This is a break from our regularly scheduled programming because I have lots of writing news, which is all happening this week because these things seem to happen in waves for me for some reason. Writing is such a private and personal thing, so when a wave of publications happens, it feels very exposing. I balance my pride in the writing and excitement at it being in the world with the discomfort of not only revealing, but promoting myself.
My very first essay was published today in the craft section of Grist, an online and print journal I love. It is about Emily Dickinson, and being a girl and a teacher and a human in a world that doesn’t always take very good care of its girls, teachers, and humans. This is an incredibly vulnerable piece of writing for me since it’s basically a tour through all the worst times in my life. If you know me personally, I don’t talk about these things often. But I hope you’ll read it and think about it and share it with anyone who might need to read something like this.
To read the entire essay, click here. Here’s a little excerpt of the essay:
I was different and punished harshly for it. There was immense pressure to “just be normal,” as one of the kinder boys put it—as if, if I could do that, it would all go away. But it all seemed so superficial and shallow. I wrote bad poetry in my journal where swans were a metaphor for the cold, assumed façade my classmates had created. When I looked at what they wanted me to fit into…I simply could not.
Dickinson’s poem gave me the words and sarcasm that I badly needed. When I read Emily’s poem, it made sense to me: the other kids were the “somebody’s,” the frogs, who needed to feel important and popular, and so they spent all day announcing their coolness and grown-up-ness to each other. The bog was society, the adult world, which was nothing but shallow, materialistic, and mean—not worth rushing toward. This is, admittedly, a very tidy translation of the metaphors, but I was thirteen, and this was the first poem that had helped me to really see my world. Here was Emily, happily refusing to join the dominant paradigm or “just be normal.” I badly needed to know there was an alternative, that I wasn’t alone. I had Emily.
Instead of buckling to the pressure and trying to fit in, Emily helped me be defiant. I’d have nothing to do with being popular if this is what being popular looked like. I’d content myself with being a Nobody, which meant being myself, with my overalls and fantasy books in the grassy corner at recess. In those eight rhyming lines, I found the words to articulate my growing understanding of how people work and who I wanted to be.
I have a few people to thank for this essay. All those years ago, Mrs. Snowden, had me memorize the poem at the center of this essay and also gave me the blank journal where I wrote my first poems. This essay wouldn’t be nearly as vulnerable as it is without the amazing editorship skills of E.B. Bartels.
This is also the first week of a special exhibit, “Fabric of a Nation,” at the Museum of Fine Arts, where I have a poem that was commissioned to accompany one of the beautiful quilts that are on display. The exhibit includes quilts from across American history and considers how we tell the story of our country.
I got to choose the Paul Family Quilt, a historic, hand-embroidered New England quilt that resonated very personally because my mother is a quilter and artisan. Art that is practical and used in daily life is rarely taken as seriously as other art, but my mother’s skill and patient hand taught me so much about art and life. I was able to write a poem that channeled the evenings she and I assembled squares together and the nights she stayed up late to use the peace of a sleeping house to embroider her quilts.
Here is an image of the Paul family quilt, but you really need to see it in person to appreciate it.
Here’s a detail from the quilt that I love:
And here is my poem I wrote that’s on a wall of the MFA (I still can’t believe that sentence is real!):
My friend from my MFA program, Jordan Cromwell, has a fellowship at the MFA and this is his first big exhibit where he worked on all the labels and with the curators. It’s been fascinating to get a behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to make an exhibit of this magnitude happen. I owe it to Jordan for thinking of me for this honor, even though he had no idea how many feelings or opinions I had on quilts before this.
Lastly, I have three Ghost Girl poems that were recently published at The Normal School in keeping with the spirit of the season. Among them is the first Ghost Girl poem that led to all the other adventures of Ghost Girl. Click here to read two more short and funny adventures.
ADVENTURES OF GHOST GIRL
Ghost Girl misses
the taste of sweetness:
canned peaches, honeysuckle stems,
the rim of raspberry jam.
Ghost Girl sucks a finger bone
to remember. She longs
for the feeling of slipping
between fresh sheets & lying there
like a clean corpse.
For fun, she knocks the plants
off their sills in your apartment
& blames it on the cat.
Ghost Girl swallows bells
so somebody might hear her.
She drifts through the city
but nobody stops her to ask for help.
She wants to ask for help.
Ghost Girl feels like the tap
of a slowly pressed piano key
before the hammer sounds—
everybody notices the note instead.
Sometimes Ghost Girl rides
on top of the train & the wind
goes right through her.
Every time Ghost Girl falls in love,
instead of butterflies, the bells
in her stomach stutter. When
Ghost Girl rides in the train car
with the rest of us, she falls in love
with the woman with elegant fingers
& a puppy on her lap & the stranger who’s falling
in love with the woman’s puppy.
Ghost Girl falls in love with the sleeping
boy & the kissing couple & the baby who
is falling in love with a stranger’s face.
Ghost Girl falls in love & the bells
in her stomach shiver & sing. O if you listen,
you might hear them over the sounds
of the tracks & the city & living things
at the next stop.
That’s it! Thank you for tolerating my uncomfortable self-promotion. After this, Notions & Notes is back to regularly scheduled programming.