Monday, April 18, 2011

"A Capella" poetry project


Here are some poems that I wrote after reading the "A Capella: Mennonite Voices in Poetry" anthology. They're inspired by some poetry-writing exercises made by Ann Hostetler (the editor of the collection / our professor), and were penned as part of an assignment given right before Goshen College's spring break this year. During that week off, I spent a few relaxing days in Onekama, Michigan, and the calm and snowy landscape made for a great creative environment!

"A Capella project"
(“poem with a line by ----.”)

Poem with a line by Jeff Gundy (from his piece “Where I Grew Up”)


Summer was always the best; summer nights, if we’re talking specifics.
I ran and ran through the city’s alleys,
found secret passageways to closed-off county parks.
tasted my first alcohol - the bitter-yet-sweet wine
burning, then slowly warming my flesh and limbs
in the eerie and silent light of a full moon in August.
No parents, no clothing, no rules.
It didn’t matter what tomorrow would bring
because it was 3 a.m. in the middle of summer and we were all young,
only a little afraid of God and the police.



(poem about music)

Praise Song

Sitting in the new, individualized
seats of the rebuilt sanctuary where
the fresh paint smell still hasn’t faded
I look up to the pulpit and see the words to a
song projected onto the wall, no notes written
Because “we can get them from the guitar.”
The microphones amplify simple harmonies
made up on the spot because anything sounds good
when all these songs are comprised of the same three chords.

I feel nothing
In this music.

Where is the old red book?
The blue hymnal with its four
lines of comfort and memories?
The songs of my youth have died
and now we have a hands-free style of
worship, so now we can clap clap clap along
awkward as only us Mennonites can be when
Modern culture replaces history and heritage.




(“father figure” poem)

My father’s hands

We’re in the kitchen of our first house
and it’s a good night for some homemade pizza.
Kneading the soft dough with his hands,
Dad makes it look far, far too easy.
Naturally, he’s an expert at it; those same hands
are the ones I’ve watched too many times to count
as they’ve taken an unformed lump of clay
and brought it to life - A bowl. A mug. A platter. A teapot.
He’d work for hours in the white garage,
his hands firmly anchored to his potter’s wheel.

Or behind the wheel: this time changing the brakes or the oil on the car
because “Why pay the mechanic’s labor
rate for something we can do ourselves?”
He devotes dozens of hours to that old Kawasaki
We found in a garage, rusty and dead. I couldn’t afford one that worked.
“It’ll run like a dream once we get the pistons free - I can just tell,” he said.
He was right. Those hands brought it roaring to life.

Or fixing up our house: building new rooms, sanding and varnishing
And showing me how to paint a ceiling,
clean a carburetor, gut a fish,
Even though I know in the back of my mind
my hands won’t ever be able to do it the way his can:
with the deftness of a craftsman, finesse of a surgeon.

Or taking the bottle of Super Glue down from the top shelf
to seal shut the huge cracks on his fingers
that all the lotion in the world can never seem to heal.
My hands, too, get calloused and dry sometimes,
and it makes me proud yet sad in a way I can’t explain.
What does a man who lived a life of hands-on
expect from a son who thinks in medicine and molecules?

5 comments:

  1. I enjoyed the common theme of remembrance that connects all three of your poems, especially your first piece (it is quite relate-able). I love your usage of sensory detail as you describe your first taste of alcohol-- the same technique is very strong in "My Father's Hands".

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  2. First a respond to your comment on my blog. "Bitter-yet-sweet wine" sounds way too classy to be a first taste of alcohol.

    And again, as always, back to seriousness(aka the blog slog). My favorite part of the first poem was how you brought together God and the Police. It makes me think about God being the ultimate Good Cop and I always like poetry that makes me think.

    The final poem's title reminds me of an old country song here is the link(watch it if your feeling sappy)... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5AdgQQ2j70
    your poem is much less plastic than the song. The question at the end of the poem is a question that I too ask. My dad works for the railroad and once said to me, "college isn't for everyone, Martin." What do hardworking parents really want from their children? Parents can provide powerful poetry. Well done, Sir.

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  3. the first poem is enormously entertaining to read through. i wonder how many of us have experienced nights exactly like those. you write for many hands, dan driver.

    as a non-menno gal, something i've observed is the fear in an older generation that the tradition of hymns may die as they do. i hold both you and this second poem of yours in high regards for preserving the ritual of it. a lot of people are afraid to criticize the almightiness of contemporary sanctuary guitars.

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  4. Oh, dear. Martin, I read your comment regarding the song and I knew exactly which one it was before I clicked on the link. Is it now clear that my brain is a vast repository of slightly-useful trivia?

    Daniel, as a fellow Goshenite, I'm intrigued by your first poem. While I've never run around town sans clothing or parents (or at all) at 3 a.m., there's still always something new to learn around your surroundings. I still remember how depressing it was to see that they had barred off the tops of the observation towers on the Shanklin Park playground or that the police tower down by First Source Bank on Lincoln has no real purpose anymore. But each of those is canceled out a bit when I see Stu Swartz write about how "Goshen was a softball Mecca" (surprised he hasn't dusted that off to fill the space that would have gone to rained-out high school baseball) or discover thousands of people milling around at First Fridays.

    [The Chamber of Commerce would like to plug their next meeting here.]

    Regarding music: I love how we can throw around terms like "blue book" and "red book" and "green book" and know exactly what they mean. It's almost a secret Mennonite code, like how 606 actually refers to 118. Now in many cases, those colors are replaced by four letters: CCLI.

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  5. I feel truly fortunate to attend a church that has not yet been peer-pressured into playing "throw-up music," as my high school English teacher called praise songs that are projected onto the front wall. Nevertheless, I have been grappling a lot with the question of how much does the music we sing define who we are and what we believe? I attended a mega-church last Easter Sunday with a friend, and as usual, I felt at odds with the hundreds of people there who stood and swayed and waved their arms passionately to the sounds of those three repeated chords. The worst part was feeling like I am so superficial that simply hearing a certain kind of music and witnessing people being moved by it can turn off any desire I have to experience God for that hour. It's a nasty feeling. It kind of ruined Easter for me.

    Your third poem reminded me of an assignment I had in high school to write a poem about somebody's hands. It is incredible how much of a person can be expressed through describing their hands, and how talking about someone's hands makes you want to say so much more about them! You did a great job giving us a taste of what your father is like.

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