Part Two

Revealing Connections

 

                                                                                    To reveal the emotional connections between two people,

                                                                        poets may use an event and the specific details surrounding

                                                                        it to clarify the nature of the relationship. In the following poem,

                                                                        color, texture, temperature, taste, and snatches of conversation

                                                                        give an energy to the emotional exchange between the two parties

                                                                        in the poem.

                                                           

                                                                        The Race

 

                                                                        When I got to the airport I rushed up to the desk

                                                                        and they told me the flight was canceled. The

                                                                                    doctors had

                                                                        said my father would not live through the night

                                                                        and the flight was canceled. A young man with a

                                                                        dark blonde mustache told me

                                                                        another airline had a non-stop

                                                                        leaving in seven minutes---see that

                                                                        elevator over there will go

                                                                        down to the first floor, make a right you’ll

                                                                        see a yellow bus, get off at the

                                                                        second Pan Am terminal—I

                                                                        ran, I who have no sense of direction

                                                                        raced exactly where he’d told me, like a fish

                                                                        slipping upstream deftly against the

                                                                        flow of the river. I jumped off that bus with my

                                                                        heavy bags and ran, the bags

                                                                        wagged me from side to side as if to

                                                                        prove I was under the claims of the material, I

                                                                        ran up to a man with a white flower on

                                                                                    his breast,

                                                                        I who always go to the end of the line, I said

                                                                        Help me. He looked at my ticket, he said make a

                                                                        left and then a right go up the moving stairs

                                                                                    and then

                                                                        run. I raced up the moving stairs

                                                                        two at a time, at the top I saw the

                                                                        long hollow corridor and

                                                                        then I took a deep breath, I said

                                                                        goodbye to my body, goodbye to comfort, I

                                                                        used my legs and heart as if I would

                                                                        gladly use them up for this, to

                                                                        touch him again in this life. I ran and the

                                                                        big heavy dark bags

                                                                        banged me, wheeled and swam around me like

                                                                        planets in world orbits---I have seen

                                                                        pictures of women running down roads

                                                                                    with their

                                                                        belongings tied in black scarves

                                                                        grasped in their fists, running under serious

                                                                        gray historical skies---I blessed my

                                                                        long legs he gave me, my strong

                                                                        heart I abandoned to  its own purpose, I

                                                                        ran to Gate 17 and they were

                                                                        just lifting the thick white

                                                                        lozenge of the door to fit it into the

                                                                        socket of the plane. Like the man who is not

                                                                        too rich, I turned to the side and

                                                                        slipped through the needle’s eye, and then I

                                                                        walked down the aisle toward my father. The

                                                                                    jet was

                                                                        full and people’s hair was shining, they were

                                                                        smiling, the interior of the plane was filled with a

                                                                        mist of gold endorphin light,

                                                                        I wept as people weep when they enter heaven,

                                                                        in massive relief. We lifted up

                                                                        gently from one tip of the continent and

                                                                        did  not stop until we set down lightly on the

                                                                        other edge. I walked into his room and

                                                                        watched his chest rise slowly and

                                                                        sink again, all night

                                                                        I watched him breathe.

 

                                                                                    ---Sharon Olds

Sharon Olds was born in San Francisco and was educated at Stanford and Columbia. She was the New York State Poet Laureate from 1998 to 2000. She teaches poetry workshops in the Graduate Creative Writing Program at New York University and was one of the founders of the NYU workshop program at Goldwater Hospital on Roosevelt Island in New York City. Her work has received the Harriet Monroe Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Lamont Selection of the Academy of American Poets, and the San Francisco Poetry Center Award. She lives in New York City. Sharon Olds's The Dead and the Living; The Gold Cell; The Wellspring; The Father; Blood, Tin, Straw; and The Unswept Room are available in Knopf paperback.

 

ASSIGNMENT:         Choose two people (one of them could be you) and portray their relationship in a poem.

                                    Use an event that is charged with emotion to focus on a specific aspect of the

                                    relationship. Be aware of how you want the reader to feel toward the people

                                    in the poem. Senses, smiles, metaphors will root the abstract feelings in recognizable

                                    experiences for the reader. Use at least one simile in your poem and underline it.

 

                                    FOLLOW THE REQUIREMENTS GIVEN IN PART ONE TO COMPLETE THIS ASSIGNMENT.

                                    SAVE YOUR POEM IN YOUR POETRY FOLDER LABELED “PART TWO-CONNECTIONS”

 

Student Example        Footprints

 

                                    Friday

                                   

                                    The young girl and the older man are together

                                    They climb into the old rusty car

                                    Their bags securely packed in the trunk

                                    The girl feels excited

                                    She shivers with the delight of going to

                                                Cape Cod

                                    alone with her father

                                    They switch on the radio and listen to voices.

                                    Some of his choice, which she doesn’t like,

                                                but listens

                                    to anyway.

                                    And some of her choice, which he doesn’t

                                                like, but

                                    listens to anyway.

                                    Neither of them complain.

                                    They chatter about her brother

                                    They chatter about her school work

                                    They have no cares.

                                   

                                    They speed by the other cars.

                                    Finally, they arrive in the sandy, deserted

                                                parking lot

                                    It is late in the season so they are alone.

                                    They pluck their shoes off their feet and

                                    scatter excitedly over the hill.

                                    The cold sand slips between their toes and adds

                                    to their happiness.

                                    The horizon comes into sight.

                                    Millions of fiery colors fill the sky.

                                   

                                    Now there are no Fridays together.

                                    The girl cannot have a civilized conversation

                                    with the man.

                                    They are two completely different people.

                                    Now when the girl walks on the beach.

                                    She walks with her peers, forward.

                                    Her footprints are lost with the other footprints.

                                    There still are those many quarrels.

                                    But lately they do not wash away so quickly.

 

                                                ---Rachel Zindler