Mood: d'oh
Topic: Writing
I sent my one and only sestina out into the world to see if McSweeney's might use it, and received a very nice rejection back in my email inbox this morning. Sigh. This is my first attempt at a formal poem since high school, I think, and I haven't workshopped it, so this is my first bit of feedback. (I tried to solicit feedback from Tad soon after I wrote it, but all he sent back in response to my list of questions was more questions, and I hardly think that counts!) It was a fun challenge--a sestina is made up of six stanzas of 6 lines each and concluded with a three line stanza, repeating 6 words in a very precise sequence throughout the entire poem--so maybe I'll try another one sometime, but it would be nice to know if this one had any merit. The form allows you to really explore the relationships between those six repeating words, and it's kind of amazing to see them falling into place and twisting and still doing their job. (Or, in my case, maybe not doing their job.) Daniel, McSweeney's very kind Assistant Web Editor for Sestinas, said he was "tempted" by the poem, so that's something.
Sestinas are the only form of poetry that McSweeney's publishes...because they're quirky and independent enough that they can decide this and get away with it. To read sestinas that are more than tempting, check out http://mcsweeneys.net/links/sestinas.
I've recently created a virtual writing office at Zoetrope's interactive site, so maybe I'll have to workshop it there and see what I hear back. In the meantime, I'm posting it here. Feel free to post your response--I'm tough, I can take it! I'll even kick if off: kudos for taking on challenging subject matter, even if the sentiment is somewhat naive and the handling somewhat clumsy; erratic line length is sign of a novice writer who hasn't mastered control of her vehicle.
HOPE FOR MONSTERS
Monsters are storied to hide under beds in the dark
but she forgoes the formality, dragging her scales from between light
sheets, grateful early morning visibility
is low and the slow transformation to human begins in the safety
of blackness as she preserves undeserved anonymity
under layers of bottled and powdered and color-stay reality.
So practiced is her assumption of this reality
that she unconsciously shrugs off daily the dark
drape of night and its monstrous anonymity
to pursue the comfort she has been taught to believe exists in daylight.
She listens to the voices telling her safety
is better insured with increased visibility.
Wanting-to-hide-yet-needing-to-see: this dual relationship with visibility
is just one aspect of a duplicitous reality
forcing her to deny feelings of safety
altogether, whether she is cocooned in the dark
warmth of her bed or bouncing lightly
down sidewalks in sunshine and well-groomed anonymity.
Some days she is content to believe obscure anonymity
is her true goal; that visibility
and dancing in the limelight
for even the briefest of moments––that believing in the false reality
of her own worth and dark
beauty––will destroy any hope of longlasting safety.
Other days she understands it is not her safety
her hard-won anonymity
is intended to protect, nor is the dark
the only place strong enough to embrace the fullness of herself. Visibility
need not imply immodesty. On those days she can almost believe the only reality
is that she, too, belongs to the light.
"Monster" is a label that gives power to those who bestow it, but, too, highlights
the fear the bestowers feel for their own safety
in the presence of the one defined. She flirts with this reality,
with usurping the word's power by applying it to herself, destroying all anonymity
through self-definition, banishing her life of invisibility
with the creation of a world where women do not hide in the dark
or mask themselves in the light. In the spark of a single neuron, her self-conscious anonymity
could be shed like a too-small skin, as dead and transparent as the safety limited visibility
has brought. In this new reality, she would glow unstoppable, in light and dark.
Thoughts captured by Kristine
at 1:41 PM EDT