Poetry— the good, the bad, and the Instagrammable.

Transcript:

*intro music*

J: Hello, and welcome back to our third episode of Analyzing the Arts, I'm your host Janani Pattabi

C: And I'm your other host Charlotte Heads

J: And today we are talking poetry! A quick announcement before we get into the discussion- all our episodes are now being moved to Spreaker, it's just a lot more convenient for us to operate and so our old stuff will still be- we’re not taking down the Podbean account, it will still be up- but all our old stuff will be moved to speaker, and we’ll just continue to post on there. So with that out of the way… poetry! We’re going to be reading some poems for you guys, poems we really like, we’re going to be discussing poetry, so yeah so I hope you enjoy. All right so I'm going first, I think, and my first poem that I really, really like is For the Gardener's Daughter by Alyssa Wong. I absolutely love Alyssa Wong, she's one of my favorite speculative fiction writers, so I would definitely check her out if you really like spooky stuff and also gay stuff. I would- I would check her out if either of those two things interest you. So, alright I will read the poem.

If I am Hades, my char’iot splintered

When I met you; my cold bones ignited

With heat, bright, that in my chest had wintered

Through storms of cities, my own heart blighted.

Your fingers’ warmth, your sighs, I’d sew them here—

Imprinting flesh and bone with golden thread,

So they might linger beyond half the year

When only cooling shadows grace my bed.

Now seeded in me and fast consuming

The fertile heartground I’d not known I had,

This lust for sunlight, rebelliously blooming

Is enough to drive a conqueror mad—

Fool enough to wish a kingdom away,

I would swallow death whole to make you stay.

C: I have heard that one before and I really liked it.

J: Yeah it is one of my favorites, I am a sucker for Greek mythology so I love that. I just- I really like love poems. I don't think I'm a romantic, but there's something about people expressing their love in poetry that I just think is very sweet so, it has everything I really like. Yeah it's- it's really fun to read, I really like the rhyme scheme, and it makes it nice and flow well. I don't know well I read it because I was- you know I'm not very good at reading poetry- but it does- it does flow really nicely and yeah, I appreciate the imagery of Greek mythology. So yeah that's my first poem.

C: I do think the introduction was like a really strong starting point, I liked how they started.

J: For sure

C: Cool. My first poem is a kind of popular one I think, it's the Two-Headed Calf by Lauren Gilpin.

Tomorrow when the farm boys find this

freak of nature, they will wrap his body

in newspaper and carry him to the museum.

But tonight he is alive and in the north

Field with his mother. It is a perfect

Summer evening: the moon rising over

The orchard, the wind in the grass. And

As he stares into the sky, there are

Twice as many stars as usual.

J: It's just, it's so- it's so sweet, and it's so sad.

C: Exactly!

J: It- it does fill you with this bittersweet feeling of like this moment is so perfect and beautiful but it's not going to end well. But at least the calf has this one moment.

C: Exactly, and I've seen a lot of like, art inspired by this poem, of people drawing the calf, and I just think it's so cute, I don't know.

J: Yeah it's a very sweet poem, I definitely appreciate poems that can like, tell a lot in fewer lines -not that long poems are bad, long poems are great too- but yeah I think it is a classic, and it's a classic for good reason. All right. My next poem is Fuck Your Lecture on Craft, My People Are Dying by Noor Hindi, and Noor Hindi is a Palestinian American poet and reporter. Her work has been featured in magazines like Poetry, and this was a poem I actually found on Twitter surprisingly because it was one that was getting shared around a lot -especially during the- during the. Palestine Israeli conflict that was kind of exploded a little while ago. So this was a poem that was getting shared around, a lot of people were liking it, a lot of people were promoting it. and it's just- it is a really powerful poem so hopefully I do it justice but also please just check out the original work. Alright.

Colonizers write about flowers.

I tell you about children throwing rocks at Israeli tanks

seconds before becoming daisies.

I want to be like those poets who care about the moon.

Palestinians don’t see the moon from jail cells and prisons.

It’s so beautiful, the moon.

They’re so beautiful, the flowers.

I pick flowers for my dead father when I’m sad.

He watches Al Jazeera all day.

I wish Jessica would stop texting me Happy Ramadan.

I know I’m American because when I walk into a room something dies.

Metaphors about death are for poets who think ghosts care about sound.

When I die, I promise to haunt you forever.

One day, I’ll write about the flowers like we own them.

C: That was… yeah, wow.

J: Yeah I wish I hadn’t like stumbled on it but, it's just such a beautiful piece, so please check out the original work. It just- yeah it puts into the perspective I guess, I don't know the whole, I guess- craft of poetry, like the whole art form and how I guess- like how Europeanized it is like how, you know people who don't have to suffer can write about like beautiful things, when there's like real issues and real people are suffering and dying, so you know some people don't have the luxury to write about the moon, or flowers. so I wish I hadn’t, but yeah really beautiful poem, it's one of my favorites I think, it's one that I keep coming back to

C: I really liked the- I don't know if this is the right way to put it but like the very deliberate language, like she didn't dance around anything.

J: Yeah, mhm I agree she was very- I think there's a place to be really flowery and beautiful and there's also a place to be like- you know, straight to the point, and I think this was a good place. I'm also just I'm in love with the line the final line which is “one day I’ll write about the flowers like we own them” I think it's- it's such a great line.

C: Yeah!

J: So what's your next poem?

C: Oh okay, so mine is The Orange by Wendy Cope, here it is.

At lunchtime I bought a huge orange—

The size of it made us all laugh.

I peeled it and shared it with Robert and Dave—

They got quarters and I had a half.

And that orange, it made me so happy,

As ordinary things often do

Just lately. The shopping. A walk in the park.

This is peace and contentment. It’s new.

The rest of the day was quite easy.

I did all the jobs on my list

And enjoyed them and had some time over.

I love you. I’m glad I exist.

J: Wow, that's a very sweet one too.

C: What stood out about this one to me I think, is this thing lately I’ve seen a lot of media talk about like- the domestic joys of life. Like smaller things instead of looking on a large scale and I think this puts that on a really good like viewpoint?

J: I agree I think- I this is- I feel so bad for saying this, but Gabbie Hannah in one of her poetry videos said something that I really agree with. She talks about how it's so beautiful that poetry can express like the little moments in life and kind of- I guess expand them. stuff we wouldn't really notice and put them in like such a beautiful way, hold those small moments on a pedestal. I don't agree with Gabbie Hannah on most things, but I do agree with that, that's kind of where my mind went when I heard this poem. It's a very feel-good poem, you know?

C: Mhm! I don't know, she doesn't do the whole flowery description thing she just says it's an orange.

J: Yeah. Again the very matter-of-fact language.

C: Yeah!

J: As much as I do love very flowery poetry, I will say. Alright. My final piece is actually a spoken word piece but I'm gonna try to read the transcript of it because I have that. It's Art Class by Rhiannon McGavin- again one of my absolute favorite poets, I listen to a lot of her spoken word poetry, I first saw her slam poetry called rape joke where she kind of brought awareness to- I guess how lightly sexual assault can be treated in our society. That got a lot of hate cause you know, the world, so she kind of basically was proving her point that she was making with that. And I was just so- I guess enamored by her voice in her writing and just how- just how powerful she delivered her message, so I listened to more poetry from her, I read more poetry from her and this is a poem I listened to like years ago and I still come back to it because it's just- its something that really resonated with me so, alright I think I've given her a lengthy introduction, so I will read it now.

In my kindergarten art class, sunlight dripped through fingerpaint-covered windows.

I learnt the primaries: red, blue, yellow. I could make the whole rainbow out of three colours.

I was older when I started telling myself that I only looked at the female anatomical models for reference. I had so much experience dressing quickly and keeping my eyes on the ground in the locker room, but this girl made me understand why they say "pretty as a painting".

You can't touch museum art. We have the same lotion. It smells better on her, it makes me think of cookies and old Paris cafés where the great painters had lunch. The color palette I bring from home is so dark, but she makes me lean towards romanticism. I can't draw a straight line anymore but that's okay;

Her hair is naturally curly.

A boy called her weird yesterday, and I wanted to tell her that I have spent hours practicing shading to recreate the light in her eyes, but that would make it obvious I'd been staring.

You're not supposed to look at your friends like that.

Our teacher says the colormaker Diesbach tried to make a perfect red and created ultramarine.

In a time when ultramarine paint was worth more than gold, he added animal blood to his flask and outburst blue, worth more than gold! I wanted vermilion like Romeo, ruby as sunset, flash lipstick, scarlet forget-me-not kisses, I would give blood to my brush for her to blush at me in that shade I would take cobalt as a new sky, azure as cornflower, schoolgirl skirt navy hiding held hands or even yellow sunflower petals. Dutch painters whispering "she loves me... she loves me... she loves me..."

Our teacher didn't tell us that the creation of Prussian blue led to the isolation of cyanide. I can't breathe without inhaling the poison, its apple seeds, and seeping through junior-high gym floorboards when you watch your best friend dance with boys who will never be you!

I always liked friendship bracelets more than promise rings. My middle-school diaries are filled with girls, like a pick-pocket sketching the Hope Diamond. I'd be lining my coat with stolen glances. I don't have a partner in crime to keep me warm.

I know the signs. The teacher's assistant, a nice junior who comes to school with cherry eyes every time her lab partner gets a new boyfriend. Throw over your men! My history professor and her roommate of 15 years.

I say someone in another time will remember us.

I want to be five years old mixing all the colors until I get the dark brown of her Monet shoulder freckles, and you give a Valentine to everyone in class.

C: oh

J: yeah! So that was a long one but it was just ah-

C: no I really liked it!

J: The feelings of being closeted during your formative years

C: I like how um- we start with like the imagery of the art class and kind of move past that but still circle back to it at the end

J: yes, all the art imagery throughout it- it's just so good. Yeah I can't do it justice with my reading but definitely listen to her perform it- her voice, the pain she feels cause I feel like the poem is very- its very beautiful like the wording she uses, the imagery she builds, its all this very like romantic scenario: ruby red, Monet freckles, it's all very like romantic imagery but then the pain of what she's saying- just like the absolute she's just head over heels in love with this girl who can never- she can never love her back and it's just- she's kind of forced to hold all this in so, I always liked the juxtaposition of such beautiful imagery conveying this like- raw pain. That's my stance on it.

C: exactly and I think that that kind of like- I don't know how to put it. Like- with like literature and stuff anytime there's like a sad romantic story, I think they always make it sound ten times more beautiful in words. And I think that poem did that really- yeah that one really resonated with me.

J: It really- yeah, took me back, took me back to like my middle school years when I was like woah! This got a little personal, but it's just- it's absolutely like- whenever I'm just bored or just want to listen to poetry, that's like the first one I go to and I'm a lot more familiar with spoken word I will admit, I do listen to more spoken word poetry than like read poetry, it's just what I became familiar with and I think somethings added when you can hear the poet like the person behind the words, like saying them the way they're meant to be said, or the way they intended for them to be said that's just- like the performance aspect of it is just so resonating. Another one I really really love -another spoken-word piece- is couples therapy By Patrick Roche, hopefully, I'm pronouncing that correctly, and is essentially- it's a poem about depression, and depression kind of takes on the form of like an abusive partner almost. It kind of shows how it's- I don't know the entire thing is like that's like the one thing that's been constant in his life, that's the one thing that's always been there, and how depression kind of like consumes him and takes everything from him. so, did get off on a little bit of a tangent but spoken word is just so, so beautiful.

C: no I agree, there's one that I couldn't find in time for this, but its about the school to prison pipeline and its three women and just- the way that they perform it is incredible, and it really changes it from reading it cause everyone does like read poetry differently I think.

J: right, you have to take into consideration like accents, where the person pauses, and it's all- it’s a different vibe.

C: Exactly!

J: yeah, to put it in different, loose terms. But yeah, what is your I guess- since we’ve gone through all the poems we like, what is your experience with poetry? Is it something new that you just found out about, is it something you've known for a while

C: It's something I’ve definitely known for a while, I didn't know much about it though, I knew like some poets and I would just read those poems over and over. I had this book that I would always carry around with me in seventh grade- it was like green and gold, and it was just like poems from the 1800s by the same old white guys. And then I discovered like- other poetry and I'm like Okay, I like this a lot more.

J: Who was the old white guy?

C: Ohhh, William Drummond.

J: Oh okay, I was thinking of a different poet but-

C: Well there's a lot of them.

J: Yeah, I will check that out though, that sounds interesting.

C: Yeah.

J: Alright well I- I think that my experience with poetry has been like very on again off again. I- I’m learning about it, I would say. I'm getting more interested in it. I think my first exposure to it was like in the fourth grade. My fourth-grade teacher was like really obsessed with poetry, So she would make us like write it a lot. But she didn't really teach us the fundamentals of it, so we were kind of just like writing what we can and I know I was really into writing it for a while. Not well, but.

C: No me too, I used to have a- I used to write these really long, wordy poems because I thought that's how poems had to be and I’m kind of like writing things that I actually enjoy now. I used to have these like page-long poems that made absolutely no sense because I was just focused on how it should sound. And I had this little website that I would put them on- under a fake name of course.

J: That's cute!

C: I was one of those people, it was so bad. But I’m glad I discovered other poetry and kind of enjoy it now.

J: yeah I was under the impression that all poems had to rhyme, so I would try to like incorporate- I wasn't even like experimenting with rhyme schemes, it would always be end rhymes. So it'd be like- I don't know dark, park. It was always at the end. So like every other- I think it's like an ABAB pattern or something, where it'd be like every other line rhymed. I was so proud of myself, I was like ‘yes! Look at you, you're a poet’ I was not really. And then

C: Ohhh.

J: Oh sorry. I was yeah- then after that I like dumped it for a little while, I was like no, I'm done with poetry. And then I- then I like stumbled upon Wattpad. And now here me out, people have a lot of ideas about what Wattpad is- and I won't confirm or deny, but I’ll be it, they have really really good poetry. I will say there's some really talented, creative people there. It's very pretty poetry I will say. It's very flowery, which I love. It's not everyone's cup of tea, and sometimes I don't understand what they're saying, but the images they're creating in my head are very pretty, so I appreciate it. One that I’m currently obsessed with is American Gothic by dreamg1rl, all lowercase and the I in girl is a 1. It talks about the I guess- the black experience in America. And it's another one like I think Art Class Where it's just beautiful, gorgeous imagery that just is conveying a lot of like grit, and sometimes pain. Just like real- yeah. It's just brutally honest and beautiful poetry so, I would say check it out. What were you gonna say?

C: Oh I was gonna admit to this time in my life when for two years I exclusively wrote Shakespearean sonnets and no other kind of poetry. It was so bad, none of it made sense.

J: you've gotta show me after this, cause I-

C: Oh absolutely not, that’ll never see the light of day.

J: No! I need to- I kid you not, we had like a thing in creative writing class I think last year- I was very shy to show any of my work, I would just turn it in. And we’d have like share days in zoom class where we just pull up the writing and our teacher would read it out. So after I turned in every assignment I’d be like please don't pick this to be read, I don't want this. So we had like a sonnet prompt, and I thought we had to write sonnets, but no one turned up with sonnets. So then I like private chatted her and I was like ‘What's going on, I spent hours writing a sonnet and making it rhyme, and everyone's writing like haikus and stuff, what's going on and then she was like ‘why don't we share yours since you spent so much effort on it. People liked it, it was anime-inspired so that was a little embarrassing but…

C: If it works.

J: You need to show me these sonnets.

C: Ha, no!

J: That's some talent if you're writing sonnets at a young age, that's talent.

C: I was writing them, I was not writing good ones. I was eleven, and I thought that that was the only type of poetry.

J: Were they in iambic pentameter?

C: …Yes

J: [gasping] No, that's crazy, you have some talent and I need to see them.

C: With what you were saying before about Wattpad poetry, I definitely prefer reading poems by people I have absolutely no idea who they are, instead of like reputable authors.

J: Oh?

C: While they have like really beautiful poems, like kind of the things we discussed, I like seeing just what people come up with in like- less of a formal setting.

J: Right, I feel like- Yeah I agree, I think there's a lot of work that does go unnoticed because they're not you know, published authors, and there are some gems in there, so I agree. Alright, I think we’ve exhausted our discussion for today, I hope all of you listening in enjoyed this. If you want since we have comments now since we moved to Spreaker, you can put your favorite poem in the comments, maybe if you've heard one of the ones we’ve talked about you can give like your own opinion on them, or you can post one we haven't heard of so…

C: send us your own

J: Oh yeah!

C: And we’ll assure you that it won’t be as bad as my sixth-grade iambic pentameter.

J: Send us your own! Why don't we like - I’m so sad that I came up with this now, while we’re recording- but why don't we like have a prompt and then they can send in poetry- you give us a prompt.

C: That would be cool though, I don't know

J: Hmm, how about this: ice cream. It could be sad, it could be funny, it could be you know, it could be anything you want. It could be like a metaphor for something tragic so-

C: it doesn't have to be a sonnet!

J: It doesn't have to be a sonnet but we love sonnets here. If you want, give Charlotte some support and write a Shakespearean sonnet about ice cream! Yeah, send them in, and if you guys want more poetry content head on over to The Chronicle, we have a poetry section for March since it is poetry month. And as always we have the fabulous, amazing Teen Experience Through Poetry every issue, go check them out, there's some really talented voices in there. Yeah, We’ll see you guys next issue!

C: See ya!