Sorry.

Well, okay, not really. To be perfectly honest........
 
 

Everybody seems to want their words straight forward. Plain english; something everyone can understand; sentences. No abstractions or symbols.  Well, sorry.  I don't write like I do because I want to be ornate or confusing.  Though their is often quite a bit of artistry and I can't pretend that I don't love rhythm, and music.  Its just that, my soul doesn't communicate in simples sentences.  I don't know how to explain it, but there's this connection when I write poems.  I guess to the subconscious.  Sometimes I just have this intense feeling or idea that I can't put into regular words.  So I write the words I feel usually words that rhyme and make a sort of sense.  I mean if I don't think about what I wrote in terms of "plain english"  and instead in what feelings, sounds, images, connotations, and ideas I've conveyed and how they fit together, my poem might make perfect sense; in fact, it usually does.  But its not a sense I can convey in plain english.  Sometimes I'll write a poem and have no clue what it means consciously, but I'll know that it not only means something but conveys how I was feeling when I wrote it. Once I had a fight with my dad, an argument really, and there was something I felt; a sort of intense sadness, vulnerability and fear, but I couldn't explain where it was coming from.  So I wrote a poem about how I felt, it went like this:

        It conveyed what I felt, and seemed to convey the source of it as well.  But I had not a clue as to what it meant logically.   I didn't figure it out until a year and a half later; I was too close to it, I think, and had to get a distance from it before I could understand.  But one day a year or two later I ran across it, and began thinking about what it could mean. The first stanza is pretty simple, its about running away from disappointment, despair, and sorrow; and hiding from the inner turmoil that seems to follow you and exist within you even when you don't notice it.  In short its about not facing the emotions I couldn't cope with.
        The next stanza is a lot more complex; it talks about searching for answers, unhealed wounds and some very confusing metaphors about wind, and silence.  At the time I don't think that I was consciously aware of being on any sort of search, but I began to realize that I always have been, always looking around and wondering, why I am I here, what does it mean, what is existence,
or perhaps it was merely, why do I feel this way?  Oh, and there were a lot of wounds back then, things that had to be faced and coped with because they weren't going to get better with time.
        Now we move on to the most intense and confusing part of the poem (the last two lines).  when I first tried to interpret those words, I was able to give it meaning on a literal level.  Because I never shared those emotions and feelings, (the ones I was running from) with anyone outside of my own mind.  So I could say, the wind was who I spoke to, my "mentor".  And in spite of all those I may have conversed with in my own head, the only real companion I had was silence. (when I say the only companion I mean the only thing that was really around when I was mentally in a world of my own.)  Thats only on the literal level, well I suppose thats partially figurative. The last two lines could also suggest a warning; aloneness, death even being a consequence of your "mentorship" with the wind. But there is so much that could be derived from those lines, so much that it can and does mean from my own stand point, not even delving into how others might interpret it.  But in a nutshell the whole poem could be interpretted like this:

I want to run away from feelings and emotions I don't know how to cope with, feelings and emotions that come from old wounds, and unanswered questions,  all things that have built up, and have been locked inside because I didn't have the courage to share them with anyone outside of myself.  I feel despair because I must feel these things having neither the ability to cope with them nor the ability to reach out to anyone else.

        That would be the simple interpretation. I counted 78 words, thats over twice the length of the poem (38 words).  And that would not be including the above pondering paragraph, nor the multitude of implications, connatations, and other interpretations that could be included.  Nor would anyone have experienced my situation.  You see when you read my words you should at least come away with a feeling and perhaps knowing that it makes a sort of sense.  You might just feel what I felt, something I couldn't and still can't entirely explain in plain english.  but was nevertheless potent, powerful, and deep.  Or perhaps you'll find meaning in it thats all your own, perhaps it will illustrate an indescribable thing that you feel, something completely or at least partially different from what it meant to me.

thats the value of my poetry, and I don't think it would be worth anything, nor would it be useful in making that connection between the conscious and subconscious if I tried to write in plain english.  After all my soul speaks in abstractions.

Rainbough Bouchard  4/25/99

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