Bumblebee

On learning a thing or two

Happy Friday, friends. It has been a busy week. I mentioned last time that I’m taking a poetry writing class at the local university. Just me and a bunch of twenty-somethings. On the first day of class, as soon as I arrived I was approached by a shy student who said,

“Excuse me, are you teaching the poetry class?”

“No,” I said, “I’m taking the poetry class,” putting on a friendly smile and shrugging a bit to show I knew I didn’t look like the typical student.

She looked horrified and immediately apologized. “I’m SO sorry!” she said.

“No worries,” I assured her. But I could tell she felt terrible. I suppose she thought she’d insulted me. But I can’t blame her for her assumption. When the professor showed up I was still the oldest person in the room by probably fifteen years, maybe more.

In theory, I don’t mind taking a class with twenty-somethings. I spend a lot of time with their demographic. My kids and all their friends are twenty-somethings and I love talking with them. But I’m not going to tell my classmates they are the same age as my kids. I think that would be weird for them. “Why am I in class with my Mom?”

When we arrive for class we’re meant to move the desks into an inward facing rectangle so we’re all looking at each other to facilitate conversation. Thus far I have resisted the urge to start directing things when I walk in the door and see that most of the class has arrived but nobody has moved a single desk. My inner mom is clapping her hands smartly and saying things like, “Okay, everybody, shift yourselves! Let’s get these desks moved!” I have bitten my tongue and then yesterday, on the final class of week three, the room had been arranged by the time I got there. (I also resisted the motherly urge to say, “It’s a freaking miracle!”)

It is a little weird to be a student in a room full of people two generations removed from me. But it’s good for me to operate outside of my comfort zone. And maybe it’s good for them to interact as peers with somebody their parents’ age. Ideally it’s not too weird for them to have me there, but that’s really not my problem, is it?

What I am loving about this class is the feedback from the professor on my writing and the opportunity to read poems and look at their mechanics with someone who can help me understand why they work. I’ve never studied poetry except in a creative writing class I took at this same university a few years ago, so I don’t know all the terms and techniques. I haven’t learned about the mechanics of writing poetry. I’ve just been feeling my way through, having some success, but not always understanding why one poem works so well but another fails to come together.

This week we’ve been talking a lot about end-stops and enjambment, the two essential ways of ending a line of poetry. In case you’re like me and didn’t know, end-stops are when a line is ended with punctuation (period, comma, etc.) and enjambment is when lines ends in the middle of a sentence or phrase. It has been interesting to look more closely at familiar poems and really pay attention to the way the poet has chosen to structure their poem using both techniques. We’ve also been working on metaphors and on extending them throughout a poem. One bit of advice I’ve found particularly useful is to try to end lines with nouns or verbs. Small thing, but, wow, it’s been an eye-opener for me.

As I said, it’s been a busy week with school work and trying to keep up with The February Poetry Adventure on top of all the normal stuff. So I’m going to share with you just one wee draft of a poem. It’s from the very first prompt offered by Petra Hernandez on February 1: Bumblebee. For me it’s a very apt poem to share this week given how many hours I’ve spent writing and how very nice that has felt.

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Bumblebee

Like a bumblebee,
let me be so intent
upon the task at hand,
so devoted to the doing
of the thing, that I bury 
my face in the joy 
of it and emerge only 
at dusk, covered in gold,
and humming to myself.

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• Come join us in The February Poetry Adventure. We’re having tons of fun. No pressure. Write one day, skip the next. For me it’s a very welcome nudge to write each morning and I’m always surprised by what happens.

• I finished A Tale of Two Cities this week. What a story! Then I picked up my next book, Project Hail Mary, by Martin Weir. My son is a huge fan and I’ve promised him I’d read it before the movie comes out next month. It’s quite a change from Dickens, but I am thoroughly enjoying the narrator’s chatty, funny voice. Another great story. What are you reading?

Happy weekend, everyone. Thanks for being here.