Chapter 19

Getting to the Heart

Too much poetry today is made up of beautiful language, exquisite images, polished and sophisticated lines, but it lacks one basic quality – heart. I call it poetry for cowards. I call it sausage poetry, poetry that is interchangeable and cranked out of MFA programs across the country. It is totally recognizable for what it is – a product to be marketed. It is poetry that wears deodorant and is guaranteed not to offend. It is poetry guaranteed to get the writer acceptance in academic circles.

This poetry reminds me of an art exhibit I arranged many years ago. The artist was self-taught and built beautiful sculptures from metal and junkyard finds. Out of copper piping and scrap metal, he built a Model T Ford. It was an exact replica of a Ford, built to size; it had a motor, a battery, a key, a perfectly detailed hood. The students at the Passaic County Community College, where the exhibit was held, couldn’t stay away from that car sculpture. It was so detailed, so perfect, so shiny and bright; it’s only flaw was that it didn’t actually move. The motor was a model of a motor; the key did not actually turn and the battery did not work. It was so attractive, but it did not move.

These sausage poems are like that. They are missing essential vitality; they are missing blood and heart. The poet hides behind the scrim of language, afraid of anything that will reveal the underside of his or her life. These are poets who sneer at hearing another poem about a grandfather; they use the word “confessional” as a way to put down personal poetry.

I heard recently about a young poet who stopped writing for years, because she was told her poetry was too passionate. This professor was encouraging her to write bloodless poems, and he did her years of harm before she was willing to shut his voice out of her head.

I say that only poetry willing to take a risk will last. This book is intended to encourage that first draft of poem, the one where the vitality and heart is found. You can go back and polish the language, shape the lines, add details, but unless the heart is in the first draft, it isn’t going to be in the final draft either. This poem “Nighties” from All That Lies Between Us is one that went through many revisions, yet I worked very hard to try to retain its vitality.

Nighties

At my bridal shower, someone gave me

a pink see-through nightgown and pink satin

slippers with slender heels and feathers.

The gown had feathers on it, too.

I’ve always hated my legs and even then,

when I was still thin and in good shape,

I didn’t want to wear that nightgown

or slippers, didn’t want to parade

in front of you like some pin-up.

But I wore them anyway, all those negligées

I got as shower presents, sleazy nylon

I didn’t know was tacky. When I wore

shorty nightgowns, I’d leap into bed

not wanting you to notice how

the nightgown revealed what I thought

my biggest flaw. In all the young years

of our marriage, I wore a different nightgown

every night, not that it ever stayed on for long,

and afterwards I’d pull it back on, afraid

our children would find me naked in our bed.

Maria Mazziotti giLLan 79

I felt so sophisticated in those nightgowns,

like the ones Doris Day wore in movies.

Only years later, when my daughter buys me

a nightgown made of soft and smooth blue silk,

do I realize that the first ones I owned

were cheap imitations of this, the one

I hold now to my cheek, grateful

to have been once what I was.

How lucky I am to have loved you

in nylon, silk, my own incredible skin.