As I have noted before, I did not set any writing goals for myself this week. I am in a limbo -- in the middle of moving from Austin to Miami, and I wanted to concentrate on the work at hand. This morning, the movers came in. And after five hours of concentrated work -- boxing, labeling, discarding-- I decided it's time to head out. So, once the movers left, I packed my notebook, some of my old drafts and my computer to Monkey Nest.
I wasn't really hoping to get any real work done. But, I have been wanting to revisit an old poem of mine for the last couple of days. When in February 2013, I took the persona poetry workshop, I had written a poem in the voice of Mahi (If you don't know who that is, check out the story called "The Goddess of Mahi River" in Folktales of India.) Personally, I think, Indian/South Asian folklores provide the poets with a rich archive. If the poets in the "Western" world have re-written Grimms fairytales to death, there is no reason why we should leave our folklores only to religious fundamentalists. I believe in radical retellings of our folklores, but that's a whole different post. For this one, I will stick to this particular poem.
The draft that I wrote during that class was long and full of assertions. In all honesty, it read like a "black magic woman"/"witch woman" poetry. And while I think Lady Lazarus is a wonderful poem, I cannot help but cringe at the lack of actual agency the narrator has in that poem. It's tone is almost compensatory in nature, the proclamations a little too childish. Also, the way in which Plath has exerted her influence on the Bengali women poets of the 1980s, it's a well-trodden path. And, problematic. So far as I am concerned. And I want to stay away from that. Instead, I wanted the understandings of gender to be a little bit more complicated. I wanted more inner contradictions, more grey areas.
I wanted this poem to do two things -- fill in some gaps in the actual myth. That is, break open the spaces where the myth is silent. Which, I think, requires some work that some can describe to really fall into the province of fiction-writing. The myth itself needs some more characterization, some more plot-building. In other words, some more imagining. Some more narration. Some amplification. I decided to work on the relationship between the father and the daughter. In the myth, we are told Mahi wanted to marry the sea against her father's wishes. And she left home because her father did not respect her choices. So, there is already an anti-patriarchal content in the story. The myth rests upon a disobedient daughter's tale. I expanded on this part even more. Gave the father particular characteristics : rage, habitual violence. Most importantly, his sense of deficiency for not having a son, a male heir. And Mahi is an observer of that rage, while feeling a deep sense of anger herself. For, she knows, she herself will never be enough for her father.
Two, instead, I wanted the understandings of gender to be a little bit more complicated. I wanted more inner contradictions, more grey areas. Mahi loves her father. Mahi hates her father. And it is this co-existence of love and anger that makes Mahi a complicated protagonist even in the original myth. I wanted to expand on that.
Now, I had thought through some of these issues when I wrote the first draft. But, something wasn't there. Today, what I mostly did, I pared it down. I made the lines crisper, shorter, less declarative, more descriptive, yet not totally taking away the declarative nature totally from the narrator. Let's face it, folks: those declarations empower us. They do help us to build our sense of a political identity. And, in my poem, I am more interested in combining those declarations along with certain other things, than erasing them altogether. And this way, I hope, the political nature of such declarations have been sharpened. Not neutralized.
So, these are the first few lines:
If you want to read the whole poem, please email me, and I can send you a copy ( I mean, all five readers of my blog:)))). I will love to get some more feedback on this one.
But more than anything else, I am happy. Happy because I produced something (even if it's a revision) during a week I wasn't really planning on working. And I have pared a 3 page draft to a 35 line poem. For some time I have been noticing that I tend to write long poems. Not that it's bad. But, as a writer, I am trying to break my comfort zone of writing long poems by making myself stick to shorter drafts. From that perspective, I have succeeded.
I wasn't really hoping to get any real work done. But, I have been wanting to revisit an old poem of mine for the last couple of days. When in February 2013, I took the persona poetry workshop, I had written a poem in the voice of Mahi (If you don't know who that is, check out the story called "The Goddess of Mahi River" in Folktales of India.) Personally, I think, Indian/South Asian folklores provide the poets with a rich archive. If the poets in the "Western" world have re-written Grimms fairytales to death, there is no reason why we should leave our folklores only to religious fundamentalists. I believe in radical retellings of our folklores, but that's a whole different post. For this one, I will stick to this particular poem.
The draft that I wrote during that class was long and full of assertions. In all honesty, it read like a "black magic woman"/"witch woman" poetry. And while I think Lady Lazarus is a wonderful poem, I cannot help but cringe at the lack of actual agency the narrator has in that poem. It's tone is almost compensatory in nature, the proclamations a little too childish. Also, the way in which Plath has exerted her influence on the Bengali women poets of the 1980s, it's a well-trodden path. And, problematic. So far as I am concerned. And I want to stay away from that. Instead, I wanted the understandings of gender to be a little bit more complicated. I wanted more inner contradictions, more grey areas.
I wanted this poem to do two things -- fill in some gaps in the actual myth. That is, break open the spaces where the myth is silent. Which, I think, requires some work that some can describe to really fall into the province of fiction-writing. The myth itself needs some more characterization, some more plot-building. In other words, some more imagining. Some more narration. Some amplification. I decided to work on the relationship between the father and the daughter. In the myth, we are told Mahi wanted to marry the sea against her father's wishes. And she left home because her father did not respect her choices. So, there is already an anti-patriarchal content in the story. The myth rests upon a disobedient daughter's tale. I expanded on this part even more. Gave the father particular characteristics : rage, habitual violence. Most importantly, his sense of deficiency for not having a son, a male heir. And Mahi is an observer of that rage, while feeling a deep sense of anger herself. For, she knows, she herself will never be enough for her father.
Two, instead, I wanted the understandings of gender to be a little bit more complicated. I wanted more inner contradictions, more grey areas. Mahi loves her father. Mahi hates her father. And it is this co-existence of love and anger that makes Mahi a complicated protagonist even in the original myth. I wanted to expand on that.
Now, I had thought through some of these issues when I wrote the first draft. But, something wasn't there. Today, what I mostly did, I pared it down. I made the lines crisper, shorter, less declarative, more descriptive, yet not totally taking away the declarative nature totally from the narrator. Let's face it, folks: those declarations empower us. They do help us to build our sense of a political identity. And, in my poem, I am more interested in combining those declarations along with certain other things, than erasing them altogether. And this way, I hope, the political nature of such declarations have been sharpened. Not neutralized.
So, these are the first few lines:
The title, for now, is "All Is Not Well." I am not entirely happy with it. But, until I find something better, this will act as a placeholder.Once I saw my fathercount the fragmentsof grasshoppers' wings.Stored in a woodencrate, collected overyears. A precise accountof the numbershe has mutilated.
If you want to read the whole poem, please email me, and I can send you a copy ( I mean, all five readers of my blog:)))). I will love to get some more feedback on this one.
But more than anything else, I am happy. Happy because I produced something (even if it's a revision) during a week I wasn't really planning on working. And I have pared a 3 page draft to a 35 line poem. For some time I have been noticing that I tend to write long poems. Not that it's bad. But, as a writer, I am trying to break my comfort zone of writing long poems by making myself stick to shorter drafts. From that perspective, I have succeeded.
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