Nov
12
The Beginning to The End
Filed Under Youth Blog
(posted by J.E.P.)
The Sawdust Poem
(NOTE: Please see the Writing Mentor note that follows JEP’s poem)
From the good to bad happy and sad life as an outlaw without a dad not knowing when this trouble will end trying to stay true to family and friends asking my self why me God but when i talk it’s like the words are running from me full of evil full of good i see pain in my neighborhood so tell me what way to go cause I don’t know fighting my problems… left to right look at me a beast is in your sight kind yes that’s me but get me angry you will see I don’t care about what people say give me what’s mine and move out the way i overcome bad so I’m a champion nothing more nothing less it’s me JEP I’m from the streets and live like I’m from there mom sitting trying to fight the tears knowing her son is a good boy but the streets got a hold on him get to know him before you judge him that’s all i can say mom till it’s going to be a better day America loves the bad guy don’t matter how much you lie.
Writing Mentor Note from David:
A funny thing happens when you work with someone for a long time—you, somehow, if the working relationship is a good one, get on the same page. It’s a subconscious transition, and when it makes itself known consciously it is nothing short of surprising and exhilarating.
I’m trying to read more poetry these days. It is, for me, the finest form of the written word when done correctly. It has the ability to change you instantly. I’ve been reading new poetry by young poets challenging form and structure, as well as thoughts and expectations. One of the greatest things about poetry is the absolute freedom it can provide. It offers a structured playfulness. In yoga this is the idea of exploration—finding your limit. Then next time, starting from that limit and finding your new limit. Poetry offers the same—you explore from the point you thought was the end.
JEP and I have been working together in The Lab and outside of it for almost two years now. He is one of the most talented poets I know. As well as a leader when he puts his mind to it. Today at Harding, I gave JEP a writing challenge—write an update of your last two weeks, a series of ups and downs to be sure, as a straight-forward update, then use the same information from the last two weeks and write a poem. This, I said, would give the reader an insight into how your mind works when crafting a poem. JEP needs little else than space and time to write, so I left it at that and let him write.
He did two things differently than he usually does. First, he chose to write the “update” in the third person: a bird’s eye view retrospective rather than a first-person serialization of events. The second was more surprising to me, and as stated above, exhilarating. First, though, what I was doing: I was checking my email. I was reading an email from a magazine I do editing work for. The email was a request to read and edit a prose poem. A prose poem? I thought, now that would be interesting to introduce to JEP. In The Lab there is often not enough time to get to all the things we would like. Still, I went to my bag and pulled out a book of poetry from one of those new, young poets and about half of this book was prose poetry. I could at the very least show JEP these poems, seemingly, to the unknowing eye, paragraphs on the page. As I was reading one of these JEP announced that he was done. And here was the second, and more surprising occurrence: JEP stood from the chair in front of the computer, a wide grin stretched across his face, and said, “I started breaking it up like usual…but I didn’t think it worked. So I just kept it all in one running line.”
When I looked at the screen I saw the poem above. Somehow, unbeknownst to us, JEP and I had gotten on the same page; we were working on a subconscious level, tapping into something, thinking the same thing. JEP didn’t know what he was doing. He had never been introduced to prose poetry. But this is what great artists and thinkers do—they take the knowledge they have of a subject, and because they are imaginative enough to see that the edges of that subject are malleable, they change them. They find a limit that they did not even know existed. They explore. And they expand.
What we have above is a student, a writer, exploring his limits in words. It is a new exploration, one with few definitions at the moment. This is what poetry allows. Once we know the rules, we start to break them to go further. The list is too long to give here the poets who have experimented with punctuation, capitalization, prose…all grammatical rules, to expand language. But add JEP to it. He was already a great writer. He is trying to be better. So he is exploring. And I for one can’t wait to see what linguistic limit he crosses in that exploration.)
The update on JEP
The last couple weeks for JEP have been like a rollercoaster, ups and downs. JEP’s been a hard worker at the work site Rainbow but still had trouble to overcome far as fights, girls, and trying to stay out of trouble. Fighting in school with another student, hanging out with the wrong crowd, and not making the right choices have been JEP’s down falls. The ups is more of the positive things JEP is good at – for example, going to school, being a leader, making good choices, and just being an all around stand up guy. JEP is now back in Harding High School and being the JEP we all know, or should I say, knew. Don’t judge a man by a life he chooses to live but by the bad he overcame…
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