LITR 3731: Creative Writing 2006
Student Poetry Submission

Javier Carbajal

I Hate Speeches!

My mouth is a desert

from which a dry silence flows.

It finally hits me as the hour approaches,

By my comrades, I’ll be judged accordingly,

Alone facing a small platoon in the Army

of an unmerciful God, purging us lazy sinners.

My hands are rain clouds

From which I let sweat pour down in shame.

Anxiety sinks in as my fellow classmates

flatter our teacher with well-crafted speeches,

I hear them but I have not a mind to listen

When I’m questioning my lack of commitment.

My feet are jackhammers

From which I fail to build a foundation.

My visual aids are outstanding and

My note cards are neatly organized

But my train of thought has derailed

Killing every other brain cell on board

My heart is a loud prisoner

Which tries to escape this embarrassment

Preparedness was undone by pride,

Practice was averted by arrogance,

My mind has forsaken me and with

No one to blame, I stand no chance.

My name is called out

I know a lesson will come out of this experience.

The genesis of this poem began in my first week of this semester’s Creative Writing class. The most time consuming part of this whole project was definitely the subject matter. I’m aware that being original is really impossible, because there isn’t a subject in our planet that hasn’t been explored through poetic means by someone somewhere. Therefore, I tried hard to look for a topic that I find interesting. The first subject matter that I seriously considered for this poem was the ballad of “Keystone Cindy”; it was the tale of the typical teenage girl that I ran across in late night parties. In this case, Keystone Cindy (nicknamed after her favorite beer, Keystone Light) would get drunk, inhale every drug and leave with a different boy every weekend. At the end, I would describe how I’d always find her every Sunday morning at church, attentively listening to her father, the church’s minister, deliver his sermon.

That was an interesting twist worth exploring, but then I considered another subject that fascinates me even more, which I like to call the “Lolita affair”: The idea of a 30-40 year old man being infatuated with a barely legal teenage girl. Another subject that I considered was doing a poem about Hurricane Rita, titled “Lovely Rita” after the Beatles song of the same name. The whole poem was designed to be a metaphor, in which many years ago, during colonial times, there was this Puritan village called Houston, and then one day, rumor began spreading that one of the most horrible and evil witches, “Lovely Rita” was supposed to come in to their village and destroy their house.

Anyway, I was juggling around with all these subject matters, but I couldn’t decide on a single one. Before I knew it, the deadline for submissions was approaching, but as the weeks passed, I was also learning more and more about the art and craft of poetry. To be honest, this Creative Writing class is the first Literature course that I’ve signed up for in my entire college career. The last time I studied anything about poetry was way back in my senior year of high school.

Reading about poetry definitely helped me find a subject matter that appealed to me. Finally, I chose a topic that always provoked some emotions within me that I always found weird. I never liked doing public speeches or presentations in front of class. That’s not to say that I don’t like to perform; in fact, I enjoy theater and drama, and I consider myself a pretty good actor. But for some reason, I always feel terribly anxious when I have to deliver a speech. I went through all the typical reactions: The dry mouth, the sweaty hands, the pounding pulse. That’s when I knew I had something to write about, and it was also something that many people could relate to.

That’s the story of how I came up with the subject matter. As for the poem itself:

Of course, without any experience crafting a poem, this became more difficult than I thought it would be, but I took my time in the writing process. My first step was to think how the concept was going to be presented on the page. I made an outline, and I thought that four stanzas, with six lines each, would be more than enough. Once I had an idea and an outline, I came up with the concept of having each stanza describe a part of the body, and how it reacted to the feelings of panic, nervousness and anxiety. My second step was to write each stanza in prose. The third step was to move lines around, transform them, shape them into poetic lines, and finding words that rhymed. I took some liberties with the rhyming pattern. At first, I was going to follow a very strict and traditional rhyming pattern, like abba, cdcd, edde, etc. But as the poem began to take shape, the structure became an obstacle to my intended message. Therefore, I relied more on slant rhymes and enjambments and I took more liberty with the pattern. Then I divided the stanzas even more, I let a two line stanza that served as a metaphor lead into a four line stanza that described my anxiety as the moment of truth came ever closer.

I shared this poem with two people, one whom was my fellow classmate Patty Coleman, who wrote “I Am Cool”.

“Let me start by saying I love your poem. Being one who hates public speaking, I can relate to the images you have created with your words. The dry mouth, sweaty hands, nervous legs, blank mind and pounding heart are all represented. Your form is uniform throughout. The two line stanzas each focusing a part of the body is good. I really like the stanza that creates the derailed train image.”

While writing this poem one of the stanzas that gave more troubles was the first one, because I wanted to use a religious simile that would reference the Book of Revelations, to give the reader an image of how dreaded this moment is to me. Patty also had some feedback on that:

“I did have a problem with the first four line stanza that ends with roaches, "lazy roaches" seems a bit contradictory to me. I see them scurrying and moving quickly. I don't see a hard rhyming pattern so you might think about using another image. Slugs or snails move slow, or if you want to stay with scavengers you might consider writhing maggots. That will keep the revolting image.”

I also shared this poem with a friend, who’s a graphic design artist but he enjoys poetry as well (something I didn’t know about her until just a few weeks ago). He had some problems with some of the images on the first stanzas, and the short 2-line stanzas.

“I would suggest not using 'erupts.' Volcanoes erupt; deserts do not. (Maybe blows or flows; something windy or sandy.) 'as the hour approaches,' is a bit trite, though I'm absolutely anal about clichés and such. 'I alone shall be judged accordingly' - personally I hate the words shall and judge, but as long as you're good with it...”

His comments were really helpful, and it made reconsider some of the lines. Here’s another example of his comments.

”'By my dear comrades, like the Army' - you have contrasting imagery here. dear comrades is intimate and relatively small, while the Army is a large impersonal group. I would suggest not using 'like the,' instead using 'my.' It better holds flow and imagery.
'of Almighty God purging all lazy roaches.' - I don't like 'roaches.' I think it's too impersonal. 'Almighty God' rings as a single entity, unlike your 'dear comrades.' You could use trinity or gods or something plural. I would replace 'all' with 'the.'”

Overall, I’m satisfied with how the poem ended up.