Composed Elements

I want to get back into taking writing classes. Sometimes after working 10-12 hour days, going to the gym, scarfing down some food while watching an episode of “The Office,” I’m just too tired to start writing on my own. Last year, I was lucky enough to go part-time at my job and take a couple of writing classes. It’s just fun to write and have people read your work and critique it (as scary as that is). (It’s also fun to work part-time). I need that extra structured push to get me back into the habit of writing. Anyhow, in my class we had done a “found poem” exercise. It’s where you find any text (could be on a cereal box, in a magazine, etc.) and use the same words, cut it up any way you want and make it into a new poem. I had a really good time making it. Below is a poem I did and after that is the original text.

The Rush

The promise of excitement,
You get up as fast as you can.
It is inviting.
It is perfect.
You can feel the glow pulsing,
Ever so light.
Bounce around mentally and physically.
The rush is slowly appearing.
An ecstasy so good,
You just want to be out there.

Original Text: “The Ultimate Guide to Surfing”

The promise of a new swell means excitement and expectation. You get up when it’s still dark, quickly wolf down some fruit for instant, pure energy and, as fast as you can, you get yourself to the beach. Down there it is cold, the beach is empty. But the water is warm or at least somehow inviting. It is a perfect honey-coloured dawn and you can almost feel the glow pulsing off the shoreline. There is a slight breeze, ever so light and blowing from the land out to sea. A short wetsuit is all you need – short legs and short arms. It is flexible and it keeps the breeze off. You zip it up, and bounce around on the sand in your bare feet. You’re getting ready, mentally and physically, and though you may still feel sleepy and half of you wishes you were still in your bed, you know the first rush of water will wash it all away. The sun is slowly appearing over the edge of the sea and golden reflections light the cresting waves. Wax. You need some wax. An ecstasy of fumbling as you scrabble desperately through your bag. The waves are looking so good, and there still no one around. You can’t do it fast enough; you just want to be out there. A few brisk rubs with the wax and your board is primed.

I hadn’t heard this poem in such a long time and I ran across it again last night. I felt so dumb because it took me so long to figure out the answer when I had the right answer all along with my first guess. So, remember it’s better to not doubt yourself – first instincts all the way, baby.

Metaphors
By Sylvia Plath

I’m a riddle in nine syllables,
An elephant, a ponderous house,
A melon strolling on two tendrils.
O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!
This loaf’s new-minted in this fat purse.
I’m a means, a stage, a cow in calf.
I’ve eaten a bag of green apples,
Boarded the train there’s no getting off.

Over the weekend, I went through a drawer, or a time capsule if you will, that I had not touched in years. In it, I found old letters to friends, a sixth-grade yearbook (in which a number of budding artists drew pictures of Mortal Kombat characters in different perspectives), and most importantly, my Robert Frost book of poems that I had unknowingly abandoned.

The first time I read the poem, “Birches”, I instantly fell in love with it and wanted to start writing and give up on writing all the same time. If I could ever describe ice on trees as “They click on themselves / As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored / As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel”, I would feel like a superstar. Using sharp imagery and poignantly melancholic word choices, it resonates a certain sadness in how we sometimes lose ourselves in our hectic lives and yearn to return back to our childhood days when life was simpler (which I’m sure many of us can relate to). If you haven’t had a chance to read this, please do and enjoy.

Birches
by Robert Frost

When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.
But swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay.
Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-coloured
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You’d think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground,
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm,
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows–
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father’s trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.

So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It’s when I’m weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig’s having lashed across it open.
I’d like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate wilfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love:
I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.
I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree~
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.