I wanted to share a very interesting site I re-discovered today: http://howapoemhappens.blogspot.com/
This blogger interviews contemporary poems about one poem they have written, specifically about the creative process behind that one poem. If you have ever wondered “how do they DO that!?” then you will appreciate reading this blog.
Happy reading!
“We have had enough suicidal women poets, enough suicidal women, enough self-destructiveness as the sole form of violence permitted to women.” –Adrienne Rich, poet.
“We who are alive must make clear, as she could not, the distinction between creativity and self-destruction.” –Denise Levertov in her obituary of Anne Sexton.
During the summer of 2009, my husband Colin and I took our long-awaited trip to Paris. This was the first time I had been out of the country and it was so exciting! One of our Paris pilgrimages was to visit famous gravesites around Paris, one of which was Jim Morrison’s grave. Years later, visitors still leave gifts to Morrison on his grave, covering the monument, and that day was no exception. Wilted and fresh flowers. A collage of pictures of him along with a note. An unopened bottle of beer. Tributes to a life ended too soon. I had never listened to The Doors before this, but I was fascinated by this hero-worship (or anti-hero worship!).
It so happened that a fantastic documentary on The Doors was out in theatres at the time entitled When You’re Strange, so we went to see it in Paris. I highly recommend the movie for anyone who is interested in The Doors. As I watched, I was struck by the self-destructiveness of the choices of Morrison’s life. Alcoholism. Promiscuity. Drugs. The end seemed inevitable.
After the movie, Colin and I talked—it seems that way too many creative types turn to self-destructive behaviors and many die young. I am very disturbed by this trend. Marilyn Monroe. Janis Joplin. Elliot Smith. Elvis Presley. Amy Winehouse. And still-living stars like Lindsey Lohan and Britney Spears who seem doomed to the same fate. Depression leading to death. Drugs and alcohol (perhaps caused by depression) leading to death. Why? Why so many?
Colin argued that creative types think too much. Creativity demands a certain kind of introspection. Writers—of songs, poetry, whatever—think about the world around them. It’s a huge part of art. Colin argued that we should all be more like him—not thinking too much about bothersome things in our past. That’s how people get depressed, he argued.
However, maybe there are other reasons. Maybe the glitz and glam of being a singer or actor is liable to send someone down the wrong path. Maybe being in an environment of drugs and alcohol was their downfall? Additionally, we considered, certain types of people are drawn to creative lives. Creative people are different. Maybe those who are self-destructive or depressed are drawn to creative pursuits instead of creative pursuits leading to self-destruction.
I am reading Sylvia Plath’s Ariel for the first time this week for my MFA class and this reminded me of this former discussion. Plath wrote Ariel in the months before her suicide and many of the poems reflect a preoccupation with death, suicide, and her father. Another confessional poet contemporary to Plath, Anne Sexton, also committed suicide after a long history of depression. This bothers me. As a (neo?) confessional poet myself who has also had problems with depression, where does this leave me? Should I not write about things that bother me? Is the creative life dangerous?
In my everyday life, I’m a pretty happy-go-lucky person, but you would never know it to read my poetry. (Or probably this blog either! Sorry guys!) If I get to “thinking too hard” (as Colin would put it! J), I have a lot of baggage that can get me down and I can easily lapse into sadness. Unfortunately, poets write about their obsessions and my main obsession is my childhood and my mother. Making sense of it and making something of it take up the majority of my writing energy.
Is this bad? Is this something that could lead to these scary other behaviors mentioned earlier? Am I in danger of suicidal tendencies? I am going to have to argue no. Writing, for me, tends to help get those sad and angry feelings out, to pigeonhole them in my life so they don’t creep up on me as much as I live my life the way I want to. At one point in our relationship, Colin was irritated at me because I never write about him or about love. (I’m not gonna write you a love song! Cause ya asked for it…oops! Song jumped in my head! Lol! I love Sara Barilles!) I can understand that, but really, if I’m having a good time and happy, I’m off being happy and living in the moment, not writing about it! So, I would argue that writing is cathartic to me and helps me make something out of the not-so-happy times.
So, I guess I’ll continue writing and try not to think about it too hard (right, Colin?! J). Hopefully, my writing can someday be encouraging to others who have gone through similar experiences as well.
However, there’s always that little doubt.
What do you think? Please respond and comment below. Is the creative life dangerous?
“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: “I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.” That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic…or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” –C.S. Lewis
As of this month, October 2011, I have been a Christian for exactly one year. Previous to this, I hadn’t grown up in church or really been exposed to religion at all except for my biological mother’s practice of witchcraft and Santaria. I vividly remember an instance in sixth grade when a classmate stopped me to ask whether or not I went to church. When I said no, she replied “you’re going to Hell!” Needless to say, I was not interested in religion for a long time.
I have dealt with depression my whole life. On my lowest days, I was paralyzed by the fear that life had no meaning. Life goes on the same every day with so much pain and hard times. In so much of it, what one person does doesn’t seem to matter. The meaninglessness paralyzed me.
I can’t say exactly how God drew me to Him. It was mostly the little things—coincidences that couldn’t be coincidence. However, once you’re on the other side of belief, a forgetfulness comes over you. It’s hard to imagine how you ever lived without Him, and it’s hard to explain what led you to believe. God changes you and afterward you are like an alien living in a strange land. He pricks at your heart and teaches you how to be. God has His ways, is all. I wanted to know more and more about Him. He taught me that, as one of His children, I am part of something bigger: His eternal plan. I don’t have to have all of the answers anymore. There’s no way I could even! He wants me to trust Him, that He has the answers. He touched me and made me believe and He led me to Him before one of the hardest events of my life—the passing of my biological mother. I don’t know how I would have dealt with that without Him. Through the whole event, I saw Him working. Everything happened the way it did for a reason. It was part of His plan.
Death has been on my mind a lot lately. I’m worried. I’m terrified to lose those I love. It’s ever so much closer now. Many members of my family are not believers and it terrifies me that they could die without knowing God, without being saved. I can’t even go farther than that in imagining it. I pray to God to show Himself to them the way he did to me, to make them thirst for knowledge of Him.
However, from my previous life as an unbeliever, I know that it would be useless for me to talk to them about it, to “preach.” In fact, in my previous life, any such attempts drove me farther away from God. I thought believers were ignorant, didn’t know “the facts.” I thought that science had already disproved God. What can a believer do in response to that? It’s an insurmountable wall. When God called me, all my questions didn’t matter anymore. I didn’t need to know “the facts” or have it “proved.” I could figure all that out later. All I knew is that I believed. I felt Him there. Comfort. That’s what I want for my family—God’s grace and comfort. I think that all I can do for my family is to continue to let God change me and be a witness to His grace and mercy. He is the only one that can change a heart, not me. Never me.
Lord, please show Yourself to us. Help me know what to do. Let me be Your hands. Please draw us ever closer.
–Note: to learn more about God and get your questions answered, Lee Strobel’s books The Case for Christ and The Case for a Creator really helped me answer my objections and questions. The Case for Christ answers questions about Jesus’ person and ministry, searching from a skeptic’s point of view. The Case for a Creator answers questions about science and Christianity and whether or not they conflict, also from the point of view of a skeptic. I found them very user-friendly. Strobel asks all the questions that you’re thinking. Another interesting and pertinent book was In Six Days: Why Fifty Scientists Choose to Believe in Creation, edited by John F. Ashton, PhD.
Jamie is my biological mother, the mother who hit me, who abused me. My estranged mother.
Barbara is my adopted mother, my momma, my stepmother; the woman who married my daddy and took two teenage children as her own.
This can get confusing.
When Jamie got sick and after she passed away, I found myself constantly explaining that my mother, the one who died, was my biological mother. My momma, the one I always talk about, is my adopted mother. I feel so awkward when I have to explain this—the mood in the room goes strange. The feeling is as if I had been lying all this time or perhaps I am lying now. Plus, there’s the added irony of the good stepmother and “evil” mother instead of the other way around.
I truly think that even though God took from me, at the same time He was giving it back in Barbara, Baba Jo, my Momma. As a young child, Baba contracted polio, leaving her sterile. She was never able to have kids, so when she married my daddy my freshman year of high school, we became hers. We are surprisingly similar. I’m not sure if this is because I have unconsciously imitated her since that time or because my daddy tends to marry the same type of women–stubborn, strong-willed, loud–\but I am often told how alike we are. She is now my best friend. I think God knew how much I needed her. I needed her to become me.
When I turned eighteen, I applied for Barbara to become my legal mother. I knew this would hurt Jamie, but at that point, I didn’t care. We had been estranged ever since my stepfather’s suicide five years before and every phone conversation left me crying and bitter. I thought that the adoption would mean I was no longer a part of her. That was a lie.
When I yell at my husband, I’m afraid that’s her. When I look in the mirror at my dark hair and pale skin, I wonder if I look like her. My breasts, my feet—I know they belong to her. I have to remind myself that I belong to myself, now. I must make choices that break out of the pattern. My husband, Colin, and I want to have babies soon, so this is at the forefront of my mind lately. Jamie was abused. She abused me. I cannot become the abuser.
I thank God every day that my momma met my daddy (in a chat room, no less!) and came from Tyler, Texas, leaving everything she knew to save us. They are no longer married, but that doesn’t change us. She changed me and she will always be my momma and my best friend.
I heard once that everyone is born with a hole in their heart, burning with loneliness. Longing fills our days, running after relationships or money or the next fix. No matter what we try and fill that hole with, it is never enough. We keep consuming more and more, but we just stay empty, ravenous.
For a long time, I mistook the hole for my mother. My brother Jeff and I were emotionally and physically abused by my unpredictable, emotionally distant mother and my alcoholic stepfather, Brett. We spent our early childhood in fear of what they would do next. I focused on school and earned straight As throughout elementary school. I thought that if I could somehow be perfect, she would see me.
For a long time after Jeff told our father about the abuse and we were taken away, the summer before my seventh grade year, I was afraid that I had cut away an integral part of myself. I thought it was my fault and my mother did not assuage my fears. She called at least once a week to ask me why. Why would I lie about her? Why didn’t I want to come home? Didn’t I remember the good times? Her voice pulled at me, the phone pushed against my ear in the evening kitchen. She fought to forget that the perfect family she lost never existed. Lost myself, I added emotional eating to my coping strategies. I filled my empty spaces with food; she filled hers with lies—to herself and to us.
When I found out that she was sick with cancer in her back, lungs, and brain, I was shocked. I realized that all these years, I was waiting…waiting for her to say the right words to make me forgive her. One of the hardest things I’ve ever done was to fly to Phoenix to see her again after over fifteen years. The little girl inside me was still afraid, still hurt, but also still full of need. I had to see her. I had to forgive her.
Now that she is gone, I know that she was only another crippled woman, just like me. Today, I am trying to learn to fill my empty places with God, the only person who can truly fill the holes in my heart.
