Obsessions

I would probably never write a thing if I didn't pay attention to my obsessions.

I'm not talking about chocolate, much as I crave it.

He drives me wild.

This is a different type of obsession -- when something catches your eye or ear and you immediately feel, "I want to learn everything I can about that."

Normal people don't let these "catch your ear" moments develop into full obsessions, but doing so is key to how I function as a writer.

Writers have obsessions, and that's a good thing. The more involved we become with an idea, concept, or tidbit from history, the more deeply we can express these things in a poem, play, story, or essay. I know it's a true obsession when I am researching or writing and I go into hyper focus. My kids know not to interrupt me then. It's almost a physical pain to be called out of what I'm working on to help find a missing shoe.

My current obsessions are:

• The Roc-A-Jets, 1950s all-girl rockabilly band based in Baltimore
• This painting, by Vincent van Gogh:

All it took was one look at that ocean of a beard, and I thought, "That painting might be a good subject for a poem." It only took thirty minutes of clicking around the Internet to find out that van Gogh had an uncharacteristically close relationship with his subject, postmaster Joseph Roulin, and Roulin's family.

What happens when obsessions collide? I don't have mental space for them both.

I'm writing down as much as I can about Roulin now, when the idea has energy. As long as I capture the initial impulse, I can come back to Roulin and van Gogh later.

Then, it's back to work on my piece about the Roc-A-Jets. Roulin looks like he would have enjoyed a good rockabilly show.

Stay tuned.

One of my favorite examples of a writer clearly obsessed with a subject appears in the novel The English Patient, by Michael Ondaatje (here is one blogger's review). Chapter 7 covers Kip's bomb squad training in the kind of attentive detail that can only come from deep research.

Come out to Ahh, Coffee! in Annapolis this Saturday evening and to hear the end result of one of my obsessions. I'll be featured at a reading, along with  my friend Fernando Quijano III. This will be my first public reading of a long ekphrastic poem. It's based on a work of fringe art -- the title of which I can't repeat here. Seriously.

National Poetry Month Issue 9/10

One of the easiest ways to teach children how to use similes and metaphors is through animals and insects. You can read my full lesson on animal simile poems here.

I'm featuring two Maryland poets for this weekend's National Poetry Month post -- Barbara Morrison and Fernando Quijano III -- both with poems about bugs.

I love bugs. When other moms were grossed out by cicadas in their hair, I was chasing my kids with a whirring bug in my hand saying, "It has red eyes! Isn't that cool?"

If you're working on similes and metaphors with young poets, ask them to look for commonalities between themselves and a specific insect. If a teen can find a connection with a gypsy moth or a butterfly, he or she can write a simile.

In the poem, "Gypsy Moth," notice how the poet uses form. The opening stanza is observation/description, which makes the simile in stanza two both eerie and surprising.

Gypsy Moth
by B. Morrison

Their sound is like the lightest
sprinkling of rain tapping the leaves
somnolent and steady, eerie only if you know
that what you hear are tiny jaws
consuming leaves and dropping tiny
hard brown beads: Gypsy moths.

Yet the words themselves hold no horror;
they might describe me:
the gypsy, the moth, restless and wise
unable to take even the best of men
and stay with him, moving on when
a town goes stale  you've seen me at dances,
my skirt flying, my eyes held fast
by my partner's, but fickle like a gypsy--
look around and I'm gone.

Posted with permission of the author.

In Fernando's poem, "Orange Eye," watching butterflies is a meditative act. The bugs become a metaphor for finding joy in simple things (a theme we've already touched on this April).

Orange Eye

by Fernando Quijano II

I don’t have to write

this poem

it writes itself

how could it not?

At ten

the monarchs come to feed

on the purple orange eyes

outside

the kitchen window

as I wash dishes

monarchs & bugs that look

like little hummingbirds

fan tails and all

buzzing bud to bud

to suck on the sweet nectar

At three

the brothers come

butterflies wearing tiger skins

with iridescent blue

spots for wings

dangling upside down

with their black

winged cousins

to catch

the undersides of the buds

that previous bug

gourmands have missed

The tigers patiently probe

each bud

with their probosci

while the jet

butterflies flutter

frenetically before moving

on, looking for the easy meal

I could wash this dish

for days

I don't have to write

this poem

The Universe wrote it

for me

long ago.

Posted with permission of the author.

MS/HS Writing Insect Poems Exercises:

1) Use Barbara Morrison's form to write an insect simile poem. Choosing a bug with a cool or evocative name is a good place to start. Stanza one is for observations and sensory description. Stanza two is where you introduce the simile and compare the insect to yourself.

2) Write about a time when you were watching an animal or insect and became lost in the act of watching. What were you doing at the time? Describe what you saw in detail -- the more closely you observe, the more your reader will understand how deeply you were paying attention.

I'll be back tomorrow with a satirical bug poem from Maryland poet John Hayes.

Poetry Friday: Ringing in the New Year

Happy New Year's Eve from Chapel Hill! We're visiting my brother and his family -- enjoying all the comforts of a college town: great restaurants, great vintage shops (I scored a knee length leather jacket for $14), and a fun science center.

We are heading home in time to ring in the New Year tonight. Speaking of ringing, I just had a debate with another  poet over Edgar Allan Poe's "The Bells."

Fernando Quijano III (AKA Baltimore's The Word Pimp) performed the poem for Poetry Out Loud when he was in high school. The "tinkle tinkle tinkles" didn't take him to the next round of competition.

Which made me realize, "The Bells" is one of those love it or hate it kind of poems. I admit to being a hater. Until I read Sharon Creech's middle grade NIV, Love That Dog. In Creech's book, elementary schooler Jack digs the pure sounds of Poe's bell ringing.

Does "The Bells" ring your bell or give you a headache?

The Bells
by Edgar Allan Poe
I. Hear the sledges with the bells-- Silver bells! What a world of merriment their melody foretells! How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, In the icy air of night! While the stars that oversprinkle All the heavens, seem to twinkle With a crystalline delight; Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells From the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells-- From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.   II. Hear the mellow wedding bells Golden bells! What a world of happiness their harmony foretells! Through the balmy air of night How they ring out their delight! From the molten-golden notes, And all in tune, What a liquid ditty floats To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats On the moon! Oh, from out the sounding cells, What a gush of euphony voluminously wells! How it swells! How it dwells On the Future! how it tells Of the rapture that impels To the swinging and the ringing Of the bells, bells, bells, Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells-- To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells!   III. Hear the loud alarum bells-- Brazen bells! What tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells! In the startled ear of night How they scream out their affright! Too much horrified to speak, They can only shriek, shriek, Out of tune, In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire, In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire, Leaping higher, higher, higher, With a desperate desire, And a resolute endeavor Now--now to sit or never, By the side of the pale-faced moon. Oh, the bells, bells, bells! What a tale their terror tells Of Despair! How they clang, and clash, and roar! What a horror they outpour On the bosom of the palpitating air! Yet the ear, it fully knows, By the twanging, And the clanging, How the danger ebbs and flows ; Yet, the ear distinctly tells, In the jangling, And the wrangling, How the danger sinks and swells, By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells-- Of the bells-- Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells-- In the clamour and the clangour of the bells!   IV. Hear the tolling of the bells-- Iron bells! What a world of solemn thought their monody compels! In the silence of the night, How we shiver with affright At the melancholy meaning of their tone! For every sound that floats From the rust within their throats Is a groan. And the people--ah, the people-- They that dwell up in the steeple, All alone, And who, tolling, tolling, tolling, In that muffled monotone, Feel a glory in so rolling On the human heart a stone-- They are neither man nor woman-- They are neither brute nor human-- They are Ghouls:-- And their king it is who tolls ; And he rolls, rolls, rolls, rolls, Rolls A pæan from the bells! And his merry bosom swells With the pæan of the bells! And he dances, and he yells ; Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the pæan of the bells-- Of the bells : Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the throbbing of the bells-- Of the bells, bells, bells-- To the sobbing of the bells ; Keeping time, time, time, As he knells, knells, knells, In a happy Runic rhyme, To the rolling of the bells-- Of the bells, bells, bells-- To the tolling of the bells, Of the bells, bells, bells, bells-- Bells, bells, bells--     Reading this poem just after my middle schooler studied Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, I can't help but see a connection. The speaker in the poem -- the character of Victor Frankenstein -- they both have that obsessive, gloom and doom or bright as the heavens personality. Interesting. However you celebrate New Year's, may your heavens twinkle with a crystalline delight this evening. Thanks for hosting the Poetry Friday party this week, Carol! Stop by Carol's Corner for some poetry fireworks.