Arts Institute Blog

When I was in high school we were required to study a foreign language. Living in South Florida, the prudent choice would have been to take Spanish and to actually pay attention in class but I chose to do neither. I chose to take the class that had the highest percentage of boys with long hair and black turtleneck sweaters: Mrs. Murray’s French class. I also chose to spend the majority of the semester looking over the shoulder of one Aaron Schantz, who had neither long hair nor a black turtleneck sweater, but who had something I found—to my surprise—much more interesting. No, it was not the secret to conjugating verbs in the past perfect tense. No, what Aaron had was a bag full of comic books and he would hide them in his French textbook and read them all period. And I would crane my neck to read over his shoulder until he got sick of me breathing down his neck and he gave me a stack to hide in my own textbook. And that is why I can’t speak French.

Though an avid reader, I had never before considered comic books as a valid literary option. They always just seemed like the hyper-active second-cousin to the Sunday funnies: all flash and tight pants and no substance. But boy was I wrong. Comics are visually compelling with complicated story-lines and intriguing characters—and they are not limited to adventure stories or superheroes. The medium is changing and evolving. Some of the most innovative story-telling and visual artistry is happening in comics. I’ve loved watching the form grow and discovering for myself artists and writers like Lynda Barry, Daniel Clowes, and Chris Ware.

With literary magazines publishing them, respected authors like Sherman Alexie and Mat Johnson (of the University of Houston) creating them, and awards like the Pulitzer and the National Book Award honoring them, comics are definitely not just for French class anymore.   I have recently decided to get off the sidelines and into the comics game myself—working in collaboration with my extremely talented artist mother, I have written and had accepted for publication my first literary comic. We are working on several more and in this blog I will talk about the collaboration process and the art of literary comics.

Who knows, maybe I’ll make a few comics fans along the way—though don’t follow my lead on the French thing. If you are in a French class, you should pay attention and save the comics for later. Because then you can read comics in English and French. Très awesome!  

Well, the ideas have been flowing better, and I’ve been doing some more free writing throughout the process of drafting these poems. I have been working on a poem for the project that includes aspects of the sonnet form. I am following the ababcdcdefefgg rhyme scheme and using a ten syllable count per line. It, again, has been interesting responding to these Japanese tales and using specific forms.  

I thought I’d include a draft of one of the villanelles that I’ve been working on for the project.  

The Change of Falling 

            after the Japanese tale “Kume and the Washerwoman” 

What makes us love what we cannot hold,

that which forces us to fall into the water

where women wash their dirty clothes?

Wasn’t I a god before I saw her, bold

and robed in clouds? I knew the thoughts

that make mortals love what they cannot hold.

A pattern of wanting things forbidden,

fruit, and places touched that must be bought

with blame and cleaned like dirty clothes.

They say it was her thigh where I lost my hold

on everything above, on knowing like a father

what makes children love what they cannot hold.

But it was her dark eyes that found me, showed

me what it was to be born out of the water,

the river where the women wash their clothes.

Loving her meant knowing what was old;

for time became something that mattered.

And what makes fools love what they cannot hold,

I found in that woman washing clothes.

I had written several poems, as I wrote last time, throughout the course of a week; I was happy about how these villanelles turned out. But, as I started writing a different poem (also based on a Japanese tale), I got stuck. I couldn’t decide what form I wanted to do, I couldn’t really decide what it was about the tale that I wanted to respond to….the list goes on. So, I thought I’d put what I had written about away for a little while and come back to it. I have looked over it several times since then, but I still haven’t figured out where I want to go with that one. I decided that I’d try a few things to get over my writer’s block.

 The tale that I was writing about was about a husband and wife who do not see each other for a long time, and when the husband finally comes home (after years of being gone in search of silk and work), he sees the ghost of his wife, still suffering from their separation. I think that getting started on writing poems for particular projects can be hard for a few reasons. You don’t just want to voice back what the story is about. You sometimes have to let the story sit with you a while.  In my case, I realized that I needed to write to work through my writer’s block (sort of ironic or contradictory, I guess). So, I started writing down whatever came to my mind about the story…images, things that the characters might be thinking or doing. And while I didn’t finish the initial poem, I ended up with a new poem, which I decided to write in the form of a sonnet. It also helped me to read information about the surrounding ideas of the tales. For instance, this last poem I wrote included an image of a flower that blooms at night, and while I’ve seen such flowers, I looked up more information about them, and looking up this information led me to other possible images and words.

I will often get frustrated when the ideas or words don’t seem to be coming, but sometimes it means taking a day off from trying to write (or even looking at the poem that won’t seem to finish), or doing a quick writing exercise to just get some ideas down.

I am beginning work on a project that involves several different disciplines– glass blowing, poetry, and Japanese legends about ghosts and demons. I am not an artist of all of these arts, or very knowledgable about any of them, except for poetry; but I am finding that both of these arts, in which I find myself a stranger, are influencing my writing in new ways. For me, poetry is about connections, whether its between people or between different art forms.

 Along with moving outside of my artistic knowledge base, I am also working on moving outside my normal mode of poetic form, free verse. I’ve written several villanelles, and I’ve been writing a collaborative renga in response to a Japanese tale about a woman who dies of grief when her husband leaves in search of silk and doesn’t come back for many years. It has been interesting doing a collaborative piece (I’ve been doing a 5-7-5 and a 7-7 grouping and then the next person responds to those lines, without repeating those previous images). It’s sort of like playing a game, in a way; your move depends on the previous player’s move, and you make your way through the poem. I don’t mean to say that this form is simplistic like one might come to associate games, though.

There does seem to be a simplicity to forms like the renga where I can count syllables and concentrate on nature…but to say that this form is simplistic is to not imply that it is easy- just as end rhyme may seem easy, if we look at how it’s done in children’s books and certain corny love songs where you can guess what’s coming at the end of the next line….”Sometimes I just forget; say things I might regret;….” For those of you who haven’t listened to Delilah lately, that’s a little “Glory of Love” for you.

One can hardly blame Sally Field for her display of pure, naked neediness all those years ago. That little speech is nothing—I mean nothing—compared to the total conniption fit of gratitude and delight that goes on inside my head for achievements far inferior to winning an Oscar. If I were to give an Oscar acceptance speech, it might look a little something like this:

Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god. You validate me as a human. You really validate me as a human and finally justify my existence. I’m not worthless. Hold me.

It’s not pretty, I realize. Especially when you imagine the sobbing and maniacal clapping of hands that would accompany that speech. Fortunately, I will never win an Oscar and all that frightening jubilation can be safely conducted behind closed doors, open to the scrutiny of no one but my cats—and they already judge me for less.

All this is to say, that while I have spent most of this semester griping about the pains of rejection, I do also know the joys of acceptance. Just this semester I have had two stories accepted for publication, and it feels great. That doesn’t mean that I will never be rejected ever again (though it should!!!!!!), but it does mean that I have a little something to prop me up when the rejections do come. I’ve made it before and I’ll make it again, I just have to hang in there. And then I can do my private happy dance and scare the cats again.

If you are interested, you can read one of my published stories here.