Random Collections of Writing

Monday, February 21, 2011

The Green Place

This is the poem I wrote to accompany my Billy Collins study. It was in part inspired by his two poems "The Blue" and "Night Letter to the Reader".

I want to stay standing barefoot,
in the soft, newborn grass.
To watch the wind stir the aspens,
and listen to the leaves rustle contentedly.

The sun gazes down at me,
at another grain of sand squandering the earth.
Indifference clear upon her face,
she glides on,
leaving me standing in the shadows of my leafy companions.

Her light filters through the emerald growth,
casting stained glass images over my skin,
and illuminating the veins in the fronds,
like a patchwork quilt.

The wind meanders by,
receiving greeting from the vegetation,
as he brushes past my face,
he whispers
of the reasons to remain.

I want to stay here,
as a part of this world,
not of the mistakes
that the rest of humanity
has planted on the shoulders of their children.

Nature never seemed more alluring,
nor did mankind ever seem so splintered.

I consent to stand in this flawless place until
the moon has bathed everything in silver,
and melted back into a crescent.

The summer rains have come
and left the ground cleansed.
The garments of trees
have fallen in a blazing cascade.

The snow has made the world
plead for the warmth of spring to come again,
like a blank canvas
aches for the vivid hues of paint.

But are not our lives riddled
with unkept promises
and flaws impossible to dispose of?

I will return to reality,
brushing it like the feet of a dancer
who’s trying to fly,
and with my head in this scene.

I fold this place into a small square
to keep in a pocket of my head,
to visit when I become exasperated,
or when I am completely happy,
or when this is all over.

Billy Collins!

In our Language Arts class our teacher gave us two full days of class and told us to "create or learn something". I studied Billy Collins' poetry. He was the US Poet Laureate 2001-2003 and the New York state Poet Laureate from 2004-2006. This is an excerpt from my project.

Lately I have found myself obsessed with Billy Collins’; addicted to the feeling of discovery and inspiration that forms after reading one of his poems. When I read one of his poems I feel as though I am looking into a mirror, the reflection of my mind. After further examination, I suddenly realize there is a thought or memory that has always been there, just never acknowledged. It is like he’s penning the extraneous strings of my thoughts into something tangible. Or perhaps his poems are like the water and sunlight for the of seeds of musings in my head, which germinate in response to the poem. Sometimes his poems seem rather bizarre and other-worldly, but then again, my thoughts don’t really ever fit together like puzzle pieces. His poems are so profound, and seem to inspire that indescribable expanding feeling in one’s chest.

Saturday, February 19, 2011

Dear Kevin Brockmeier,

This was for the writing contest: Letters About Literature. The prompt was to write a letter to the author of book that has changed your life. I wrote to Kevin Brockmeier, the author of The Brief History of the Dead.

Dear Kevin Brockmeier,

Until recently, I felt severed from the world, existing mostly in my own mind. It’s not that the real world didn’t hold anything of interest, it was just so much easier to observe from the safety of my own thoughts. More and more I found myself caring only about perfecting the creations in my mind, as opposed to dealing with the tangible world. I didn’t care when my sister did stupid, dangerous things, only that it wouldn’t affect my thoughts. She brashly put herself in danger without regard for anyone that might care for her. She made stupid decisions that proved her obvious disdain for any sort of responsibility, maturity, and caution. She was the dictionary definition of a hedonist. She was walking backwards down her life so as not to see the almost certain destruction in the future. And I still quietly wrapped myself in a cocoon, blinding myself.

When I read The Brief History of the Dead, what struck me the most was its bizarreness. It seemed to be a long forgotten jar of glue, holding the strangeness of the real world to the eccentricity of the electrical impulses in my head. I quickly bonded with the disconnected Laura and her scatter-brained, intricate intellect. Laura found some sort of chaotic calmness in all of her memories and the jumbles of her thoughts. She had to emerge from her mind and deal with the harsh Antarctic, to not only keep herself alive, but help others survive. It was easier for her to do so while living with an army of thoughts in her head. Yet, she remained anchored to both places. I found Laura blazing a trail through every crevice of my mind. She showed me our similarities, and our differences where she had taken the correct fork in the road and I had chosen to seclude myself even further. The journeys, trials, and personalities of each person in the City accompanied her, and began to represent the shards of places in my mind.

I haltingly came to the conclusion that as a society, we are very interdependent. I am forced, without consent, into the world. Laura depends on her real-world memories to survive. Likewise the people in the City rely on Laura to emerge from those thoughts and trek through the tundra. As for me, I would much prefer to stay in my own fantasies, and yet, people still need me. My sister still needs me to inhibit her from willingly “leaping off the deep end.” She needs me to care, and to make her hold hands with her consequences.

And in my own almost imperceptible way, I add diversity to this world. Since the world has billions of personalities, we have to carefully examine ourselves and discern exactly who we are in all of that cacophony. You weaved a story of people depending on each other across worlds, and possibly even time. As in an orchestra, if just one musician is willingly missing, the entire web wrinkles very slightly. Thank you for showing me that I can’t seclude myself inside my picturesque mind, for showing me that I need the world, and that the world needs me.

Sincere thanks,

Abbi Chapman

I'd Travel into the Future....

This is a writing contest put on by tweentribune.com. Sadly, my entry was never submitted. The prompt was:

If you could spend a day with anyone alive or dead, real, fictional or imaginary…

Who would you pick?
What would you do with them?
When would you meet: in the past, present or future?
Where would you meet them?
Why would you pick them?

All in 100 words or less……

I’d travel into the future,
past the world that’d ended
and the regrets and mistakes,
to meet Billy Collins.

We’d read all his poems,
write new ones,
sit in the transparent nothingness
and try to make sense of it all.

He’d pass on his knowledge and inspiration to me,
like a grandfather.
I’d wrap myself in the words that he wrote.
We’d be at The Vanishing Point, in The Blue.

At the end of the day,
I’d return to this world and time,
perhaps I’d gained something more than just memories,
to help this world that is falling apart…

Lois Lowry Speech Summary

This is a summary of Lois Lowry's (author of The Giver) speech, The Beginning of Sadness, given after 9/11.

After 9/11, the country was forced to a sudden realization – that we can no longer protect our children from knowing pain. For the longest time parents could tell their children they were safe, and not lie. Children were thought to be immortal from the burden of loss. No such luck anymore. Lowry made an excellent choice to use the poem “On Turning 10,” because it perfectly illustrates this. “…If you cut me I would shine. But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life, I skin my knees. I bleed.” As a society, we have been attempting to drown out our fears by blinding ourselves. But, as Lowry explains, this IS the beginning of sadness. Children will lose parents, siblings, and friends to this greedy, corrupt world. The average person will fight for the politics of those that govern us. So, let us write things down; so that our pain will neither be forgotten, nor shall we drown in it.