jbcheaney

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Pain and Poetry

Lament isn’t an animal wail, an inarticulate howl. Lament notices and attends, savors and delights—details, images, relationships. Pain entered into, accepted, and owned can become poetry. It’s no less pain, but it’s no longer ugly. Poetry is our most personal use of words; it’s our way of entering experience, not just watching it happen to us, and inhabiting it as our home.

Eugene Peterson, Leap over a Wall, re: David’s lament over Jonathan & Saul, p. 119

We hear a lot of wailing now, much of it wrung from a genuine place of pain. I can’t address national causes, but all of us are individuals and experience individual pain, going back to when our first parents were kicked out of the garden. Pain was a natural consequence of breaking fellowship with God; pain even in the wellsprings of our deepest joy, like vocation and parenthood.

One technique counselors offer as a means of handling pain is to write about it. Language, especially well-thought-out-and-written-down language, gives us a means of taking ownership of our experience. Rather than merely suffering, we can shape our suffering into an object that’s part of us, yet separate. We can invest it with meaning and give it a name. We’ve transformed an “inarticulate howl” into something that speaks to us, and for us, and of us.

Easier said than done, of course. Pain, whether emotional, physical, or spiritual, is easier done than said, notoriously. In moments of physical pain, I have felt myself dropped into a pit with darkness below, solid walls all around and—maybe—just a sliver of light above. The walls are slick and featureless and offer no foothold for climbing out. Until time, like a slow-working anti-venom, begins to draw out the intensity.

How do you even begin?

You may have to let a little time go by before you can even frame a coherent thought.

Then, try to find a word—just one word.

My God!

Repeat it, for emphasis.

 My God!

Complete this question: Why–?

 Why have you forsaken me?

Complete this statement: I feel like—

I feel like a worm, not even human.

Describe the circumstances

Mocking and scorn surround me;

instead of sympathy, insults.

My enemies roar like lions, gore like bulls

Describe your condition

 I am helpless, poured out like water, loose-jointed, heart-melted, dry as dust.

Say what you need right now.

My God, don’t stay away—

Let me see you! Let me hear you! 

   Restore me to your precious fellowship.

                                                                                    -Adapted from Psalm 22

When pain is personal, it can’t really be shared. That’s one of the most painful things about it. But by putting it into words, you can share it with yourself. (And Christ, who already knows)

When pain is corporate, there’s a chance someone will relate to what you’re feeling. In that spirit, I offer a lament for our current trauma, based on the above model:

Oh, my country!

Why are you tearing yourself apart?

I feel helpless in the face of such rage.

From a single, terrible spark, justifiable anger

            has morphed into madness.

            Heartfelt mourning

            burns through to chaos.

Locked into our rival camps, we can’t hear each other

What can I say? What can I bring to healing?

Lord, have mercy on us.

NOTE: In a much lighter tone, Wordsmith Apprentice offers several poetry models for imitation. Writing poetry to to a set of rules is easier for a beginner than writing from scratch, because the mind actually feels “freer” within parameters.

Eight Ways to Talk about Race While White

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  1. Don’t talk; listen.  As a white person, I find that almost anything I can think of to say about race sounds patronizing—even to me.  So just listen for a while.  If there’s no one you can listen to personally, listen to Ta-Nehesi Coates in Between the World and Me.  I have a lot of problems with Coates, and I don’t think his line of thought is particularly constructive, and yet—he lost a good college friend in a police shooting.  There’s more to that story, but for Coates the takeaway is this: his friend would still be alive if it were not for his color.  Throughout history, whites have suffered injustice and violence, but not for their color.  With that glaring distinction in mind, we can listen for a while.
  2. Don’t state; question.  What do you think we should do? What’s the best way to achieve a just society? This is actually a good rule of thumb for any discussion where there’s likely to be disagreement.  Making statements, no matter how logically or forcefully, is equivalent to building walls.  Asking questions, on the other hand, is opening windows.  Besides, you might learn something.
  3. Wipe that patronizing frown off your face.  While listening, you will probably hear some things you don’t agree with.  You don’t have to agree with everything, just acknowledge.  We get a lot of things wrong on our side of the racial divide; it stands to reason that there will be mistaken assumptions on the other side.  Don’t be too quick with the mea culpas, or with the “But–”  It took us a long time to get into this mess, and it will take a long time to get out.
  4. Try on the shoes, but understand you can’t walk in them.  The closest a white person could come to that happened in 1959, when John Howard Griffin chemically darkened his skin to record his experiences traveling through the south in Black Like Me.  Otherwise, the closest we can come to experiencing the other side of the color divide is understanding that we can’t.
  5. Checkbox your privilege.  Personally, I hate the term “white privilege,” because it slaps a big fat generalization on a wagonload of individual factors.  And yet (again)—whites, if they behave themselves, don’t’ have to worry about being stopped at checkpoints or suspected of ill intent when they just want a quiet place to read.  They are not subjected to suspicious looks, nor do they need to worry about being pulled over by a cop.  (I get pulled over once every three years because of my lead foot, but I never automatically rehearse the hands-on-the-steering-wheel-speak-respectfully-and-don’t-make-eye-contact mantra.  It makes a difference.)
  6. Try to find the middle. Once we start talking, the talking points emerge.  From the left: white privilege, systemic racism, Hands-up-don’t-shoot.  From the right: absent fathers, illegitimacy rate, black-on-black crime, Hands up don’t shoot never happened, don’t you realize that?  Though I lean right, for the purposes of conversation I lean in, searching for the common ground.  It’s there somewhere.  We won’t be able to make any progress in the conversation unless we find it.
  7. Think forward, not back.  The history sucks, no getting around it.  We can acknowledge that—but we don’t have to stay there.  The late Walter Dean Meyers, much-awarded writer for children and teens, became a bit fed up: “Black history is usually depicted as folklore about slavery, and then a fast-forward to the civil rights movement.  Then I’m told that black children, and boys in particular, don’t read.  Small wonder.”  To paraphrase a familiar saying, history is a great teacher, but a terrible master.  Chaining oneself to a grim past, even to keep your enemy in shame, is slavery by another name.  Instead, what can we take from history to help us make the future better?
  8. Be a friend.  I live in a part of the country without a large black population, because freed slaves and people of color were historically not welcome here.  And yet (once again)—I see black and white kids jumping on a trampoline together.  I see two middle-aged guys in overalls, one black, one white, having breakfast at Golden Corral.  Mixed-race couples attract hardly a glance anymore.  That doesn’t mean we’re the land of sunny harmony, but when change happens, it happens one on one.  We fight our own suspicions and priors.  We look for common ground and common interests.  We smile and say “thank you” and “Excuse me.”  One on one, step by step, and God willing we’ll get there.

 

old english

Six Consequences of Our Native Tongue

“English Is Not Normal,” says John McWhorter, and as a long-time linguist and lecturer on the subject, he should know. I collect such articles like a beaver collects sticks, so I’m familiar with the general outline, but McWhorter brings out some facts I didn’t know. Having “little Latin and less Greek,” (that’s from Shakespeare, but it describes me), I’m pretty much a monolingual; otherwise I’d be more aware of these anomalies. But, assuming you and I are both English speakers, here are the consequences we can expect as we English our way through life.

  1. Spelling Bees. Yes, anyone who’s been through an American elementary school knows that English is fiendishly difficult to spell—but so much so that spelling is an actual competitive academic sport. Scripps-Howard would have no meat to chew on in other countries where the language is spelled more or less phonetically.
  2. Nobody else in the western hemisphere can understand us. Portuguese and Spanish speakers can communicate well enough, as can the Dutch and the Germans—even (stepping out of the western hemi) the Thais and the Laotians. But there’s no other language that is even moderately close to English.
  3. We’re genderless. Yep, it seems very odd to us that all the major European languages retain a sense of noun genders (feminine turnips and neutered English maidens,* etc.), while English does not. We think they’re weird; they think we’re weird, so it’s even. After years of studying Latin, though, I’m happy to dispense with the he-trees and she-souls, along with adjectives that must agree both in gender, declension, and case. Agreeable adjectives was the point at which my daughter decided Latin was NOT FUN.
  4. Superfluous do’s and the’s. This probably isn’t too unique—other European languages have their little lardy poke-ins. But none, to my knowledge, have definite and indefinite articles: those embellishments that must adorn a singular noun. Or an undistinguished, general noun. Or the noun—yes, that one over there. Also, according to McWhorter, the Celtic languages are the only others that incorporate do as a means of asking a question. Do English speakers? Why, yes they do. 
  5. 50-cent words. In most other languages, “big words” don’t have any special cachet. English received a dose of sophistication with the Norman invasion (they spoke French), but around the 16th century “Latinate” words were deliberately adopted as a way to sound smart. And with a wave of scientific progress in the 19th century, scientific minds decided that science and tech words should derive from Greek: thus, photograph (light writing) and sodium (salt).
  6. Etymology. Thousands of English words have such an interesting background that a whole division of academia developed to study them. To one little Island, whose the blue-painted inhabitants were called Celts, came first the Romans, then the Angles and Saxons, then the Danes and Norsemen, then the Normans. From one little island went Sir Francis Drake and John Smith and Captain Cook, bringing back the wealth of nations and their quirky words. “To be fair,” writes  John McWhorter, “mongrel vocabularies are hardly uncommon worldwide, but English’s hybridity is high on the scale compared with most European languages.”

The result is one word-rich mongrel language with enormous flexibility in structure. A real wordsmith’s playground!

*See Mark Twain’s essay, “The Awful German Language”    

fantasy-castle

Five Reasons NOT to Write a Fantasy Novel – Yet

Typical conversation a a homeschool convention while meeting a young writer:

Young Writer: Are you a writer? (After noticing that my booth has something to do with writing.)

ME: Yes, I am.

YM: What do you write?

ME: Well, primarily a regular column for a well-known Christian news magazine [which they may actually have heard of].* But I do a lot of writing on the web, and I’ve also published a few novels.

YM: I’m writing a novel right now.

ME: Really? Good for you. What’s it about?

YM: [Long answer 1] It’s about a colony of dragons who . . .  [Long answer 2] It’s about a Sorcerer’s apprentice who . . . [Long answer 3] It’s about a secret society of magical knights who . . .

            [Short answer] It’s a fantasy.

Okay, there are a few exceptions: mystery, sci-fi, even the occasional western. But almost every time I ask this question, “fantasy” is the answer I get. As an exercise in constructing scenes, building an imaginary world, and pulling together a plot, there’s nothing wrong with banging out a fantasy novel on your laptop. But you might want to consider these reasons to reconsider.

  1. It’s harder than you think. My first novel took about eight years to write and still turned out crummy. It’s true I had other responsibilities then, like motherhood, so I had to work in the writing time between naps and diapers. Nor was it a waste of time, because I learned a lot in the process of writing a crummy novel. But I could have learned it all a lot faster if I hadn’t put the cart before the horse.
  2. The best writing comes from close observation and personal experience. Even the most far-out fantasy is grounded in the real world: its people, its personalities, its sights and smells and sounds. It takes time to train yourself to observe and experience, because that means looking outside yourself to take in the world around you (not something that comes naturally to most of us!). 
  3. So, give yourself time. Instead of plowing right into a multi-chapter novel, start like a painter does, with sketches and studies. Take your notebook to a public place, like the playground on a warm, sunny day or the food court at the local mall. (Do local malls still have food courts? And do locals still have malls?) Notice the people around you and the conversations you hear. Jot down your impressions and construct imaginary scenarios. Some of those people might end up in a novel someday.
  4. Fantasy that’s not based on real life is likely to be derivative. That is, instead of telling an imaginative, original and magical story for your first-time fiction attempt, you’ll probably end up re-telling a paste-up of all the other fantasies you’ve read or seen. Real originality stems from real life.
  5. Everybody else is doing fantasy. Don’t you want to be different?

Of course, if you’re dead-set on writing fantasy you likely won’t be unpersuaded. And that’s okay—it’s a legitimate genre with a proud ancestry that goes back to Homer. So go for it! But if you get stuck on a plot point or bamboozled by a block, you might want to back up a bit, grab your notebook and head for the mall. At least you can get Chinese there.

* WORLD Magazine, since 1991.

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