Purple Umbrellas and Spiced Jelly Beans: A Poetry Resource
Michigan doesn’t usually get the memo that spring is here. Or it does, but the state has a short-term memory, or winter is a hard habit to kick. For example, earlier this week in Ann Arbor we all thought we were going to the beach. Windows were flung open, everyone decided to take up running, grills were rolled out onto patios and fired up.
The next day though, winter said, “Not so fast, I have more to say!” Rain from the Midwest Heavens poured so hard it sounded like it was shattering cement and I couldn’t help but wonder if this freezing water dousing all of us was penance for the hooky the weather played the day before.
Driving to work was horrible. The windshield wipers couldn’t keep up and the rain that rocketed onto the windshield performed some kind of grunge melody that brought me back to my teenage years listening to Kurt Cobain scream, “Here we are now entertain us,” and my whining response: “Why is he so angry? What is he even talking about? Why don’t they play Janet Jackson and Salt n Pepa?”
Plus, I realized I didn’t have an umbrella.
Under no circumstances will I walk through rain when I need to be somewhere I want to look polished. I’m not trying to pretend I don’t care that I will undoubtedly look like Templeton the Rat from Charlotte’s Web after walking from my car into work, and be fine staying that way for the duration of the day.
So I pulled into CVS to buy an umbrella. I walked into the drugstore seconds after it opened and breathlessly asked where the umbrellas were. The man behind the counter said he had to go get them. “I didn’t know it was supposed to rain today!” he said, and he said it like he was so happy about this situation. He pranced off to get the umbrellas and left me there looking at the Easter candy: the Peeps, the pastel colored foil wrapped chocolate eggs, and my favorite: spiced jelly beans. On the other side of me was the make-up: mascara and primer and eyeshadow and blush all wrapped up and shiny and beckoning.
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Before there was Target, the place to go for make-up and candy in the Chicagoland area was Walgreens. Every Sunday morning, the Chicago Tribune thunked on our front steps and I dutifully read the comics (Charlie Brown, Calvin & Hobbes, and that single gal with the brown bob - was it Cathy? - were my favorites), then pulled out the Walgreens ads. Then, I called my best friend Celena to plan our excursion for Wet n Wild, L’oreal, and Revlon products. We always vowed we’d never buy Sun-In, no matter how much it was on sale, but as the temperature rose, it became more and more difficult to convince the Puerto Rican and Greek teenage girls that buying a bottle “to just try it and see what happens” is a terrible idea. I usually bought nail polish (always bright pink), some kind of bronzer, and eyeliner. Dark green was my favorite. Celena could always find the perfect red lipstick and lipgloss and usually had some kind of mascara that vowed lashes as tall as the Sears Tower. Both of us walked out of the store with a white plastic bag filled with make-up and candy in one hand, and Diet Cokes in the other.
I’ve known Celena since I was 14. She moved to my neighborhood on my birthday in 1989, though I didn’t know it at the time. It turned out to be the best birthday present I could ask for. In those days, I had one prayer and it went like this: “Just one friend. Please God, just give me one friend.”
And then Celena.
We helped each other grow up and we did it with humour and mischief and flair. But we also have dark sides. We knew all the words to the Cure and Depeche Mode songs, for example. We loved to reflect and analyze and brood. Neither of us were afraid to cry. We were drama personified, Celena and I, and it was our willingness to embrace and celebrate all the parts of ourselves that made us shine. I was completely at home with who I was and wasn’t around Celena, and I believe she can say the same thing.
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There is a scene in The Hobbit where Bilbo Baggins is bullied into climbing the tallest tree to see if there is any end to the forest Bilbo and the dwarves are in. So he does and when he pokes his head out from all that dark, the sun is shining so bright it takes a beat for him to adjust to it. When he opens his eyes he sees butterflies. Tolkien doesn’t say it, but it’s clear Bilbo is stunned by beauty. And for a moment, he’s renewed by it. What comes next could be argued that experiencing a cool breeze and seeing the butterflies made no difference. Everyone was still lost. Everyone was still hungry. This group still had this elusive and dangerous quest to fulfill.
But I was reminded of this scene when the worker at CVS came out pushing a large bucket of umbrellas, each of them black except for one purple umbrella. Of course I chose the purple umbrella. I also put two bags of spiced jelly beans on the counter along with a dark berry red lipstick. None of this would bring the sun out. It would still be raining. I would still have to go to work. A colorful umbrella, candy, and make-up were not going to change my situation.
Except Tolkien ends the scene with Bilbo thinking about the breeze and the butterflies. He’s grumpy and overwhelmed, no doubt. So are the dwarves. But it is the butterflies and the breeze Tolkien leaves us with before the page break. I think this is a cue.
I don’t know all that much about how to read poetry except that I love to do it. Every day after lunch, I print out a poem, get out my marker pens and read. What I look for in each poem is a grounding or anchoring image. Usually it shows up at the end of the poem. The image is supposed to settle you into the experience of the poem. Note that I didn’t write “help you understand” the poem. I never come to a poem in the hopes of understanding it. Poetry isn’t asking to be understood. Do you think a caterpillar asks what it all means as she’s brutally turning into a butterfly? I want to believe that the experience left her with wings and the only thing to do now is fly.
I think Tolkien left us thinking about the butterflies to tuck us into the story of Bilbo Baggins and this ridiculous and necessary quest he is on. I think this is what best friends do, too. Celena and I anchored each other into our lives. I would still want to know why Kurt Cobain was so angry. I would still have to grow out years of perms and come to terms with the fact that curling my bangs and spraying them with Aqua Net is never ever a good look on anyone. Celena and I would experience heartbreak again and again, and we would break hearts, too. There would be pain and sorrow, boredom and fear. But I believe that every experience calls us to pay attention because poetry is peeking out and waiting to be found in all of our moments. Sometimes it’s the poetry of best friends, sometimes it comes in butterflies. Sometimes it comes in purple umbrellas and spiced jelly beans.
Poetry Activities
Here are some activities for playing with and writing your own poetry. They can also be used as revision exercises if you have a piece of writing that you’re stuck on. Have fun, and consider sharing your work. We all need a pop of the purple umbrella in the downpour of our days.
Poem 007: “Do You Have Any Advice For Those of Us Just Starting Out?”
Give up sitting dutifully at your desk. Leave
your house or apartment. Go out into the world.
It's all right to carry a notebook but a cheap
one is best, with pages the color of weak tea
and on the front a kitten or a space ship.
Avoid any enclosed space where more than
three people are wearing turtlenecks. Beware
any snow-covered chalet with deer tracks
across the muffled tennis courts.
Not surprisingly, libraries are a good place to write.
And the perfect place in a library is near an aisle
where a child a year or two old is playing as his
mother browses the ranks of the dead.
Often he will pull books from the bottom shelf.
The title, the author's name, the brooding photo
on the flap mean nothing. Red book on black, gray
book on brown, he builds a tower. And the higher
it gets, the wider he grins.
You who asked for advice, listen: When the tower
falls, be like that child. Laugh so loud everybody
in the world frowns and says, "Shhhh."
Then start again.
—Ron Koertge *
* pronounced KUR-chee
Read the poem and find the “advice” in each stanza.
Stanza One:
Stanza Two:
Stanza Three:
Stanza Four:
Stanza Five:
Stanza Six:
Prompt: Write a poem offering advice on “just starting out”
Think of three pieces of advice
Come up with one grounding image
Write your poem in a “say it but don’t say it” way as Koertge does.
The Hardest Things: Teenage Girls + Sonnets
Not from the stars do I my judgment pluck,
And yet methinks I have astronomy—
But not to tell of good or evil luck,
Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons’ quality;
Nor can I fortune to brief minutes tell,
Pointing to each his thunder, rain, and wind,
Or say with princes if it shall go well
By oft predict that I in heaven find.
But from thine eyes my knowledge I derive,
And, constant stars, in them I read such art
As truth and beauty shall together thrive
If from thyself to store thou wouldst convert;
Or else of thee this I prognosticate:
Thy end is truth’s and beauty’s doom and date.
-William Shakespeare
Can't pluck judgement or anything from stars
and what does "have astronomy" mean? To
know what shines in the dark, or the scars
that put the light there? Or is it both? Knew
you - surely - art comes from the heft of night
and the insistent twinkle that breaks through.
Truth and beauty shall together take flight
the marks they leave, like cairns. Look! Here they grew.
Here they grow next to me in this Starbucks
nails clacking on keys, their voices a pitch
I no longer catch; like sunbeams dust struck
when I walk through that light trying to sift
through and catch the dirt that also sparkles.
Try to pluck stars, and we're left with partials.
-Callie Feyen
Rewrite a Shakespeare sonnet:
Read on of Billy’s sonnets
What do you see, hear, taste, touch, and smell?
Where does the sonnet take you? What memories and feelings come up?
What are the anchoring images?
Write your own sonnet
Found Poetry:
Copy and paste one page of your writing into a new document. (If you can, print it out.)
Circle all the words that strike and shimmer.
Go back up to the top of your page and see what kind of poem you found. Cross out words as necessary.
Object (Image) Poetry:
Choose an essay you are working on. Choose one that isn’t finished but you’re willing to delve into it.
What images are in the essay?
Choose one, particularly one that anchors the reader in the story, and write an object poem for it.
As In Poetry:
Look through your writing and pull words that you tend to use frequently. Have these words lost their shine and shimmer? Has their meaning fallen flat? Try and revive them by working on an “as in” poem for one or all of them.
Directions:
Your title is the word you’re working with
The first line is the part of speech, and its definition
Three stanzas (at least) follow, each increasing in intensity
Here’s an example:
union
noun: the act or fact of joining or being joined, especially in a political context
as in
he tells us
our spirit is restored
who's spirit?
if I am part of the union
but my spirit
has not been restored
where does that leave me?
as in
he tells us
we were dead
but now we're hot
is hot the opposite of dead?
I thought it was alive
is being "the hottest" good?
(ask a menopausal woman this question)
as in
he tells us
we should be ashamed
when we don't agree
but i don't feel shame
I've stopped listening
because I'm thinking about sanctuary cities
and whether refuge
is available
to all
or is it only for those in the union
Ode
An ode is a formal lyrical poem written in celebration or dedication to someone or something.
Write an ode for one of the topics of your essay. You could do this for a person in your essay as well.
Here’s an example by Nicki Giovanni:
Rosa Parks
By Nikki Giovanni
This is for the Pullman Porters who organized when people said
they couldn’t. And carried the Pittsburgh Courier and the Chicago
Defender to the Black Americans in the South so they would
know they were not alone. This is for the Pullman Porters who
helped Thurgood Marshall go south and come back north to fight
the fight that resulted in Brown v. Board of Education because
even though Kansas is west and even though Topeka is the birth-
place of Gwendolyn Brooks, who wrote the powerful “The
Chicago Defender Sends a Man to Little Rock,” it was the
Pullman Porters who whispered to the traveling men both
the Blues Men and the “Race” Men so that they both would
know what was going on. This is for the Pullman Porters who
smiled as if they were happy and laughed like they were tickled
when some folks were around and who silently rejoiced in 1954
when the Supreme Court announced its 9—0 decision that “sepa-
rate is inherently unequal.” This is for the Pullman Porters who
smiled and welcomed a fourteen-year-old boy onto their train in
1955. They noticed his slight limp that he tried to disguise with a
doo-wop walk; they noticed his stutter and probably understood
why his mother wanted him out of Chicago during the summer
when school was out. Fourteen-year-old Black boys with limps
and stutters are apt to try to prove themselves in dangerous ways
when mothers aren’t around to look after them. So this is for the
Pullman Porters who looked over that fourteen-year-old while
the train rolled the reverse of the Blues Highway from Chicago to
St. Louis to Memphis to Mississippi. This is for the men who kept
him safe; and if Emmett Till had been able to stay on a train all
summer he would have maybe grown a bit of a paunch, certainly
lost his hair, probably have worn bifocals and bounced his grand-
children on his knee telling them about his summer riding the
rails. But he had to get off the train. And ended up in Money,
Mississippi. And was horribly, brutally, inexcusably, and unac-
ceptably murdered. This is for the Pullman Porters who, when the
sheriff was trying to get the body secretly buried, got Emmett’s
body on the northbound train, got his body home to Chicago,
where his mother said: I want the world to see what they did
to my boy. And this is for all the mothers who cried. And this is
for all the people who said Never Again. And this is about Rosa
Parks whose feet were not so tired, it had been, after all, an ordi-
nary day, until the bus driver gave her the opportunity to make
history. This is about Mrs. Rosa Parks from Tuskegee, Alabama,
who was also the field secretary of the NAACP. This is about the
moment Rosa Parks shouldered her cross, put her worldly goods
aside, was willing to sacrifice her life, so that that young man in
Money, Mississippi, who had been so well protected by the
Pullman Porters, would not have died in vain. When Mrs. Parks
said “NO” a passionate movement was begun. No longer would
there be a reliance on the law; there was a higher law. When Mrs.
Parks brought that light of hers to expose the evil of the system,
the sun came and rested on her shoulders bringing the heat and
the light of truth. Others would follow Mrs. Parks. Four young
men in Greensboro, North Carolina, would also say No. Great
voices would be raised singing the praises of God and exhorting
us “to forgive those who trespass against us.” But it was the
Pullman Porters who safely got Emmett to his granduncle and it
was Mrs. Rosa Parks who could not stand that death. And in not
being able to stand it. She sat back down.