Author: Amanda Ameen

I know that this idea has been discussed so many times, both on here and in class, but it’s still on my mind, so I figured it’s something worth bringing up again:

As a poet/writer, do we have a duty to write about current events, especially events happening now (e.g. Dakota Pipeline, Trump, possibilities of a Muslim registry, the state of the economy from the generational group most heavily effected, the attack on Roe v. Wade across the country… this is the short list…)? The obvious answer would be, “if we have a passion to do so,” as writing without passion results in empty words strung together. But are we more expected to muster up the passion?

I guess I’m mostly asking out of my feelings of selfishness. I’ve spent the semester writing about personal problems which, although arguably important for my mental health and overall well-being, feeling painfully insignificant in the bigger picture. I want to say, “who cares about x, y, and z. A madman has just been handed the fucking nukes of the United States!” But then I think about everything happening, and I feel overwhelmed. But I guess that’s why we have the need to focus on what’s happening in our own lives. We can’t have both the empathy to carry everything and our sanity.

And I suppose it’s also arguable that the smaller things speak to larger problems within society. My writing so heavily of rape and childhood abuse and mental illness are by no means “insignificant problems” when they affect a greater proportion of the country than those willing to talk about it. Nonetheless, my ability to make a difference feels too narrow as a result.

Go through a handful of your past poems and try to identify one or two (or more, if you’re feeling ambitious!) works/techniques that you use most often. Re-write one of your poems without using this technique in order to approach the subject from a different angle. If you’d prefer, you could also write a new poem completely without the technique, but keeping the same subject seen in your older work. The idea is simply to approach an old subject from a new perspective to see what comes of it.

So, for those of you who don’t know, I’m an intern at a drug rehab center. Basically, my job is to follow whatever unfortunate therapist got stuck with me for the day, sit in on their group and therapy sessions, take notes, give out breathalyzers, and basically just do whatever else the shrink doesn’t want to do (oh, the joys of free college aged labor).

The therapist I found myself with today does this thing where he’ll think out loud. Sometimes he’s talking to me, sometimes (coughmostlycough) it’s to himself. Which ever the case it was today, he brought up an interesting point.

He wrote two sentences on a piece of paper that he wanted to use in some group therapy at some time. The first one read, “I can’t use.” The second read, “I can not use.”

He asked me what the difference was between the two sentences (shot in the dark, he wasn’t referring to the grammar).

The first was a demand, the sort a parent would tell a child. “You can’t use today because you are not allowed to, and you’re not allowed to because I say you aren’t.” Show me a person–addicted or not–who isn’t degraded and belittled by this statement… But emotions aside, the statement takes away any chance of autonomy the client may have, which is something I hadn’t noticed until looking at the second sentience: “I can not use.”

I want to focus on the two words: “can” and “not” and note that they are separate in the second sentence, as opposed to being fused into one: cannot. Breaking “can” into it’s own word is what returns the power to the clients in outpatient by reminding them that they can use, if they choose to do so. Granted, we’d rather they didn’t choose to use… but in the end, we acknowledge that it’s their life, and their choice, and we cannot stop them. The “not” is what gives them the strength to do just that. They “can” opt to use, but they won’t, or rather, they will choose “not” to.

The “can’t” in “I can’t use” denies both the can and the not, and this is what strips the client of their rights to choose, just as their addiction stripped them of their rights to choose what would become of their lives.

Just some small words that make all the difference to those who hear or read them.

This past Friday, I spent the night collaborating on an art project with a buddy of mine, something we’ve been promising ourselves we’d do for rhe past several weeks. We thought it’d be fun, seeing as his mediums of choice are sculpting, wire, and jewelry making, and mine are pointism, charcoal, and monoprint work. unfortunately, we didn’t get far. We got lost in conversation on an artistic delima of his:
During the past year, his art has become something therapeutic. I asked what was wrong with this, for isn’t art supposed to have therapeutic elements for the artist? Rather, aren’t the first versions of pieces, the first drafts of poems or the first outlines of paintings, supposed to be raw in emotion to at least a certain extent before the create goes back and softens or sharpens the image?
I’m asking genuinely because he didn’t seem to have an answer, and I’m wondering if he felt that art sold have some sort of message rather than pure emotion. Or rather, if the message o the task away of a piece is more vauable than the emotion or thought from which it came? I’m not sure that I know even my thoughts on this.
I can say that when it comes to poetry, I do sit down to second and third drafts with the question of, “why should the reader care?” Or “Why do I feel the need to tell the reader about x, y, and z.” But second draft still feels as though it is built on the foundation of the first, the one which, for me, is emotion or thoughts or memory thrown down on the page in words that are coherent to me. Does that then make the emotion more important, if I’m only spending the next few drafts polishing the poem and making it coherent to the reader?
I don’t know. I’m just thinking out loud.

A comment in our last workshop reminded me of a question Dr. Asher once asked us in our Philosophy and Literature course a year or two ago (side note, great class. Highly recommend). He put forth a poem about a man whose son died in one World War I, and asked if the poem would have any less meaning if the son in the poet’s piece did not truly exist.

As I’m unfortunately blanking on which poem he showed us, I will instead point to “Common Form” from Kipling’s Epitaphs of the War: “If any question why we died, / Tell them, because our fathers lied.”

This poem, or, rather, couplet, has stayed with me (haunted, may perhaps be a better word) since I was sixteen and speaking to my father—a major history buff, whose favorite war was WWI—about Kipling’s life.  For those who don’t know the details, Rudyard Kipling was a well-known English writer, big fan of imperialism, and who worked with the English government to write pro-WWI propaganda, an offer he immediately accepted. Much to his delight, his son John attempted to join the Royal Navy, but was rejected on medical grounds due to his terrible eye-sight. He then tried to join the military, but again was rejected for the same reasons. Finally, he was accepted into Irish Guards, but only because his father, who was close friends with the commander and chief of the British Army, pulled strings to get him in. Sadly, John died in battle, and sources say he was last seen stumbling in the mud in search of his glasses, which had fallen off during attack. Shortly after his death, Kipling wrote the famous lines: “If any question why we died, / Tell them, because our fathers lied.” Likely in reference to his grief in being the one to get his son into the military, despite his son’s repeated failed medical exams.

Obviously, there are countless stories and poems about death and loss of loved ones, but part of what makes Kipling’s poetry, particularly these two lines, so haunting to me is the tragic nature of his son’s death and the guilt he suffered for the rest of his life due to the role he indirectly played in causing it. In essence, it is Kipling’s experience that comes through in these lines that gives legacy to the poem. Even if Kipling did not have a son, and is instead an incredibly empathetic writer, I believe that true experience still must come into play in order for the poem to stick with the reader the way “Common Man” had for me. In the case of “Common Man,” the true experience came from knowing Kipling’s life, but I’m sure if it were a fictional poem read by an individual who had Kipling’s level of guilt for losing someone, and who read these lines, the reader’s true experience would come forth and take hold of the lines more than a reader who lacked that guilt… if that makes any sense.

While I am open about my double major in my writing classes and do include on my resume that I study both creative writing and psychology and ultimately become a LCSW (you’d be amazed how many social workers/counselors/therapists don’t know how to write their own damn case notes…), it’s not something I typically broadcast in the workplace. I’m sure every writer has gotten Are you going to write about this/me? question at some point; however, there seems to be an added layer of ignorance and flat out stupidity whenever someone asks, So, you plan to study sick people and then write about them?

…Where do I even begin explaining how offensive that question is to both me and my future clients?

Yes, imaginary person standing in for every person I would like to slap—you caught me. That’s the only reason I’m studying to be a therapist. It actually has nothing to do with wanting to help people or anything weird like that. I just want to take advantage of other people’s trauma and misfortune.

Yes, typically writers borrow from the experiences or traits of those around them, and if I am a therapist, I’m going to be around a lot of people with a lot of different experiences all day. So, yes, some aspects of the stories I hear may seep into pieces of mine (although, let’s not forget every confidentiality contract I ever signed with every treatment center/organization I’ve taken part in). But the question seems to carry a certain stereotype occasional seen in writers: That everything we do has the alterative motive of just looking for another story idea; that we care more about our work than those around us. Or, and this is probably the worst, we only involve ourselves with others to use them for our own benefit.

Unfortunately, there have been therapists and social workers looking to make some cash or find some fame by telling the stories of their clients (CoughCorneliaWilburCoughCough), who have made a mockery out of field of social work—and I don’t believe I’m exaggerating in claiming they make a mockery out of a field that’s still put down by other sciences. On top of it, the question implies a writer has no other goals or life outside of writing. Yes, writing is a passion, but so is working with trauma victims. It puts the writer in a box and forces the single title of writer when there are more aspects to a person.

But that’s all I have to say. Thanks for reading that little rant of mine.

My best friend and I have grown up in artistic households. Both of our mothers are writers, painters, and musicians, and encouraged the two of us to follow in their paths. Today, my friend is an actress and a painter, and I am a writer and an artist. This past summer, we talked about the different forms of art we find ourselves drawn to–her, preforming, acting, and abstract paintings, me, writing and surrealist ink/charcoal drawings–and where we gathered inspiration for our separate mediums. My friend talked about observation of other people’s actions. She can mimic the speech patterns of someone after speaking to them for a few minutes, she can master their small tics, the gestures they make with their hands while they talk. She can mimic what they do, but does not always think of why they may act in a certain way. At least not to the extent that a writer would. She described writers as being more internal, going out of their way ton understand both their own feelings and the feelings of others, and allowing that to be the guiding force in both the thoughts and actions of their characters. She went on to make this analogy:  a writer is a self-sufficient island, while an actor requires attention and aid from the outside world. (It’s been a few months, so I may be misquoting her)

I’m not sure if I agree with this, so I’m taking it to this blog to see what other’s think.

For the past few months, I’ve been struggling with the topics in my writing which my brain has been leading me to (if that made any sense at all). I feel I write too much about specific aspects of my life that, at this point, I’d rather put to rest.

Evidently, this is where my mind and I disagree. Because even when I try to write about other topics, I can’t help but return to the older topics, and I feel as though I am writing the same story from different angels: kid leads shitty life because of x, y, and z, grow up to be a messed up adult dealing with a, b, and c… It’s actually kind of annoying.

The idea of seeing things with one eye that we do not see with the second resonated with me. No, I doubt the writer was referring to anything PTSD/trauma related… but I liked the idea anyway, and am hijacking it for the sake of this post.

I’ve worked with both foster kids and adult-aged drug addicts via internships, and something I’ve noticed in both groups is they each have dealt with trauma through their lives. The kids (aging anywhere between infants to ~21) generally don’t register their own trauma. They may talk about it, but it’s like they’re just stringing words together that they’ve heard without understanding. This is how trauma is seen in the eyes of children. The adults have a greater understanding of whatever trauma they faced as adults. Even if they can’t put words to what happened, you can tell that they–through their older eyes–have a clearer picture of what happened.

And this is where writing about trauma get difficult. Trying to write from both eyes, the younger and the older. Viewing the image from the younger, but analyzing with the older.

I have no idea where I’m going with this. There’s my train of thought.

While reading the piece on image by Philip, I found myself thinking of something my German professor said on the first day of our 101 class a couple of years ago—That German is the language of poets and philosophers.

Philip discusses images behind individual words, but something he forgets to do, and something I see a lot of people within the English speaking world forget to do, is to look at the image/s brought up by the sentence as a whole. While languages such as German put strenuous rules on individual words (e.g. gendered nouns, various cases), English compensates for its lack of gender and cases by forming a very strict sentence structure: Noun, verb, preposition, possible second proposition, object—e.g. “he went to the store.”

German, on the other hand, has only one grammatical law: That the verb must be in the second place of the sentence, with the subject right beside it. So while in German it would be grammatically correct for me to say “The store went the man to,” English-speaking people would likely assume I’ve just had a stroke. In English, we put most of our emphasis on the subject—“the man went to the store.” While this more common in the German language, it is equally correct for me to put that same amount to emphasis on another part of the sentence—“the store went the man to.” The latter sentence forces the reader to look at the store first, thereby subtly altering the image behind the sentence in a way the English language simply cannot do, and thereby embracing a certain amount of creativity and meaning the English language lacks.

Often times, I need to remind myself that poetry and prose are “fruit of the same tree” to be completely cliché. That is, both are forms of writing with the potential of overlap, should the writer wish to do so. Imagery seems to be the greatest connecting the force that allows the writer to create a sort of inner world in a poem the same way one would do in a work of creative prose: “Good prose will do you no harm, and there is good discipline to be had trying to write it” (Pounds).

It’s difficult for me to put into words how I feel about any form of writing. The only explanation I can give is this: Sometimes, I go into my head, where there is my own world that I know more than the world outside.” That is what I like about writing prose—I have more room to create the world and take what’s in my head and put it on the page. Imagery is what allows me to do this—I think in pictures to explain the abstract, using what I know from prose (e.g. precise details that form a full picture in the reader’s mind), and trying to place it in my poetry, which is why my poetry tends to be more structured, telling a story, rather than being abstract.