Archive for the ‘Poetry’ Category

• WHAT MATTERS TO ME IS STORY

  Date: 2021.09.06 | Category: Poetry, Septuagenarian, The Art of Writing | Response: 0

  WHAT MATTERS TO ME IS STORY

   

  It’s been six months since my memoir in verse, Septuagenarian, debuted.  I think about this as another Minnesota poet, and another, and another has released another book of poems.  I think about how different our voices are. How different our techniques. I am less about craft and more about subject. Perhaps because I was told I didn’t learn how to write in graduate school, I didn’t want to prove them wrong.  Or, perhaps, because I was told that what I wrote about wasn’t trendy, I did want to prove them wrong. Trendy not why I write, but that what I write matters (if only to me).  As Deborah Keenan said about my book:

   

  Sherry Quan Lee writes with a purity of intention.  She has no interest in certain kinds of poetics that conceal, or only honor, adornment.  She has her gaze on the long sweep of her personal history.

   

  What matters to me is self-awareness and healing and to know and accept that I am strong—that I am okay. What matters to me is story. And knowing that mine is only one story, but stories intersect no matter how different they may seem, at least that’s been my experience.  Sometimes it’s a similar time and location, a tragedy, a celebration, gender, culture, sexuality, race, age—family.

   

  Yet, since publication, I have seldom opened my book to read what I had written.  Out of fear or out of closure I’m not sure which, maybe both.

   

  Recently I finally let go of dollars to find a streaming service where I could watch Queen Sugar.  I am on Season 4.  Every episode of the entire series has my emotions roller coasting as I come to it from my history and my experience. Nova is an activist, an artist.  She wrote a memoir telling family stories, divulging secrets.  Her family is unforgiving.

   

  Beginning seven years ago my sisters one by one turned from me.  If there was an excuse it was, to me, senseless; one sibling yelling she hoped my writing friends took care of me.  One sibling saying my highs and lows were too much for her.  And one sibling refused to come up with an excuse.  Were they afraid of my truth-telling?  Was I wrong to share our stories? Did my writing have nothing or everything to do with the separations? Two of my  three sisters gave me permission, the other sister I respectfully left out of my books.  I even changed my last name (another kind of separation).

   

  I hope Nova and her family can reconcile and forgive.  Yet for me, separation feels healthy, but sad—I can’t stop grieving.  Is truth-telling for a greater good if the truth be told continues a history of separation?   Does a writer/an artist have control over what they write? Are we born to disrupt?  Can our souls/our spirits handle the repercussions, the displacement?

   

  My most recent book struggles with the theme of separation.  The separations that have cursed my family. Black families/slave families were separated by the auction block, if not that assigned duties and  gender were other forms of separation.  A female slave assigned to house duties-including the duty of fulfilling the master’s sexual improprieties.  And from those liaisons, babies of various skin colors/mixed-race babies—my great-grandmother–added another dimension to the separation of families. Black men were lynched.

   

  Separation was created by laws that kept Chinese immigrants, who came to work in America as cheap labor, from bringing their wives.  West Coast Japanese were separated during WWII most in internment camps, some joined or were drafted into the armed services, others were able to attend college in Minnesota.  My Chinese father joined the Navy because he wanted to, leaving a wife and two young daughters’ home in Minneapolis while he fought the Japanese from a ship out at sea.

   

  My story is complex (as yours probably is too):  poverty, passing, fear, anger, divorce, addictions–separations.  Each poem, each book releases and sets aside who I was to create space for who I am.  Yet who I was has a way of creeping into who I am so I will never be free enough to be happy; but I am emotionally healthy which comes from years of learning, of therapy, of listening, of reading–of truth-telling. Minnesota is a choir of many voices, many songs; poetry. Colorful/diverse writers inform me, connect me, keep me from becoming idle, from being satisfied. Keep me alert.

   

  Maybe today I will open my book, Septuagenarian, and re-remember a life I have lived.  73 years-old.  I have no regrets.

   

  Sherry Quan Lee

  © September 6, 2021

• A LOVE POEM

  Date: 2021.04.14 | Category: Poetry, Septuagenarian | Response: 0

  Age Has Everything to Do With It

   

  Permission to write this poem, to weave this story.

  To hold the hand to touch the narrative.

   

  Not all relationships are volatile. Not this one.

  Age has everything to do with it.

   

  They meet for the first time in a park and it’s raining.

   

  She places a cross on the picnic bench, unsure

  if it’s necessary. Not knowing she is protected

  by organic food and lack of devilish intent.

   

  If needed, there is an umbrella; but truth weathers

  gray skies and intuition.

   

  They break bread and sip jasmine tea. This is love,
  or so she reckoned, not just another walk in the woods.

   

  copyright Sherry Quan Lee; from Septuagenarian: love is what happens when I die

• THE WRITING PROCESS-what I remember what I don’t

  Date: 2021.02.20 | Category: Assignments, Poetry, Septuagenarian, The Art of Writing | Response: 0

  The Writing Process-What I Remember; What I Don’t

   

  A student once said to me that she appreciated me telling the class to keep everything.  Keep each and every draft of your writing, your manuscript.  Did I say that?

   

  Actually, I save nothing.  Okay, next to nothing.  When did I start letting go? It’s not about keeping what brings me joy.  My writing isn’t joyful.  Although, someone once said it had sass.

   

  I have always decluttered.  Every two or three months I purge-this includes not only things, but sometimes, people (sometimes they purge me).  But since the Pandemic, actually even before, I started a momentous purge—maybe it was when I turned 70 and knew any day now could be my last and why make my children go through my things, things they wouldn’t want.  Even worse, if they, without paying any attention to who I was, threw them out without a nod or a recognition.

   

  My office files are fairly pristine.  Sorted, labeled, shelved:  insurance, taxes, car, condo, publications—mine and those of my friends.  Yet, as the piles of my essays and poems thin, I am heart struck to notice a journey of words that repeat, that sail forth, that bring me to my writing/life today at the age of 73.

   

  I have a book forthcoming. March 2021, LHP:  Septuagenarian: love is what happens when I die. Now that’s a scary title if not understood as a metaphor.  The mock-up of the cover has the sub-title in small font size.  What does that mean?  Are we afraid of death?  Actually, the title came from a poem within the manuscript and it stuck, the line in the title, not the poem.  It’s a metaphor.  Clarissa Pinkola Estés said What must I give more death to today, in order to generate more life? I say, what must I let go of to generate love, be love, give love, get love.

   

  As I fumble through boxes of what I have not yet been able to discard, I discover a few poems that haven’t yet found their way to the trash.  One poem in particular, but there are others, starts out like this:

   

  “I woke up knowing I was dead.  The first thing I’ve been sure of all my life.  The marks stretched, some visible and some invisible.  Stretched past cardboard boxes.  None of them empty,  Each box filled with an arm or a leg.”

   

  The two-page poem contain boxes each labeled by a decade. It ends with:  “This was love.  She had finally gotten what she wanted.  But she was no longer who she was. She didn’t recognize herself….”

   

  The poem was dated October 15, 1999.  Only three years after I earned an MFA. There are hand-written revisions.  There is a short version printed in red.  A note says Vulva Riot.  There is a chorus that reads:  “Stretch marks, mark time, highway marks, passing marks, remarks, earmarks, market, marker, question marks, magic markers, grave markers, stretch marks.”

   

  Sometimes we don’t know why we say things, do things, save things—write things.  But there is significance to our actions.  I am glad I saved this poem. If I had come across it earlier, it would be in my book.  It would be the Introduction, the Foreword.  I am going to edit the poem.  This poem will not be discarded.  There are no rules I told my students.  Save all your drafts or don’t.  Discard everything so future generations won’t be bothered, or save what has been your life line and hope someone will embrace it.

   

  WRITING EXERCISE:  choose a word, such as mark and explore it and all related words by sound, by meaning, or both.  Create a chorus/a short verse.  Let it be the pattern that emerges.  How do you fill the empty spaces in-between?  Are they boxes marked by decades such as:

   

  “One box, marked 1953-1963, contained Hostess Cup Cakes.  Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup.  Barbie dolls.  Captain, May I.  Sorry.  Sugar and Spice.  Axel and His Dog. Captain Kangaroo. Nancy Drew. Bobbsey Twins.  The Little Engine That Could.  Pop Beads,  Roller Skates.  Crinolines. Hula Hoops.  Red Rover.  Pony Tails.  Our Redeemer Lutheran Church. Kool Aide. “Go Tell Aunt Rhody the Ol’ Gray Goose Is Dead”. The Salvation Army Book Store on Nicollet Island. Government Surplus.  A metal Grocery Cart.  Trading Cards.  Air Raid Drills.  Standish Elementary School.  Woolworths. Wonder Bread.”

   

  I probably did tell the student to save all of her writing.  I probably meant it.  Much of my writing, my former life was left behind when I made, yet another relationship move.  This one sudden.  Sometimes things aren’t saved because we can’t take them with us.  But sometimes, a book authored and signed by you to another poet will show up on a Google search and you know not everything is lost, it just might have found a new home.

   

  Sherry Quan Lee

  February 18, 2021

• FOUND POEM

  Date: 2021.01.13 | Category: Assignments, LHP/MHP, Poetry, Septuagenarian | Response: 0

  FOUND POEM

  Attributed to Septuagenarian: love is what happens when I die (March 2021)

   

  One doesn’t have to imagine good and evil amidst all this terror

  sadness, the bones and the blood surrender

  we can make a difference we are all somebody

  we are not on the backs on the backs on the backs

  of sorrow

   

  that preceded

   

  head separated from body

  body separated from country

  family separated

   

  love guarantees memory        madness

  guns in white rooms the ghost

  of a man an unholy ghost trying to rewrite the story

   

  what if what if what if asking the questions is [not] enough; sometimes

   

  I feel like a boxer punching    the world

  is heavy that’s when the silence is broken

  not with words but with images   children

   

  didn’t know what to make of the bickering

  children got lost in the silences babies suffering;

  the father the mother the siblings gone

  a newspaper headline

   

  to the wicked and the wise there is a difference

  between opinion and truth, a space where dying

  to love where freedom is clearly not where in the world we are

   

  divisive and our lives are at risk

  tolerate a difficult word; racism, white men with assault rifles; death

   

  is temporary

   

  history implodes on a regular irregular heartbeat the charade is over this year

   

  love

  like a sorcerer reads palms this is love choking on air,

  ready to survive pedestals

  collapse amidst a pandemic

   

  hallelujah!

   

  as I sip my morning coffee it is grief it is death it is love;

  hate travels the ♥ broken is what saves us.

   

  © Sherry Quan Lee January 12, 2021

   

  ASSIGNMENT: I’ve been thinking about the recent insurrection at the capitol, the fast and flowing media coverage, the attempts to oust the 45th, etc.  My thought was, as a poet, I should write a found poem based on various print and even video media; but, I thought it would be complicated because of copyright, what is fair use, and how to attribute my sources (unless there is no thought of publishing it).  Instead, I turned to my own writing using only text from my forthcoming book.  Try this as an assignment, use words and phrases from what you have previously written and “find” a poem. I started with a goal in mind, to discover what I might have, perhaps unknowingly, said beyond the personal, have I entered the world?  Having a theme in mind isn’t necessary, it is enough to just randomly choose words and phrases you are drawn to as you reread what you have written over a particular span of time.

  NOTE: The poem published here is a first draft.