The Scrapper Poet

I just recently finished Major Jackson’s book, Hoops, and I have been thinking about one of the lines in his poem, ” Wyoming “.  In this particular work, the poet asks, a sort of rhetorical question, “Jersey, the industrial carcass, one/Of the great literary states we agreed/Which of course, begged the question/about landscape: Does a poet’s muse need/Her own wasteland to succeed?”

I guess my response to that question would be “Yes.”

This week, I am taking a class,  titled “Putting Sacred Spaces in a Poem,”    under poet  Todd Davis (who also happens to be the star of Poetry Daily today, take a look here).  I took this class for many reasons, but mostly because I have always been fascinated with the way poets deal with spiritual issues in the written work.  I don’t consider my work especially spiritual, although I have noticed that religious figures and allusions do pop up from time to time in my poems.

On the first day of class, Todd asked class members to talk a bit about what they thought was sacred, or how they would define “sacred places.”  For many people, youth was a sacred place.  Or family.  Several people mentioned natural landscapes.  Today, we talked about sound, and several people, when they read their drafts used soft sounds, like the “l”. 

The word “sacred” does invite a sort of reverence in poetry, yet I’m happy that this class has taken the term a bit further.  With one of the exercises, Todd asked us to list (brainstorm) a group of sounds we associate with our own sacred places.  However, last night when I did this, my list came out harsh — I heard grinding, chortling, huffing, scraping.  In fact, when I reviewed many of my poems, the verbs seem sort of, well, rough.  In fact, my natural landscapes that I hold sacred are rough — full of debris and wreckage and ruins.  Fans of The Scrapper Poet know that I was born in the Rust Belt, grew up in the Rust Belt, and currently live, teach and write in the Rust Belt, so the beauty of corrosion is part of my life.   I love barns that are decorated with faded letters: Chew Mail Pouch Tobacco, Treat Yourself to the Best.  I love railroad yards with old boxcars.  I love crumbling factories that are falling, slowly becoming part of the earth.

What have I learned thus far this week?  That there is something sacred about the harshness of the world, about violence, about death.  It’s how we weed through the rough edges to capture what is important, or what may be considered holy.  I have never really looked at my work, or works of poets who write about working-class life and issues, as sacred, but now, I will.