Essay on Poetry by
            Karen Heywood


            
I, Too, Want the Plums

            


            
Where does a poem come from? Poet William
            Stafford devotes a whole section on this question in his book
            You Must Revise Your Life. Stafford says for him
            "Often a poem crystallizes fast, during my daily writing…"
            and other times while "Looking back over jottings of a week
            or so before it happened, I find phrases and attitudes that reached
            out for each other and came on together, till I recognized a
            poem and welcomed it as mine" (47). I like that definition,
            although I've never tried the exercise myself. For me, a poem
            usually comes from a moment or a memory. Something touches a
            sense in me, the sound of the chapel bells on campus or dried
            leaves scuttling across the sidewalk that remind me of my childhood.
            The warmth of the sun on my face as I walk out of shade or shadows,
            or of my infant grandson's body curled in slumber across my chest.
            A certain gesture or gait of a stranger that brings to mind a
            loved one I haven't seen in a while, and miss. Moments and memories.

            
But is this enough, to just write of our
            own feelings? As someone who likes to raise social awareness
            through my writing, I question why the hardest part for me is
            to take the "I" out of my poetry. I know the poem came
            from me, it consists of my feelings, but how do I pull out those
            feelings and make them universal? What if someone has never cuddled
            a child on their chest?

            
In Adrienne Rich's book What Is Found
            There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics, she says a poet
            must be aware of "…your own level of responsiveness,
            of responsibility, to what lies around you" (51). The responsive
            part I get okay…I'm pretty responsive. But, then I wonder
            if I am being responsive enough, or responsive to the right things,
            the important things. And, what exactly is my level of responsibility?
            I know I feel compelled to make a difference through my writing.
            Whether I touch one person or many, my goal is to offer them
            hope, or show them they are not alone.

            
Rich believes that a poet is responsive
            and responsible when "she or he is free to become artistically
            most complex, serious, and integrated when most aware of the
            great questions of her, or his, own time" (51). She goes
            on to say "When the mind of the maker is stretched to the
            fullest by the demands of the time - not fads, vogues, cliques,
            chic, propaganda, but the deep messages of crisis, hope, despair,
            visions, the anonymous voices, that pulse through a human community
            as signs of imbalance, sickness, regeneration pulse through a
            human body" (51-52). This is pretty heavy stuff, and I wonder
            if I am up to the challenge, if I have what it takes to tackle
            such important issues, and emotions. I tend to write simple poems,
            every day common poems. Sure, I touch on emotions of importance
            like hope and despair. But, what is my level of responsibility,
            and how do I know it is enough? When is it okay to write a poem
            and "just welcome it as mine" as William Stafford says?

            
I suppose these are questions most poets
            ponder, and perhaps it is the task of the individual poet to
            find their own levels of responsibility. I know Rich's words
            have raised an awareness in me as a poet, and I know I must share
            my words, my "visions." Maybe I don't need to pull
            the "I" out - maybe the "I" is really "We."
            So what if someone has never cuddled a child on their chest?
            Perhaps my poem will touch a part of them that longs for the
            warmth or closeness of another human being.

            
Alice Walker, essayist, feminist, author
            of The Color Purple, and poet extraordinaire, says
            in the Preface of her newest collection of poetry, Absolute
            Trust in the Goodness of the Earth, that "what remains
            the same is the sense that, unlike "writing," poetry
            chooses when it will be expressed, how it will be expressed,
            and under what circumstances" (xi-xii). This is true for
            me. A poem comes from a moment or a memory the poem chooses,
            not I.

            
So, where does a poem come from? I think
            William Stafford sums it up best with a poem of his own, "Thinking
            about Being Called Simple by a Critic" from You Must
            Revise Your Life:

            

              


              I wanted the plums, but I waited.

              The sun went down. The fire

              went out. With no lights on

              I waited. From the night again -

              those words: how stupid I was.

              And I closed my eyes to listen.

              The words all sank down, deep

              and rich. I felt their truth

              and began to live them. They were mine

              to enjoy. Who but a friend

              could give so sternly what the sky

              feels for everyone but few learn to

              cherish? In the dark with the truth

              I began the sentence of my life

              and found it so simple there was no way

              back into qualifying my thoughts

              with irony or anything like that.

              I went to the fridge and opened it -

              sure enough the light was on.

              I reached in and got the plums.

              (35).

            
Works Cited

            

              

                
Rich, Adrienne. What is Found There:
                Notebooks on Poetry and Politics. New York: W.W. Norton
                & Company, Inc. 1993.
                
Stafford, William. You Must Revise
                Your Life. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.
                1986.
                
Walker, Alice. Absolute Truth in
                the Goodness of the Earth. New York: Random House. 2003.
              
            

            
 

            
Karen Heywood is a poet, playwright,
            and award-winning essayist living her dreams in Mid-Missouri.
            She graduated Magna Cum Laude from Stephens College in Columbia,
            MO.with a BFA in Creative Writing in May 2007 at the age of 50.
            Karen currently teaches freshman English Comp at Stephens, but
            asks that you not hold that against her…she really is a
            nice person!