LITR 3731: Creative Writing 2006
Student Poetry Submission

Karen Heidrich

Shifting Sands

Divers descend through layers of blue and neon

fish scatter like bursts of fireworks.

With outstretched hands, they wave

food--stale scraps of Holy cheese on white--
to nourish the masses, food

to entice the greedy, food

to tempt the timid out of their lairs.
The skittish see only a raised fist.

Its fare oozes between the fingers,

suspends in a cloud,

settles over the sand. 
 
The enemy is a scale-less species

camouflaged in skin of shifting colors.

It waits in the dark,

whips out without warning,

stalks its sisters and boots its brethren out

into a sea of open graves.
Evil-doers, vindicated by a vision, starve

for a purpose, starve

for a higher power.     

Victory waits on the other side, they believe

            sending their children in is justified.

God,

help us

distinguish between the worthy and the wicked.

Buoy the weak to the surface,

and let the insurgents sink.

Lord,

tie Samson's hair with loose restraints. 

Blur the boundaries, the shifting sands

that separate the species,

the ideologies, the schools

of split-tail jacks and jellyfish.

Poetry Exchange Report

The writing assignment, a poem, was a daunting project but Minot, in the required text, offers advice about generating ideas that made images flow.  From a list of people, events, and personal experiences that have changed me in some way, I wrote two poems, both inspired by strangers.  One is included below, without critique and revision, as an example of what I learned from the text about using line, negative space, and sound:      

A madonna,

shrouded in a cotton dress--

                too worn,

                too plain not to be ignored.

Instinct curls her shoulders forward--

                fetal,

                frail as a withering flower.

Aware of being watched, she turns gracefully.

                              Smiles weakly.

                              Blinks vaguely.

A mother,

reliving the blue dawn,

unable to revive its breathlessness,

crumples from its stillness.

I was prepared to use the better of the first two poems for the assignment.  While waiting for feedback, the fear of revision prompted a third poem, generated from personal experience.  The abstraction was greed.  The vehicle was feeding fish while scuba diving.  Although the idea was far from dense, it seemed worthy of a poem.  The writing of the first draft, predominately imagery, preceded the anniversary of September eleventh by one week.  Emotions that would have gone into a tired conversation worked their way into and between those first few lines, adding an unexpected layer.  The piece that follows is the second draft, written in three-line stanzas and deriving its poetic sound from consonance:     

Invading unannounced, descending in a cloud
of homemade fish food -- scraps of Holy cheese on white
dissolving in an outstretched hand --
 
intending harm to few while nourishing the masses.  Their
confusion sours what is left to sink untouched
by darting silver fish.
 
The gift has been consumed.  The need for aid denied
yet lobsters cower in their lair and morays hide
from sharks still prowling everywhere.
 
The misinformed are caught in flowing hate and swells of bile,
their sisters downed, their brothers buried underground --
accept these tears shed overseas.
 
Tie Samson's hair with loose restraints, God.  Blur the boundaries less
distinct than water columns, crags, and shifting sands
so jacks can school with jellyfish.

The first critique is from Sandra K. Moore, most recently published in contemporary fiction.  In the local writers' group where we met, her critiques were sought after.  Excerpts from our email exchanges explain some of the changes made to the above draft:

 . . . leave out things like "Invading unannounced," "the misinformed," and "tears shed overseas" . . . [the beginning is] the right point in the poem to have painted the picture for the reader, and then tell the reader what the poem is actually about . . . a direct plea to God, should have dramatic power; the easiest way to give it that power is to leave it on its own.

. . . the rhythm is a little off because the poem overflows with gerunds (-ing words). It's as though there are few actual sentence subjects to latch onto in the first couple of stanzas, which leaves the line breaks doing all the work . . .

Sandra's comments helped turn sentences into lines of poetry.  Her suggestions were accompanied by explanations, too lengthy to be included here.  Although I used most of her advice, some of what I didn't use inspired other images.  For instance, she suggested personifying the imagery in the third stanza but I chose to conceal the names of the animals and play up the camouflage. 

Mary Bel Garza, a fellow classmate, critiqued a draft similar to the final version.  She found the imagery in line eight confusing.  That comment fit closely with Sandra's suggestion to use only the imagery to paint the picture.  Because two critiques agree, I changed "world-weary" to "skittish" to describe the fish, thinking the original word choice disrupted the image for Mary Bel and created confusion.  Although I wanted every word or phrase to have a double meaning, I did not want that to be obvious in the first stanza.  Based on more of Mary Bel's critique, I made several changes to improve the clarity of the third stanza.

The assignment required two critiques but, before settling on a final draft, I wanted a critique from a male perspective.  Joe Cuellar, another classmate, critiqued the piece and offered a detailed interpretation that was similar to what I intended, yet not the same.  For instance, he said Samson’s hair made him "think of Samson string that is used for a variety of purposes when fishing."  If the revision of that stanza works, the prayer quality will invoke the reader to think only of the Biblical Samson.  What I thought most interesting, however, was that Joe visualized the setting differently than I planned.   He said, "The first stanza reminds me of the manner in which Somalian warlords use food as a weapon against their own people.  The [diver] reminds me of helicopters landing in some of these ragged towns where the only thing that separates the blue sky in the background is the broken neon signs hanging on what used to be buildings." 

I wanted the reader to envision paratroopers, supply drops, and blinding bursts of gunfire but Joe's eloquent interpretation provided an equally meaningful image.  That gave me several choices.  I could change the title to fit the setting.  I could add something to the last stanza so the reader knows the boundaries and sands of the poem are the borders where America and others have provided a military and political presence, from Gaza to Lebanon and west to Iraq.  In the end, I decided leaving the setting open to interpretation might give the piece a sort of timelessness that would invoke readers to personalize it, to place it in a setting most meaningful to them.

For me, the poem is finished.  Whether it is publishable quality or not, I plan to send it out and see what kind of response I get back.  Getting my name out and having my work read is a step toward future publication.