"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.

The Art of Not Knowing

Patricia Karamesines "Introduction to the Mysteries/How to Read a Poem" uses a rather informal tone.  She dedicates her poem to "Sean" and the first line begins with "First, kiddo" as if addressing her son or a young person she cares about and is familiar with.  She addresses the reader as "toots" and "dearie" and "darling" giving the poem a light-hearted touch.    In a few places, she writes categorically listing different ideas as one would do when expressing ideas with examples.   Her poem, in many places, reads like a conversation.For example, while trying to explain how to read a poem in the second stanza, she writes "If you read a poem, yourself, alone, watch for those sudden synchronizations of, you know, pulses..."  Her tone makes the poem identifiable as if she was speaking to me and was perhaps my mother.  Though the tone and language of the poem often remains informal, the poet addresses a much deeper thought.

The last line of her poem reads "It isn't to know, darling, it's never to know, but only ever follow what calls". I was reminded of the movie "The Santa Claus" were a sweet little elf tells Tim Allen "Seeing isn't believing, believing is seeing".  Karamesines, in her poem, encourages the reader to experience, take risks, find adventure and stumble upon truth and knowledge as if  catching such things "playing naked in the stream".  She does not suggest not to seek for truth but rather experience life in a way where truth will find you.

Often times, I think Heavenly Father gives us a similar answer to our prayers.  We often want immediate and comprehensive answers to every plea and prayer without actually experiencing the adventure that comes when we don't know everything.  The poet writes "To read a poem is to stand with it and to move, to change in ardor of exchange, to wind with words into a nerve bundle of world's desire."  Such advice should be applied to experiencing life in general; we should be willing to experience and trust in God's promise that we will stumble upon our answers.

"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.

"hair like spun glass."

The poem in “Fire in the Pasture” I read that stuck out to me the most was My Daughter’s Favorite Bedtime Story by David Nielsen. It’s about how his daughter’s favorite bedtime story is Go, Dog, Go! by P.D. Eastman. He thinks it is interesting because he’s read it to her so many times, but she always wants to read it again. He uses a lot of descriptive language; “hair like spun glass” and “the black water smooth as sleep, or maybe death” being the most prominent. At one point, he reflects on if his daughter sees some of the details that he sees, then compares it to wondering if how seeing so much is how God feels about watching His children on earth:

Does she see in the sky/ a smile of teeth for a moon? I wondered once,/…if it’s how God feels, watching the pages,/knowing the end and the beginning,/ having already read it a hundred times,/ or more.

Separation and Faith in James Goldberg's "Ghazal"

One of the difficulties of being a Mormon is accepting the love of God and trying to develop a personal relationship with him, while simultaneously accepting his absence, to live life and make decisions without him telling you every choice you should make.

          James Goldberg’s “Ghazal” illustrates that difficulty poetically. The poem is a formal ghazal, meaning that it begins with a rhyming couplet and continues with unrhymed couplets after, each ending on the rhyme initiated by the first couplet. Goldberg’s poem begins with the rhyme “free again,” which is echoed throughout in variations of “—ee again.” This gives the poem a certain amount of momentum, pulling the reader through each couplet to hear what the next rhyme will be, like this:

Faith was the beam I removed—and went blind
You had to wash the clearness out with mud so I could see again

I left you once—because you told me that I should
When I come back, what will I be again?

The altar has room, James, for both of your legs
So don’t ask for that promise on just one knee again

          Ghazals originated anciently in Arabia, which immediately connotes Jerusalem, and both the Old and New Testaments. Goldberg touches on several biblical stories—Adam and Eve, Moses, Jonah—before landing on the story of Jesus, his experience in Gethsemane, and his healing of the blind man with clay.

          But the next stanza, the one when (I assume) Christ tells the man to leave, that one is less explicit. That stanza only says that the man told him to leave, and then he wondered what would happen when he was gone. This is like the story of the ten lepers, when Jesus told them all to go see the priests, and they weren’t healed until they left.

          It must have been a little scary to have to leave Jesus, and not know if you were going to be healed. The lepers must have wanted so badly to stay with Jesus, and when he told them to leave, it may have been a difficult thing to hear. But this is the great anxiety of our religion—to come to love and worship the Savior, but to have the faith that we can keep living in this world without him physically by our side. The faith that it took to obey Jesus, and leave him, is the same faith we must develop if we are to become like him. We must have the faith to act, knowing that with his Atonement, he can heal us.

Pears. Pears. Pears.

Every year growing up my mom would make us can pears. Hundreds and hundreds of pears scattered across the kitchen, blanketing every surface in a green layer of fruit. First we peal, then we core and then we cook. I hated every minute of it. I'd walk away from every batch with sore hands and sticky fingers. My mom always promised me it would be worth it come January, and it always was. The sticky sweet taste of pears became a comfort from January through April reminding me that summer would return.
My sister just had a baby. 7 lbs 20 inches of pure perfection bundled up in a dinosaur blanket. His full head of black hair poking out above the dinosaurs and footprints of the fabric. Every day I smell his head in with the hope that he still has that new baby smell, and every day I'm not disappointed. When my sister first found out she was pregnant she kept track of how big the baby was on her phone. I'd ask her weekly how big it was and she beamed with excitement as the little creature inside of her grew to different sizes of fruits. One day she told me he was the size of a grape. I looked her straight in the eye and said
"someday that grape inside of you is gonna get married and have little grapes of its own." She just looked at me and said.
"You're weird"
Now as he's growing and learning this poem in Fire In the Pasture makes me think of him. This new father is telling his son of all the wonderful things he's going to experience. Just as he thinks of his son, I think of my nephew. That someday he will smell pears and probably can them, and hopefully he doesn't hate it like I do. This poem's form makes me think of it more to myself, Because it doesn't have a classical poem type structure it makes me think of it in more of a thought structure.

Things Discovered in "Things Missed" by Simon Peter Eggertsen

I was lucky to find this poem within my section to which I felt that I could relate.  Simon Peter Eggertsen’s poem, “Things Missed” is basically a descriptive narrative of a trip that he took to Giza in a sort of independent self-discovery attempt.

            I went to Giza once this way, entered the wind-dusted

            space, dodged the thronging hawkers, slid sideways

past the harried shirtsleeve tugs of the pleading guides,

as they offered to sell me a day or two of knowing.

It was not only my personal fascination with pyramids and archaeological sites that called my attention to this essay, but also the way that the author begins by reverently stating the themes in the first stanza, and then describes an experience using imagery for the rest of the poem.  He spoke of shuffling in the sand, exchanging smiles with camels, and squinting into the west-leaning sun, in a vivid way. 

I have had similar experiences.  I am always dodging the tour guides as well whenever I visit an archaeological site.  There is something majestic about being alone in places like these, with the possibility of finding or seeing something that perhaps no one else has ever seen.  It can make that place sacred to you.  But what the author was really describing in a metaphorical way was his experience of finding truth on his own.

           

            Every now and then I make it a point to go

            without knowing to these places, try to discover

            a view of my own, be surprised, have

            an experience uncluttered by history or the facts.

This is something that we all do as Latter-day Saints.  In the church, especially while young (in age or in the church), we seem to be constantly bombarded with the idea that we need “to discover a view of [our] own.”  We are regularly reminded to obtain our own testimony.  We all wish to “have an experience” which allows us to “imagine [our] way to a bit of truth.”  Luckily, we do not have to go all the way to Egypt to find it.

Bottled Fruit by Melissa Dalton Bradford

I don't read titles. While I inadvertently do when clicking links for newspaper articles online or selecting titles from the shelves at the library, I unconsciously (until three minutes ago) don't look at them. Maybe that comes from a sense of wanting to let the work speak for itself and trying to prevent the formulation of a pre-conceived opinion, or maybe it stems from overeagerness to start reading. Sometimes it's because I'm lazy! Whatever the reason in this poem, my title-blindness kept me from recognizing I was reading about canning until I hit the third stanza.

It's not that the author is not clear in her subject matter. On the contrary, her elegant, personifying descriptions clearly set the scene when I went back for a second and third reading. But canning, a prominent theme in Mormon home culture because of its ties to food storage, has always been a messy, old-fashioned practice in my mind. It stirs memories of lugging dusty Mason jars up the stairs from my grandparents' damp basement to a hole in their garden to dump expired peaches and pickles. They always made this terrible plopping, oozing noise when they met the earth and it didn't help that the hole started to resemble a fairground port-a-potty.

In "Fruit," however, canning becomes the vehicle for a beautiful ode to the author's mother. Her tone is inviting and nostalgic as she shows her mothers' deep love and desire to provide for her children (both in her life and after she passed on) through her willingness to sacrifice and prepare.

"Let us go then, you and I, to visit those cellars
of all my mothers and their mothers and mothers,
who considered shelf life over self life..."

Her mother would give up the luscious, tangy flesh of a summer peach fresh from the tree and preserve it to satisfy her need to provide. Perhaps one day her stores of fruit and vegetables will outlast her, allowing her to still nourish her children with a meal made by her hands though she has left mortality. The insurance of shelf life was more important to her than instant gratification for her self life, which is a theme that rings true in Mormon culture as well.

P.S. If anyone has time to read the second draft of my personal essay and share feedback on how I can improve it I would really appreciate the input.

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)