Could just be that chaotic memories are poetry in motion leading us to write memoir. I’m posting a blog from Mara Buck, an exceptional writer of poetry and novels, among other artistic works. A sensitive person, with a great head on her shoulders, Mara and comes up with ingenious thoughts on most subjects. Today she has something to say about “from chaos comes the poetry of memoir.” Seems she’s got a scientific streak as well…
Which of us has memories as ordered as files in a desk drawer, neat and tidy, accessible or ignored, hidden or exposed only by our own decisive hand? Not I and (I suspect) not you either. The greater number of us live instead in a constantly evolving state of discovery and disorder, the past intruding upon the present, forever subject to ambush, chaos really. Yet chaos can be a good thing, and when perceived and accepted for the potential gift it is, can render the most surprising of outcomes.
In chaos theory as applied to physics, small initial differences can yield widely divergent outcomes of unpredictable nature. Such is life inside a family, each member with a slightly different viewpoint, seldom agreeing on cause or effect. Chaos is created. Such is individual memory, tinged unreliably with emotion, influenced by the memories and opinions of others. The product is once again chaos. We each see only a part of the whole at any given time, and these factions shift and split within our overloaded psyches and through the years, blemished by emotion and doubt, chaos results where clarity is needed. Like fragments on the hard drive of a computer, remnants of abuse and distrust and pain clutter our brains in nano-bytes, useless within themselves, impeding progress until the defrag system clears the unwanted stash.
Writing memoir can become a system of harnessing that chaos, of restoring order.
It takes courage to surrender to chaos, to step back and grit our teeth and become a voyeur until, until… Until that moment when the sun breaks through the clouds and highlights the answer that was there all along, hidden within the whirlwind of chaotic memories. Writing through that chaos is a brave thing, an individualistic thing, such a difficult thing that when we attempt it we must first acknowledge the risk, that all our efforts may not produce the result we had imagined. Yet it is a learning experience, as is life, and once we accept and examine the bumps in the ride, we can better enjoy the trip, and we are the richer for it.
To illustrate the point in a rather physical manner, my desk is a partners’ model from 1910, a massive thing with four banks of drawers and a twenty-square-foot top which accommodates two complete computers, a printer, phones, answering machine, and all the bells and whistles befitting the twenty-first century. However, cowering amid the computer wires and assorted piles of effluvia, there is the treasure of a small antique bisque creamer, formerly beloved by my mother, and every now and then I stroke the softness of the porcelain and it feels not unlike the touch of her skin. A piece of beauty found amid the chaos. A physical memoir.
I wrote a poem entitled Chaos, ending with the line “for out of chaos comes poetry.” We must trust that the poetry of memoir will come someday from our own chaos, no matter how toxic, no matter how painful, because that’s what poetry ultimately is. Poetry is truth.
http://www.redroom.com/member/MaraBuck
http://www.redroom.com/blog/marabuck/chaos
http://www.youtube.com/user/marabuck Check Mara’s YouTube spot – intriguing, to say the least.
Mara, Thank you for alerting me that the comment section isn’t working. I’m trying it out – we’ll what happens
What a great article. Chaos can bring up many truths and enlightment as we work our way through it.
Testing
Thanks so much Lynn for inviting me to be a guest. You have a wonderfully informative site. I’m still making notes!
Mara – It was my pleasure to have you as a guest. You’re welcome back whenever you are itching to post something memoir related – a poem or some of your art may work, too.
“I have found in my own education that a jumble of seemingly unrelated facts or principles can coalesce into a magnificently unified microcosm, wherein all components balance beautifully, harmoniously and usefully with the application of appreciation to knowledge.” ~ Harrison Solow, Felicity and Barbara Pym, 2010.
I think that with poetry, as with everything else, appreciation is based on knowledge, knowledge is crucial to understanding, understanding is fundamental to wisdom and wisdom produces poetry. Everything is “seemingly unrelated” until the poet transforms it into a particular harmony. As usual, Mara, we seem to be in tangential agreement (although I would argue that the tangle of wires and machines ends up, ultimately in your poetry and as your memoir and thus fundamental to the harmony you create. I also write memoir. But I call it something else. So enjoyed reading your critique!
~Harrison
Harrison – Thank you for your thoughtful comment on Mara’s guest post.
I have just now finished listening to your answer as to what changed after you won the Pushcart Prize at http://lamp.academia.edu/HarrisonSolow. Illuminating to be sure – the small mindedness of many of your colleagues is shocking. Fortunately, it seems their pettiness has moved you to an even higher plane. You are an amazingly talented and inspiring woman.
What is the something else you call the memoir that you write?
Your quote, “It’s about literature. It’s about reading. It’s about writing. It’s about becoming educated, about not assuming things aren’t happening just because you don’t see them happening, about not ever believing that language is a true vehicle for communication – and it’s about knowing that sometimes, in order to get a true education, you have to turn to your butcher,” touches on one of my truths. In my work, I encourage women to write from their hearts, where intimate and universal wisdom unfolds through their collective ordinary voices. The beauty in their short, true tales stems from their sincere need to know, to learn, to understand, as well as their willingness to share perceptions of intimate family relationships through deceptively simple stories, even when many don’t consider themselves writers of scholarly significance. I thank these women for having the courage to go to a tender spot deep inside themselves and then to find the words that will bring their discoveries to light in brief memoirs; bio-vignettes that have the power to move people and change awareness.
It’s good to have made your acquaintance through Mara.
Hi Linda, I really appreciate your comments. Nice to meet you on Lynn’s site. Mara.
A day later, Harrison. Your comments and Lynn’s answers did truly disappear, but then RR was down (for me) all yesterday and well into the evening, so finally herewith… We find harmony from the chaos, how appropriate.
I do agree that a great many of those tangled wires are fundamental to the whole (exactly the point) but not the duplicates, not all, not every tiny slight, every misunderstood word, every piece of burned toast or overflowing toilet, because to enable every fragment of the stash to become a part (however clandestinely) of the whole, one would produce merely a vomit of youthful existential angst, a quantity of stream of consciousness lacking quality and cohesiveness. I see the final product as being in the editing, the sifting through, the ultimate knowing of that which is important and relevant to the whole, which is in agreement with your second paragraph.
Can’t wait to check out Felicity and Barbara Pym. ~M
Thanks, Lynn, for being so tenacious about your website. That word chaos again! But mostly thanks for the link to Harrison’s spoken comments on the Pushcart Prize and lyrical reading of her works — more on that later.
I always love to read your thoughts on your own work, how adamant you are in your support for the women with whom you work and for whom you have created such inroads.
Did I truly link the two of you? I am honored. We should at least have Welsh tea.
Again, Lynn, thanks for making sure Harrison’s comments got through to me. With you in my corner, I feel ready for anything! You are always the protective teacher.
I entirely agree on the liminal aspects of fiction, non-fiction, et al. (Again, more at another time.) And I love the thought of you and Lynn sharing ideas.
As to your comments on my writing — Harrison, I can do nothing more than stand back and blush.
I’m thrilled to be part of this beautiful triangle.