“Let me be that I am and seek not to alter me.” William Shakespeare (Much Ado About Nothing)
So poetry gets a bad rap some reason for being...''out there'' because they're hard to interpret or something. I admit, studying English sometimes, I have to read and interpret poems where I'm thinking, "This is sooo ridiculous--this is only famous because so-and-so wrote this." But I think that if you come across a poem and you feel that it's above average, it's probably because without taking a ridiculous magnifying glass to it, you can find something special about it.
I took a look at this in my Creative Writing class and even though it might seem a bit graphic/violent, it's one of my absolute favorites.
Reason to Survive November
[Tony Hoagland]
[Tony Hoagland]
November like a train wreck –
as if a locomotive made of cold
had hurtled out of Canada
and crashed into a million trees,
flaming the leaves, setting the woods on fire.
The sky is a thick, cold gauze –
but there’s a soup special at the Waffle House downtown,
and the Jack Parsons show is up at the museum,
full of luminous red barns.
– Or maybe I’ll visit beautiful Donna,
the kickboxing queen from Santa Fe,
and roll around in her foldout bed.
I know there are some people out there
who think I am supposed to end up
in a room by myself
with a gun and a bottle full of hate,
a locked door and my slack mouth open
like a disconnected phone.
But I hate those people back
from the core of my donkey soul
and the hatred makes me strong
and my survival is their failure,
and my happiness would kill them
so I shove joy like a knife
into my own heart over and over
and I force myself toward pleasure,
and I love this November life
where I run like a train
deeper and deeper
into the land of my enemies.
as if a locomotive made of cold
had hurtled out of Canada
and crashed into a million trees,
flaming the leaves, setting the woods on fire.
The sky is a thick, cold gauze –
but there’s a soup special at the Waffle House downtown,
and the Jack Parsons show is up at the museum,
full of luminous red barns.
– Or maybe I’ll visit beautiful Donna,
the kickboxing queen from Santa Fe,
and roll around in her foldout bed.
I know there are some people out there
who think I am supposed to end up
in a room by myself
with a gun and a bottle full of hate,
a locked door and my slack mouth open
like a disconnected phone.
But I hate those people back
from the core of my donkey soul
and the hatred makes me strong
and my survival is their failure,
and my happiness would kill them
so I shove joy like a knife
into my own heart over and over
and I force myself toward pleasure,
and I love this November life
where I run like a train
deeper and deeper
into the land of my enemies.
You don't have to totally see it the way I do, because that's the beauty of poems--there should never be a "memorized answer" that they teach you in high school. Anyway, I love, love, LOVE this poem, because for me, it's a description of a frame of mind I wish more people exhibited. Everyone stresses, everone suffers, and everyone has their giants to battle.
But for me, this poem seems to say that the best way to win, is to prove to your enemies, challenges, issues--that you're above being bitter and above feeling sorry for yourself. And sometimes it's tough! But our happiness, our victory equals defeat for those who want to see us suffer & fail. If you believe in Satan, you know what I mean. Proving to him that you're above temptation, or you can be forgiven for screw-ups and mishaps--it's our success and his failure.
I love Hoagland's language; it's bold, blunt and brave. I don't dabble too much in poetry, but it's poetry like this that makes me think that I want to try my hand at it and hopefully have some sort of impact on someone else.
What poetry do you like? Are you a poet?
If you want to find poems of all shapes and sizes, check out www.poetry.org.
