it and transform the pain into something palatable, useful even. It was not easy, and it never really is, but I am proud of growth and poetry generated by the pangs of angst such a catalyst brings. Although steeped in both passion and loss, the poems in Slipstream are of the kind I most like to read. I look to poetry for a sense of communion, insight and wisdom, and to illumine what it means to be human, deeply human. Like the poems I hold most dear, I hope my poetry resonates with readers and may be of some comfort or use. Since a little reverb from a poet's physical experience inevitably takes root inside us as we read their words, my sincerest hope is that readers inhabit a space inside these poems that helps them feel less alone with the messy, complicated emotions the heart holds as it plunges toward depths of great love and, at times, even greater loss. Though we've all been there, it is easy to forget we are not alone in the midst of our melancholy. The poetry that moves me most evokes feelings that are hard to pin down, and to intellectualize why a given poem stirs up such strong emotions is counterproductive to the enjoyment of poetry (which is, after all, the prime reason I’ve dedicated such a great deal of time to the craft). Kant believed that when we find something beautiful we must respond to it as it presents itself, without reasoning or analysis. There is nothing more fundamental we can appeal to, though we justify our feelings by pointing to aspects of that beauty (52). Crafting an aesthetic statement brings out similar feelings in me.
Although difficult to put into words that which seems less choice than impulse working on this collection has allowed me to stretch and reach deeper for that revered space inside which evokes Lorca's notion of duende; this reaching necessitates an embrace of, an exploration of new forms, and tackles both light and darkness. Slipstream embraces both the smallness and enormity of our world and those in it with the intention of illuminating a notion similar to Whitman's belief that the universe waits in a blade of grass, though an Amylia poem is more likely to find that universe in a raindrop or a forgotten jacket. These are poems preoccupied with relationships and the quotidian. However, the themes and modes my aesthetic embraces are much like me: resistant to complacency and ever evolving. I consider this a good thing. For a poet, stagnant waters equal death. Luckily, the world of poetry is in constant flux. Perhaps this is why when faced with an examination of my current aesthetic the ground beneath my shuffling feet keeps shifting and cracking. What this process of reflection and attention to the craft of poetry has taught me is that as soon as I grab hold of a firm aesthetic ideal or concept, the sky above cracks open, too, and what before appeared only as a vague hint of clouds in the distance suddenly comes into focus, and rains down previously unseen opportunities for growth and discovery. It's an experience any poet craves: to watch the big sky above hold within its expansiveness an attainable realm that before seemed uninhabitable. It is in this spirit that poets I most admire dedicate their lives, continuing to seek ever more expansive means of creative expression. It is what James Wright eloquently referred to as the artist’s obligation to “furious and unceasing growth” (as qtd. in Stein 19). This growth and the exploration of the perpetual expansion and shrinkage of the self (often as the result of great love or the apparent loss thereof) are Slipstream's prevalent themes. There is the also self-reflection and self-consciousness and the beauty of the moment and of the moment gone: "The blackbird whistling/Or just after," as Wallace Stevens wrote. Literary critic Harold Bloom believes poetry and self-consciousness are inextricably linked, and considers poets essential explorers of the great vicissitudes of human consciousness. The allure and beauty of such meditations is that despite being commonplace and ordinary, so too are they utterly unique, like snowflakes. Henri Cole exemplifies this in "Beach Walk:" Later, I saw a boy, aroused and elated, beckoning from a dune.
Like me, he was alone. Something tumbled between us— not quite emotion. I could see the pink interior flesh of his eyes. "I got lost. Where am I?" He asked, like a debt owed to death. (6-10) Many of the poems in Slipstream value candor and directness as Cole's latest poetry does. The goal is not to theorize but to magnify; Slipstream is my attempt to use the lyric mode to clarify and illumine intimate aspects of the self in compelling and unexpected ways. However, when poets like I skip the consolation prize of comforting illusions we humans like to cling to, and choose instead to embrace hard-to-swallow truths, questions and concerns about the relationship between poetry and truth inevitably arise. Yet to be overly concerned with debates about "the truth" of a poet's discoveries or revelations seems to me beside the point. What matters in the end is not whether the thoughts and feelings expressed in my poems are literally true, but whether or not I am able to inhabit them in convincing ways, and whether readers can enter into them as well. The reality is that the opacity of many aspects of the self creates stumbling blocks for those of us who to don the mask of truth-teller, however fleetingly. The danger is that it is easy to forget that in the end it's just a guise, albeit a necessary one. The guises poets embrace are merited means to further creative expression. The persona poems of my favorite female poets including Louise Glßck (Meadowlands), Margaret Atwood (Morning in the Burned House), Anne Sexton (Transformations), and my mentor, Jeannine Hall Gailey (Becoming the Villainess) have paved the way for me to explore the freedom that comes from crafting poetry in which the boundaries are drawn between the lyric speaker and author of the poem, although Slipstream does not rely on transparent masking of myself as speaker. However, even when the beloved "I" is employed in my poems, what is ultimately presented is an invented persona, a fictional self (or fragment thereof). "Over the Transom," "Update on That Sexy Urban Cowboy," "What Remains" and "After Visiting an Unmarked Grave in India" are first person narrative poems from Slipstream in which one might easily assume the speaker and author are one in the same, though this is not the case. Apart from character or point of view, the well worn themes of love and loss, independence (and codependence) and the ambivalence and resulting freedom one feels upon
moving forward pervade this first collection of poems. Behind this lies a wish to embark upon a lyric exploration of how understanding and compassion can be paired with unwavering directness. The candor and tenderness in the resonant poetry of Anne Sexton (Live or Die), Lucia Perillo (The Body Mutinies) and Henri Cole (Blackbird and Wolf) emboldens me. Take Cole's "Gravity and Center," for example. In it he focuses an honest gaze inward toward the (subjective) self and its troubling relationship with the (objective) outside world: I am sorry I cannot say I love you when you say you love me. The words, like moist fingers, appear before me full of promise but then run away to a narrow black room that is always dark, where they are silent, elegant, like antique gold, devouring the thing I feel […] (9-14) Whether we assign such poems (including those in Slipstream) the label of confessional, autobiographical or "truthful" matters less than what they teach us about the nature of poetry and the self. I like to read and attempt to write poems that take the raw material of a life and use it as fuel for explorations into self-consciousness and meditations on the inner and outer landscapes of a life. It is to this end that I have aimed these poems.
Works Cited Cole, Henri. Blackbird and Wolf: Poems. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008. Print. Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Judgment. (1790), Revised edition. Oxford University Press, USA, 2009. Print. Stein, Kevin. James Wright: The Poetry of a Grown Man. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1988. Print.