Sandra Heska King

daring to open doors

Late for Poetry by Lyla Willingham Lindquist

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late for poetry

(Haitian chicken)

I’m so glad Lyla Willingham Lindquist adjusted some time to share a few poetic pearls here today as part of our Month of Making Manifest with Dave Harrity. Lyla and I have been online friends for a few years, and we first met face-to-face on the Frio River in Texas. Lyla makes me think and laugh, and is the wizard behind my blog design. Some of us call Lyla the “Blog Whisperer.” 

My early experience with poetry was one of deprivation. It’s most likely that this is not completely true, but it’s how I remember it.

I learned in high school that nursery rhymes have a positive effect on the brain development of infants and toddlers. I recalled few nursery rhymes, so as is my way, determined that they had never been read to me as a young child. (This was also probably not true.) I could have been smarter, but for a few silly couplets.

In sixth grade, I memorized and recited my first (and last) poem, “Trees” by Joyce Kilmer, who I believed at the time to be a girl (who else would write about trees?). Like other assignments in Mr. Palm’s class, I was mysteriously excused from memorizing others. I now understand the value of memorizing poetry and try not to resent Mr. Palm for it.

Throughout most of my adulthood, I kept poetry at arm’s-length (my arms, by the way, are very long). I had no adverse educational experiences with poetry, no recurring nightmares about teachers who used poetry as a blunt-force instrument. I just knew nothing of it: I found poems hard to read while my eyes were rolling. I kept my distance, steering clear of poetry and would-be poets with statements like “Poetry is just cryptic nonsense.”

A couple of years ago I gave poetry a trial period to prove itself. I started to read it. When sufficiently provoked, I would even write it. One day, a friend sent me a poem. I was sitting at a baseball game watching one of my boys play and it showed up on my phone. It was a not a sentimental poem. It had nothing to do with trees or loveliness, nor did it mention cows, moons, or nimble boys named Jack with scorch marks on the back of their shorts.

Its words were bold, strong. Maybe I’ll even say severe.

But they made sense to me. In fact, they made sense of me. It sounds more dramatic than necessary to say that they were the first words I’d read that ever fully made sense. But it may be the truth.

My response was angry. Not angry at the friend for having sent it, nor angry at what the poem said. I was angry about the years poetry had been missing from me. Someone (many someones), somewhere (many somewheres), had written words that explained the world and my existence in it in a way that made sense. And yet I’d never read the words because they’d been written by someone with a worldview too divergent from my own or in a literary form that seemed to walk the long way around a subject instead of looking it in the eye.

What I had dismissed as cryptic nonsense or kept otherwise off-limits in fact held the key to a penetrating comprehension that had eluded me most of my life. As though poems themselves were to blame for my delayed appreciation, I was angry at poetry because of its late arrival.

I got over it, mostly. Enough to read more poetry, anyway. And to write more of it. In many ways poetry loosened my tongue. It gave me ways to say things I’d never been able to touch with words before. The funny thing is, at the same time it’s given much less to say.

Of course, in the end I discovered the one who was late was me.

On Explaining the Adjuster’s Delinquency

He waited 92 years to confront
an 18-wheeler in his path, then drove
his crumpled Grand Marquis
into the night. I chased after,
couldn’t see for the shadows
and the trees
so I cried out at the top
of my small voice,
“Old man! I need from you
only a tardy slip.
I am late for poetry.”

 

late for poetry

 

Lyla Willingham Lindquist is a claims adjuster, helping people and insurance companies make sense of loss. When not crunching numbers or scaling small buildings, LW is an editor at Tweetspeak Poetry, writes and draws occasionally at The Chicken Question, and designs websites at The Willingham Enterprise. Find LW on Twitter at @lwlindquist.

Lyla bio pix

Comments

  1. I am a self-proclaimed poetry chicken and I might need one of the tardy slips if you ever find the guy in Grand Marquis…

    • We have a certain fondness for chickens at Tweetspeak. Both actual chickens, and those who are a little anxious about poetry. 😉

      And I never did find the guy.

  2. There’s so much here I like. The generosity that how you remember it may not be how it was with the nursery rhymes; memorizing “Trees” for a man named Palm; the links; the rich life after repentance (to stretch a metaphor to your arms’ length); and your own poem.

    I suspect the timing was somehow just right. Would you tell what that pivotal poem was?

    • Different people remember the same events in different ways, so I have to be open to the possibility that I just wasn’t paying attention. It happened plenty. 😉

      Yes, on the timing. Makes all the difference in the world. The poem? I keep it pretty close. Coupling the poem itself with the idea that it helps me make sense of things paradoxically leaves me open to the interpretation of others in ways I like to avoid. 😉

  3. I wrote bad poetry as a young child and later as a young woman, making sure the rhythms and rhymes were just so, but never showing or reading it to anyone. And then I abandoned the form for twenty years in favour of painting which I both showed and sold. I guess I could say I was late to return to poetry, making discoveries of it more from within my prose than in metered or measured lines. I think decades of music may have affected how I look at my writing now, and what I call poetry.

    • It makes sense to me, Carol, that both the painting and music would influence your writing. And I think everyone’s relationship with poetry will be different. (That is, I won’t say everyone needs to write it.) But I am a believer that poetry, if given a small chance, can add richly to one’s writing and to one’s life.

  5. Ohhhhh Sandra thank you for hosting Lyla. Well written post and amusing, too, of course. Poetry is the best rediscovery of my adult life–better late than never, eh? Yours about chasing the Grand Marquis driver for a tardy slip. Perfect. (But I don’t get the rooster).

    • The chicken … is just a chicken. I write at a place called The Chicken Question. And half my Tweetspeak infographics probably have chickens. It’s just a thing, I guess. 🙂

      Thanks for reading and commenting, Jody. 🙂

      • I missed Jody’s chicken question. There’s this thing about moving from a poetry chicken to a poetry chick, too.

        Is this a rooster or a chicken? I don’t know. But I’ve wanted to use these photos for something… taken at a Haitian beach…

        And if you haven’t checked out The Chicken Question, you should. 🙂

  6. “But they made sense to me. In fact, they made sense of me.” Isn’t this key? If we’re lucky enough to find the poem that knows us by name, we’ll look for more. There’s always more.
    Thanks for helping me remember, Lyla.

  8. I memorized a poem in 6th grade -“Casey at the Bat.” And I don’t even watch sports very often. I learned to love poetry – at least some poetry – as a young mom, collected it a bit over the years. And occasionally, I write in a quasi-poetic format. Not sure it’s actually poetry. Thanks for this Lylaesque reflection — only you could include chickens, long arms, nursery rhymes and anger-at-poetry in one finely crafted post. Kudos.

    • Thanks, Diana. 🙂 Sandra surprised me with the chicken.

      I’ve come to see such value in collecting poems — putting them away in a notebook or marking up a book with a pencil or bookmark. Every now and then I need one of them, because it has the right words to explain something to me. It’s hard to imagine being able to do inner work anymore without poems to support it. 😉

  9. I’m late for the discussion portion of class. What a surprise, right? But I’m wondering what poem it was that showed up on Lyla’s phone that made her angry at poetry for arriving later than was fashionable.

  10. Hey Carolyn, glad you made it. We don’t worry about late. 😉

    The poem is one I keep to myself. It’s meaning is fairly personal and if I were to share it in the context of what I’ve written here, it just opens things up to everyone’s interpretations, all of which would be equally personal to each reader and probably leave me feeling quite psychoanalyzed. 😉

    So, you could just pick a poem you like and believe it was the one. 😉 Happy to hear from you here. 🙂

  11. “The poem made sense of me.”
    Who am I?
    Why am I here?
    What word did you breath when you made me?
    What word am I?
    What poem?
    What poem that made sense of me?

    Lyla – you inspire me. As do you all.

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