Five, No, Three Things I Hate About Me
The list keeps getting shorter. First, I was going to follow the movie title, but that seems like too much work, so I halved it. Five seemed like a fair number, not too self-loathing, but complete enough for a self-inflicted ass-whipping. But then I thought, who am I kidding? I just don’t hate myself that much, or at least most of the parts I hate never left high school or my underclass dorm.
Nevertheless, a commitment is a commitment, no matter how attenuated it may be.
#1 (I realize this ruins the suspense, but if you were in a countdown sort of suspense mode, then you need to go for a walk and think about things.)
#1: Cowardice, aka, my need to be “cool”
I put cool in quotes because this despicable part of myself is based on my irrational interpretation of what others would think is cool. You could translate cool as “just clever enough,” “just cynical enough,” or if you want to go back to those dorm years, “drinks a lot, dude.” It’s not that I’ve ever gone around acting as if I were always being watched; it’s just that whenever one of my frailties might have been exposed – my self-consciousness about appearance, my self-consciousness about money, the possibility that my peers might think I was capable of introspection, or that I had access to a full range of emotions – I started the song-and-dance routine that might distract the audience from the thing that was right in front of them.
Some details to support the point: I’ve told people the story of my experience at the Connecticut Writing Project, but I’ll tell you again anyway. It was 1998, I was 32, married, and ostensibly grown up. During one week of the institute, I worked on a poem about my father’s sudden death in 1977. I had never written about it, and I don’t know why. I just know that when the opportunities arose – for example, during an undergraduate Creative Writing class – I chose to write witty repartee about Budweiser instead of pursuing anything that might have helped me solve the mystery of death and dying and the aftermath. So I committed to two things I’d avoided in my past: writing a poem and writing about my father. The writing of the poem was a great experience (as was pretty much everything associated with CWP), and I have pages and pages and pages of words and lines that ended up in a 16-line poem. You can read it below.
But then I was ambushed by my cowardice. On my way to the printer to pick up the poem I’d sweated over day and night for a week, I glanced at someone’s computer screen and saw a few lines of a pastoral kind of poetry. Not that I have anything against nature or against her admirers, but two lines immediately popped into my head: “Fields, fields, I want to spit./How can poets write this shit?” Inspired as I was by my use of profanity (so rare for me), I sat back down at my computer and in fifteen minutes dashed off sixteen lines that contained the kind of social commentary that demonstrated that I was just clever enough, just cynical enough (I guess I’d grown out of the need for drinks a lot, dude, so that’s at least some progress).
About an hour later, we were meeting as a group to share our work. Guess which piece I shared: the personal poem I’d labored over for a week, in whose completion I felt immeasurable personal satisfaction, or the witty little ditty I slapped together in a trice.
Time’s a tickin’. Guess.
You probably got it right. But fortunately, a couple of friends from my writing group didn’t let me get off that easily. They, who had been patient and helpful with regard to my missteps and confusions during the course of the writing of the poem, asked me to read the first poem. So I did. It’s nice to know that it’s possible, with a little help, to overcome one’s cowardice.
Herewith the poems, if you have the patience.
Last Night
Hey Dad you wanna have a catch?
Sorry, son, I’m tired.
I never knew just what it was
About him I admired.
I love you, son, he said to me
As I headed up the stairs.
I didn’t think to plead for him
As I said my bedtime prayers.
That night I slept and so did he,
Just one of us awoke.
I searched for answers everywhere
But God, he never spoke.
On rainy days I think about
The path I’ve tried to follow,
A road on which he’s guided me
To look hopefully tomorrow.
Value of the Century
Trees, schmees! I want to spit.
How can poets write this shit
about nature, grass and lovely things,
about does and fawns, a bird who sings?
Why can’t poets feel what’s real,
like a merger or investment deal?
Why obsess ‘bout God’s green earth,
not cars or clothes or my net worth?
Get thee to the Wharton School!
Make sense of your life, you fool!
There you’ll hear what really matters,
not baby’s cries and pitter-patters.
And when they’re done you’ll surely know
the value of my portfolio
the evidence of my success,
the character that it reflects.
Later, I tried to make this poem more worthwhile. In a poetry class at Wesleyan, I tried to add something resembling a refrain to the poem so that it was less smart-ass and perhaps more reflective of the tension between childhood innocence and the experience of our culture.
Value of the Century
See the children play in the trees.
Boys with bruised shins, girls with skinned knees.
Trees, schmees! I want to spit.
How can poets write this shit
about nature, grass and lovely things,
about does and fawns, a bird who sings?
See the children lined up by rows,
Boys wearing caps, girls wearing bows.
Why can’t poets feel what’s real,
like a merger or investment deal?
Why obsess ‘bout God’s green earth,
not cars or clothes or my net worth?
See the children lined up by height,
Boys to the left, girls to the right.
Get thee to the Wharton School!
Make sense of your life, you fool!
They’ll teach you there what really matters,
not baby’s breath and pitter-patters.
See the children lined up by pair,
Boys flexing muscles, girls brushing hair.
And when they’re done you’ll surely know
the value of my portfolio
the evidence of my success,
the character that it reflects.
See the children lined up by rank,
Passing by trees on the way to the bank.
At some point in the future, I’ll get to thing #2: My need to always be right (which, no irony intended, really bothers me).
The list keeps getting shorter. First, I was going to follow the movie title, but that seems like too much work, so I halved it. Five seemed like a fair number, not too self-loathing, but complete enough for a self-inflicted ass-whipping. But then I thought, who am I kidding? I just don’t hate myself that much, or at least most of the parts I hate never left high school or my underclass dorm.
Nevertheless, a commitment is a commitment, no matter how attenuated it may be.
#1 (I realize this ruins the suspense, but if you were in a countdown sort of suspense mode, then you need to go for a walk and think about things.)
#1: Cowardice, aka, my need to be “cool”
I put cool in quotes because this despicable part of myself is based on my irrational interpretation of what others would think is cool. You could translate cool as “just clever enough,” “just cynical enough,” or if you want to go back to those dorm years, “drinks a lot, dude.” It’s not that I’ve ever gone around acting as if I were always being watched; it’s just that whenever one of my frailties might have been exposed – my self-consciousness about appearance, my self-consciousness about money, the possibility that my peers might think I was capable of introspection, or that I had access to a full range of emotions – I started the song-and-dance routine that might distract the audience from the thing that was right in front of them.
Some details to support the point: I’ve told people the story of my experience at the Connecticut Writing Project, but I’ll tell you again anyway. It was 1998, I was 32, married, and ostensibly grown up. During one week of the institute, I worked on a poem about my father’s sudden death in 1977. I had never written about it, and I don’t know why. I just know that when the opportunities arose – for example, during an undergraduate Creative Writing class – I chose to write witty repartee about Budweiser instead of pursuing anything that might have helped me solve the mystery of death and dying and the aftermath. So I committed to two things I’d avoided in my past: writing a poem and writing about my father. The writing of the poem was a great experience (as was pretty much everything associated with CWP), and I have pages and pages and pages of words and lines that ended up in a 16-line poem. You can read it below.
But then I was ambushed by my cowardice. On my way to the printer to pick up the poem I’d sweated over day and night for a week, I glanced at someone’s computer screen and saw a few lines of a pastoral kind of poetry. Not that I have anything against nature or against her admirers, but two lines immediately popped into my head: “Fields, fields, I want to spit./How can poets write this shit?” Inspired as I was by my use of profanity (so rare for me), I sat back down at my computer and in fifteen minutes dashed off sixteen lines that contained the kind of social commentary that demonstrated that I was just clever enough, just cynical enough (I guess I’d grown out of the need for drinks a lot, dude, so that’s at least some progress).
About an hour later, we were meeting as a group to share our work. Guess which piece I shared: the personal poem I’d labored over for a week, in whose completion I felt immeasurable personal satisfaction, or the witty little ditty I slapped together in a trice.
Time’s a tickin’. Guess.
You probably got it right. But fortunately, a couple of friends from my writing group didn’t let me get off that easily. They, who had been patient and helpful with regard to my missteps and confusions during the course of the writing of the poem, asked me to read the first poem. So I did. It’s nice to know that it’s possible, with a little help, to overcome one’s cowardice.
Herewith the poems, if you have the patience.
Last Night
Hey Dad you wanna have a catch?
Sorry, son, I’m tired.
I never knew just what it was
About him I admired.
I love you, son, he said to me
As I headed up the stairs.
I didn’t think to plead for him
As I said my bedtime prayers.
That night I slept and so did he,
Just one of us awoke.
I searched for answers everywhere
But God, he never spoke.
On rainy days I think about
The path I’ve tried to follow,
A road on which he’s guided me
To look hopefully tomorrow.
Value of the Century
Trees, schmees! I want to spit.
How can poets write this shit
about nature, grass and lovely things,
about does and fawns, a bird who sings?
Why can’t poets feel what’s real,
like a merger or investment deal?
Why obsess ‘bout God’s green earth,
not cars or clothes or my net worth?
Get thee to the Wharton School!
Make sense of your life, you fool!
There you’ll hear what really matters,
not baby’s cries and pitter-patters.
And when they’re done you’ll surely know
the value of my portfolio
the evidence of my success,
the character that it reflects.
Later, I tried to make this poem more worthwhile. In a poetry class at Wesleyan, I tried to add something resembling a refrain to the poem so that it was less smart-ass and perhaps more reflective of the tension between childhood innocence and the experience of our culture.
Value of the Century
See the children play in the trees.
Boys with bruised shins, girls with skinned knees.
Trees, schmees! I want to spit.
How can poets write this shit
about nature, grass and lovely things,
about does and fawns, a bird who sings?
See the children lined up by rows,
Boys wearing caps, girls wearing bows.
Why can’t poets feel what’s real,
like a merger or investment deal?
Why obsess ‘bout God’s green earth,
not cars or clothes or my net worth?
See the children lined up by height,
Boys to the left, girls to the right.
Get thee to the Wharton School!
Make sense of your life, you fool!
They’ll teach you there what really matters,
not baby’s breath and pitter-patters.
See the children lined up by pair,
Boys flexing muscles, girls brushing hair.
And when they’re done you’ll surely know
the value of my portfolio
the evidence of my success,
the character that it reflects.
See the children lined up by rank,
Passing by trees on the way to the bank.
At some point in the future, I’ll get to thing #2: My need to always be right (which, no irony intended, really bothers me).
posted by Mike McAteer @ 10:15 AM
1 Comments:
At 10:12 PM ,
Glow said...
hey mr.mcateer!! it's gloria. i actually had to make a blog thing for american studies last year, so i sort of have one. i just read your blog entry and it inspired me to start my own, but as of right now i'm stuck on thinking of a title for it, so i might have to hold off just a bit. i was reading both poems and really liked both. i can sort of relate to your first poem. only,my father didn't die..even worse, he left. i guess you can say that in a sense he did die..he died in my heart. so in a way i can relate. i've never thought of expressing what i feel into writing. i've always expressed my feelings through physical means, but i think that i just might try it through writing. mr.mcateer, i've only known you for a few days, and already you motivate me. i do have to say, i don't get motivated that easily. i can already tell that it's going to be an awesome first semester~ do know mr.mcateer that i already look forward toyour class everyday. day six has got to be my worst day, because i drop your class and i have a double science period. *sigh* i'm out.
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