Yes, It's Really Eden

“The title is really ‘Eden’?” I asked, shaking my head. “That’s both uncreative and presumptuous.” 

Then I read it—the poem by Javen Tanner in Fire in the Pasture. And I nodded.

From what I understood, the poem describes a secret meeting and sharing of fruit between the speaker and his lover in a garden. While it’s apparently a modern tale, Tanner makes several references to the story of Adam and Eve throughout the poem. He seems to feel that he and his lover are mirroring Adam and Eve’s experiences in and after the Garden of Eden. 

My basic opinion about what makes poetry “good” is how much or how differently it makes me feel. And I generally have a hard time expressing these feelings in the usual terms. Such is the case with “Eden.” Its Biblical imagery brought a sense of the epic, spiritual, and inevitable. The slight differences between the Bible quotations and the poem’s paraphrases brought depth. And Tanner’s diction brought intimacy.

The diction in particular caught me. For one thing, his use of the word “proxies” in the first line was spot on. I had to look up the word “nomenclature” from the third stanza, and I’m still not sure I know exactly what Tanner meant by it. But that’s part of poetry’s art, too, I think. Perhaps the only word I didn’t like was the word “sick” to describe the air, but it admittedly fit the theme of its surrounding lines. 

And the poem’s final stanza describing the fruit—a peach—and the woman’s heart. . . . Again, I’m not sure if I “get” the lines completely, but they’re perfect:

                delicious and desirable.

                See how it beats and bleeds,

                how it breaks to heal itself.

These lines feel like life. And love. And it made me wonder how breaking heals. But I suppose that’s exactly the point, isn’t it?  

"The Excommunicate" by Danny Nelson

Consistent with my theme of this semester, I found Danny Nelson’s poem “The Excommunicate” to be a deeply insightful view into the mind of one who has lost faith and feels there is no way to reconcile it. The imagery of the piece is dark and bitter. It opens with a condescending mention of a “white-shirted man” who rests his hand upon the back of the narrator and assure shim that “God is not gone.” However, as the poem will reveal, the narrator feels that this man has misunderstood his need entirely. He knows God is not “gone,” but rather feels that God remains all the same, but as a “plague” in his life. He goes as far as to describe God as a “vengeful task master,” an “unapproachable father,” and an “inconsistent judge.” Ben Abbott’s reading of the poem brings these empassioned declarations to life, and you can feel the pain in each depiction of a distanced deity.

            

It is clear that the speaker is as hard on himself and his misunderstood band of brothers as he is on his Heavenly Father. He calls them “bastards” and “abortions in the wilderness.” Purposefully using such emotive language, Nelson’s narrator feels victimized and judgmental, but still justifies his actions in his head, stating that there are “some hungers which are better to fill than to die.” The most heart breaking lines, for me, read, “No help from him who SAYS he bore the burden of all. No hope. No hope remains save sliced wrists, harsh medicines, or the long slow slope built by the bored Gods.” There seems to be no escape for the torture soul, except those of self inflicted pain and anguish. The poem ends with a supplication, perhaps made in cruel jest, but perhaps as a sincere, final cry, as the narrator states, “Oh Savior, stay this night with me, behold, tis eventide.”

            

I cannot imagine feeling so angry towards God, which is why I appreciated this poem so much. Poetry is an excellent lens into the emotive life of someone who you may not understand otherwise, and this certainly was the case for me reading this poem. I felt pained both listening and reading it, sympathy and a sense of hopelessness in spite of my own convictions of the Lord’s infinite forgiveness and goodness. That is the power of the text. I am fascinated by these people and am trying to find a better way to communicate the love of God to them, and this poem certainly gave me insight into their lives that I did not fully comprehend beforehand.

Reaction and Analysis of "The Excommunicate" by Danny Nelson

This poem is a shocking departure from the usual sentiments expressed in the church, but it ends with something familiar and powerful. As the title implies, poem seems to express the feelings that accompany a person being excommunicated from the church. The language and imagery are strong and vivd. The poems starts and speaks of God as "a plague in my blood clotting life giving streams." Who would think of God as a plague? This put me in the shoes of someone experiencing extreme spiritual pain. The speaker doesn't deny the existence of God at all, but feels weakened by him, or maybe simply weakened by the burden of whatever he/she has done.

The speaker feels like an "abortion of a wilderness church" and "broken by hunger." There is so much imagery of solitude and hopelessness that contributes to the overall theme of being stuck in a whirlwind of doubt and guilt. The speaker refers to the savior as having only said "be bore the burden of all," implying his doubt about the validity of the atonement. Amid this doubt, he says, "no hope remains save slashed wrists." But, after spending almost the entire poem painting this hopeless picture, the poem concludes with the words from a hymn:

O Savior, stay this night with me; Behold, 'tis eventide.

That line (and the entire hymn) has always brought real comfort to me when I've felt burdens in my life, but this poem created an even more profound meaning to that line by using it to remedy such exquisite hopelessness, sin, doubt, and guilt. To be excommunicated would be an enormously difficult trial, but this poem depicts how far-reaching the Atonement truly is. It helps me to have more confidence that no matter what mistakes I make or how many doubts I may have, I will still be able to find solace if I embrace the Savior.

"UTopia" With Snakes, Apples, and Iagos

Laura Nielson Baxter's poem, "UTopia," begins with two questions: "Have you ever heard / of a flawless paradise? / Who would tell about it?" The questions serve to grab the reader's interest, forcing them to pause and consider what it means for a place to be perfect, flawless. From these questions she moves on to state, "There's not much of a story there: / 'Life's Perfect, The End.'"
This statement grabbed my attention for two reasons. First, most people wish for a perfect world. They believe that if God is perfect and created the world, then the world should be perfect. However, that's not how God works for a very good purpose, which leads me to my second reason: good stories need conflict.
I'm currently taking a fiction writing class in which we've discussed what makes a good story. One of the key components is conflict. Without conflict a story is flat and shows no growth or progress on the part of the characters. In this poem, Baxter uses the idea of the need for conflict to point out that in a perfect world there is no conflict which means there is no growth. If there is no growth, the purpose of life is undermined. This sums up why the world isn't perfect, despite the fact that is was created by God. The world isn't perfect because we need to grow.
We as LDS people believe that there must be conflict or opposition in all things in order for the plan of salvation to work. There must be an opposite so that we can struggle, grow, and progress towards exaltation. This is why the world contains "a snake," "an apple," "heathens," "Pandora's Box," and "Iagos." We need conflict as personified in these allusions to the Bible, Greek mythology, and Othello illustrate. Without opposition, there is no purpose to life.
It's an important concept to understand and this poem presents it in a unique way that allows the reader to ponder on their personal perceptions of the world and why it has flaws.

Picture from pixabay.com

The poem that stood out to me during the listening section of this assignment was "Close" by Amber Watson. I did not particularly like the poem, but listening to it made me notice the alliteration in the poem and how it worked to create a gasping like sound similar to one who has injured themselves. I would have missed that if I'd only read the poem silently.

the Sunnyside Road

I didn't originally want to analyze this poem. I was easily disinterested by its first remarks to alcohol. But, the more I read, the more I found this piece to be completely beautiful and different than what I expected. And maybe almost too relatable to my life.

me
in your bed, your head clogged
with phlegm, you having gotten
drunk three nights out of seven
every week while I was gone
so you wouldn’t have to feel
 the trashed-out beauty of this
 place we walked in early June
as I now retrace those steps
 that led us to Sri Rathiga...

 Fire in the Pasture (p. 263)

Timothy Liu takes us through the journey of a love memory he had with his partner. There is heavy imagery of the scenery "six stone lions standing guard / over bushes heavy with summer / roses the size of newborn heads / ". The language and description helps personify all of these normal objects we see. We all have a connection with this description--we have seen in movies or read in books. There is definitely objective indicators that help us identify the setting, as she names the city, "Sri Rathiga," or the "where Krishna’s and his wife’s ecstatic dance inlaid in wood hung above our table filling up with those soft green peppers not to be found anywhere else in Ilford..."

This poem has an LDS theme of relationships, love, and unity. The memory takes place beginning in a garden area--and alludes to the blossomed roses, this is a symbol for love flourishing, and a relationship developed. Later, he says, "from the day I put its golden weight on thirteen years ago (my partner saying, you’ll have to take it off yourself—I’ll never remove it)." In the LDS culture, we have a strong belief and foundation upon the importance of marriage, love, and unity in a companionship. Doctrinally, it is the greatest and highest covenant we can make on this earth with God, and here this marriage is portrayed as now separate and distant, no longer united. He chooses to only use the pronouns of "I" or "me," and never "we." He refers to his wife as "Beloved," which can also be a religious connotation --as something of great worth, and have spiritual connection with them. This applied to me, because even though I have never been in this situation before, I feel, we have all had failures and successes in relationships that help us zoom out and see it from a different perspective later on in life --as Liu has. We may all have to walk down the sunnyside road of a memory--but we usually do so as different and better people.

446 words
"Sunnyside Road," Timothy Liu, Fire in the Pasture, 263-264

An Adult Take and Tone in Tyler Chadwick's "My Daughter's Favorite Bedtime Story"

Oh man!  I just realized I had forgot to post my post!  I guess I learned my lesson on drafting it in Word.  Sorry for the late post, but here it is!

I love Dr. Seuss and it is no surprise to me when he is a favorite of others.  "Do you like my hat?"  has become a beloved phrase in the Nelson house, as we begged my mother to read "Go, Dog. Go!" again and again.  It looks like it is Chadwick's daughter's favorite too.  Seeing as she knows the ending, I bet she begs him to read it over and over too.

                                                                    

This poem is arranged in very long stanzas- the first being 28 lines describing and analyzing different parts of the book.  For example:

Mid-ocean, midnight, / the black water smooth as sleep,/ or maybe death, but she'd never think of that,/ would she?

The lines are broken up into thoughts, almost miniature tone-shifts themselves.  Much of Chadwick's lines and thoughts are like this, taking an adult perspective to a child's book. This is shown in sentence length (he has very long, intricate sentences, whereas Dr. Seuss has small, short phrases) , as well as commenting on things like "impossible three-story rowboats."  He adds realism to fiction and even adds hints of Seuss to his sentences.  I feel like he longs to see the world and stories through his daughter's eyes, as  one who waits for a final party and wants to read the same story over and over again.  

 The first stanza builds to Dogs together at last, eating big slices of cake and jumping on trampolines directly to a tone shift into the final 6 lined stanza reminiscing over a book ending and starting over. Is that how children work?  It has been a long time since I've been a child, but I am pretty sure they are prone to mood changes.  They build up excitement and wonder, only to slow down when it's over and begin to climb again.  

This hints at several LDS themes.  One, being child-like innocence, wondering and waiting for that "final party" where all the "dogs from the book come together."  I think that this could allude to heaven.  All us dogs from life coming together to eat cake and celebrate.  Another, being to start over again.  Life is a cycle with childhood, adolescence, adulthood- which essentially starts over with each new generation.  I hope my children will have the same child-like wonder in books that I did, and that I have the same adult-like wonder in children as Chadwick does.   

Cryptic Symbolism in John Talbot’s “Nightjar”

This poem may just fit the stereotype of all poems. Right from the beginning the symbolism is trying. You are left to grapple with each word fighting to try and decipher what the poet was trying to represent to the reader. This can be fun to some, frustrating to others. In the case of this poem, it does not come easily. The poem begins:

“And if I shrink to drain your flask of pitch?

Call you duskfeather, call you nightjar.

Up and churr then, up and hawk for moths.

Come morning, not crosswise as others do”

A quick search of the word Nightjar will give you lists of information on a bird called a nightjar. This may help the reader begin to surmise the meaning of the poem. Nightjars are active at evening and all through the night. They also eat moths as a main food source.

The poem ends with:
“You toast of no vintage, you draft

Of afterthought tipped pinging into the butt,

Nightjar. Shallow in the ruts you scored

By the footpath, your paired bald

Eggs will baffle in the sun the toddler

Tomorrow and the toddler’s mother.”

In this sense we can see that the nightjar can be compared to the mother of a toddler. This reminds me of my personal reflections of my own mother. Just as the Nightjar works all through the night, the mother cares for the toddler late into the night. She wakes when the toddler has a nightmare or is sick. She cleans, prepares, and feeds.

The aspect of religion is also intriguing. There is an allusion made to the verse in the Docterine and Covenants, “shrank to drink the bitter cup” and also referring to the Savor’s words in Luke 22:42. This religious undertone further exemplifies the mother’s commitment to the child and to God. The symbolism between the Nightjar bird and the mother and child brings out the dedication of the mother.

The Silence of the Innocents in Neil Aitken’s “The Art of Forgetting“

During the journey through life we have experiences, some are good others are not so good and some are consequences of our own choices. Those bad experiences are often responsible for our negative emotions such as stress, anxiety and sadness. Nevertheless, we still feeling responsible for what we could have done differently, which drags us even further into desolation.

Thanks to my Psychology background, the analysis of this poem might be biased due to the “women oppression” sense I perceived in the lines of this poem. Similarly, my interpretation could have led me to describe the consequences that result from rushed marriages.

When I started reading “The Art of Forgetting”, I immediately felt a genuine empathy for the character and the way her feelings reflect despair. The poem starts with repetitious phases of “how to swim, how to ride a bike… how to voice my own name”. This motive might be expressing a strong desire of seeking ways to overcome a bad experience…an unhealthy marriage.  I was impressed after I read the last line of the first paragraph: “I marry to my teeth, but cannot break open”. This metaphor invoked for explaining the oppression this woman is experiencing in her new life after marriage. Women in particular are unable to practice activities they used to enjoy when they were single; even today some of them still experiencing male domination.

Moreover, the shift in tone goes from hopelessness to honoring her grandmother’s example of how she was able to forget her own life in pro of her family “wipe clean the first two years of married life, the loss of her world, my mother’s birth”.

This last sentence seems to reflect how women in previous generations were able to fulfill a unique expected mother-wife role, assigned by society. Although, some of them were not pleased with this duty, being a submissive wife required women to not resist their husband’s will.

 In addition, I immediately became touched by how women might have to sacrifice their goals because they end up marrying too soon or too early. It is not a secret that marriage is a well-known concept in the LDS culture and that some people become engaged in less than a month. As a consequence, some people experience the “…hundred shades of smog” in their every day life because they failed to truly get to know their partners before marriage. In my opinion, there might not be a specific number of years a couple had to date before they get married however, it took me six years to be convinced that I was marrying the right person.

Later in the poem, we are able to hear the character voice when she says: “I am not my grandmother …I want to remember this year and the one yet to be” this dialog allow the reader to identify a denouement in the plot structure when she says: "her muscles have memory and how this desire to become free is leading her to pray every morning". The resolution could be addressed when the character mentions, “An old horse always returns, mile after mile” in this line she implies she wants to go back where she belongs, she hankers her previous life.

I believe Aitken’s poem invite us to pray and to realize that choosing an eternal companion is not an easy task. Therefore, we have to seek guide for our Heavenly Father to find a worthy man who can take us to the temple to be sealed. Similarly, we as women have to be worthy as well to deserve these eternal blessings. As a final point, we have to know the person we are marrying, without forgetting that the Lord loves us equally, man and woman and that he wants us to be happy…”Nevertheless neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 11:11)

The Sincerity in the "Prayer" by S.P. Bailey

I laughed out loud while reading this poem and then I was touched.  In the poem “Prayer” by S.P. Bailey tells the story of a boy’s picture day as a first grader. The poet paints scene for the readers and we cannot help but relate to the situation. The poet has a sincerity of tone and an ability to describe such an important life event.

It was picture day. Me: a first grader. I was all ready.

Hair combed. Shirt tucked in tight. Tie clipped on.

Mom’s orders were clear:

            No getting dirty or messing up my hair

            No riding my bike. No playing in the sandpile.

            No playing outside at all.

These six lines pull to mind a young boy that often gets dirty while playing. He is a little rambunctious but he has a desire to please his mother. Each reader can remember picture day and how they tried to make sure they were clean until the click of the camera. The poet repeats the orders from mom with a very parallel format. Just as if a mother would try to get her son to understand, she instructs ““No” getting dirty” with an emphasis on the “No.”

Later on in the poem the little boy decides to follow the spirit of the law and but still have fun. Only then he is in his playhouse and gets caught in a rainstorm. He is so afraid of disappointing his mother. He prays with the sincerity of a little boy.  The rain stops. He is sure that he saw the finger of the Lord. God stopped the rain for him.

The part of the poem that really stood out to me was the boy’s sincerity that God listened to him and answered his prayers. The poet compared this kind of faith with that of an adult that would think that it was a “coincidence” that the rain stopped. I like to stop and acknowledge gifts from God. Sometimes it is seeing a squirrel, sometimes it is when things work out with my rent and sometimes it is when I have prayed for my sister and she starts to do better. I hope that I always remember where all gifts come from and never think "oh it was a coincidence." 

Sharing Names in Sally Stratford's "Inheritance"

A sharing of names, and of stories, bonds two family members together. She’s ready to hear more stories, she’s “holding a tape recorder” waiting for her to wake up. This desire to know about our ancestors’ is common in the LDS culture; as is the sharing of names. How often while performing ordinances for family members in the temple, do you hear the same name?

My grandmother, Alice Clariece Ricks Christensen

I reflect on my grandma, my grandpa, and my family while reading this poem. My grandma Alice was sick and in bed for a long time. I often sat by her bedside. My grandpa cared for her relentlessly for nine years. My husband’s grandmother’s name is also Alice, and this is what he wants to name our baby girl, who is coming in April. I haven’t been so sure about it, and I don’t know if I still am. But coming from my great-uncle’s funeral just now, I realized how much I love my family, especially those older than me who have worked so hard to pave a good life for me. Naming my baby Alice wouldn’t just be a tribute to my grandma—it would be a gentle, sweet reminder to my own mother of her mother; to my grandpa of his wife, and to my husband and I of the wonderful grandmothers we have known and loved. And it is this legacy of remembering and honoring our family that has Latter-day Saints reusing names. I believe there really is a special meaning in the sharing of names.

When Sally Stratford (the author) starts off mentioning that the two of them share names, you sense there is a bond between them. Then, she continues with detailed imagery to further paint the physical scene of things around her—her ring like “a heavy rock of salt”, her chair—which is “a pink velvet chair”. But she further lets us see what she is seeing, her sweet gentle grandmother. Sally uses a simile to describe her grandmother’s sagging, aged skin “like pie crust draping over apples”. There are tender descriptions of her grandmother, and sweet reminiscing on the stories already once told. We know this time together will soon end—as the author alludes to her grandmother’s passing that is just around the corner. However, the end doesn’t make me feel sad. It seems like it is time, and that all will be well. The sun will still shine, and the stories will still live, as will her grandmother’s name and the legacy associated to it.

-Lizzy S.

(419 words)

Poem: "Inheritance", Sally Stratford, page 400