30 Poems in 30 Days: Writing About Issues
September 6, 2007 by J.C. Hewitt
This is Day 3 of 30 Poems in 30 Days
The Outside World
The first couple days of our poetry project have focused on the personal. Poetry can be therapeutic. It can help you to explore personal issues and to capture the events of your life. If all poets stuck to writing about themselves, however, the world of poetry would be far too narrow. For every poet who writes about the personal, there is another poet writing about the external world.
Poetry that is focused on issues, causes and events can be very powerful. This type of poetry can inform people, change people’s views or even spur people to action. Poetry has, for all of history, been a tool for social change and the expression of political and philosophical ideas. Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, for example, was an introduction it a sub-culture that most of America knew nothing about. Pablo Neruda, a passionate Chilean poet and communist politician, once read his poetry to a live audience of over 100,000 people, the largest known crowd to ever assemble to hear a poetry reading.
Inside Out
Poetry can be issue-oriented and still be personal. Political movements take place at every level. Social issues such as homelessness, health care, immigration, discrimination, addiction, physical abuse and mental illness are felt most strongly by the people who experience them first hand. The world is an imperfect place and humans are the living embodiment of all those imperfections.
A Voice in the Wilderness
You can’t solve the problems of the world in a single poem. There is only so much that can be accomplished with poetry, and solving the world’s problems is pretty tall order. Your goal in writing about an issue is self expression more than change. You want your poem to influence, not dominate.
But is it art
Another key to writing issue-oriented poetry is to remember that the poem should not take back seat to the issue it addresses. Make every line interesting and memorable to the reader. Make your images sharp and specific. Keep your reader interested until the end. Don’t work too hard at drawing conclusions and giving instructions or you will risk leaving the reader feeling manipulated, which is a quick and easy way to lose your audience.
Not Everyone will Love You
One final thing to remember is that when you take a stand, you can expect dissent. Some people are easily offended and angered. Some people are so locked into their own mindset that they will lash out at anything that disagrees with them. There may even be some people out there who will intelligently and calmly demonstrate that you are wrong. Worse yet, you may find people that the people who take your side are more offensive than the people who disagree with you. Taking a stand means taking a risk. There’s no way around that.
Today’s Assignment
Find a news or opinion article that was published on the web this week. I recommend using Google News because it can take you just about anywhere. Look for a story that has some emotional or philosophical impact on you and use that story as the basis for your poem. If you post your poem here, be sure to post a link to the original article so we can see the inspiration!
Today’s Recommended Poet
Poet W. Joe Hoppe is the model of an up-and-coming new millennium poet. He has published numerous chapbooks and cut his teeth performing live poetry in the thriving Austin poetry scene and pads his income by teaching at Austin Community College. His new book, Galvanized
Hardware
In a hardware store with wooden floors
dusted sunlight glints on the galvanized flakes
of zinc silvered watering cans
brass bulbed and voluptuous
aimed, as I am, solely
towards pouring out their fullness
Ferruled strings and ballchains coil in rows
waiting attachment to lightbulb sockets
pulled to make those bare bulbs shine
as illumination of the life that hides
in basements kitchens and garages
Ropes dream strong around wooden spools
hemp sisal and nylon smell like they feel
prickly earthen petroleum slippery
to pass over pulleys
through eyebolts and carabiners
turnbuckles tightening in purposeful connection
in pathways for following our common strands
Nuts bolts and washers screws and nails
shine in their bins like useful jewels
poised to bring things together
screwdrivers and wrenches gleam in capability
high hammers like angels sport cardboard wings
to swing into action through rightly said prayers
Wandering here in this place of basics
nothing complete and contained in itself
each object existing to work with some other
I’ll strive to find how it fits back together
Here’s my submission. To read the article that inspired it, go to:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/health/2003871006_popcorn06.html
Sometimes You Pop the Popcorn and Sometimes the Popcorn Pops You
I’ve always considered you to be dangerous
Popcorn
A gateway snack to the evils of corn chips and sunflower seeds
A snack with thorns
Shards that catch in my teeth
Making my gums swell
And giving my tongue far too much
To probe and fret over
But I loved you anyway
It’s the smell that drags me down that long path
From a single kernel to a whole bowl
That warm inviting smell that brings me home
To six years old in front of the TV
Surrounded by family
Long after I was supposed to go to bed
I should have been more paranoid
Your smell is more than inviting
It is a slow acting poison
Ready to fill my lungs and lay me low
One whiff can’t kill me
Ten thousand would be a better start
But your smell is lurking out there
Ready to punish me for my love
It wasn’t always so
Popcorn
You weren’t always so manufactured
So processed
Engineered
Perfected
Shiny
Easy
They made you this way popcorn
They made you a killer
They put chemicals in your bag
Chemicals to simulate butter
Because the real thing
Wasn’t sufficiently cheap and portable
I’m no prude
Popcorn
I’ve been seen around town
With genetically altered beef
Irradiated fruit
Snack cakes
I know the score
But I can’t say that I’m not disappointed
In the company you’ve been keeping
They say they’ll stop using the chemical
They say they’ll treat you right
But don’t believe them
Unless
Unless
This is what you wanted
Say it ain’t so
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20622619/
What did he ever do to you
that was so wrong-
Love you unconditionally?
Prtoect you without question?
Aid you selflessly?
He watched the streets swarming with people
As you watched your own reflection in the gleaming squad car
Shameful and repugnant
Salient with your needs
Never thinking of his
When he needed you most
He is now an angel
You aren’t even a monster,
but something so foul
you shouldn’t even exist
You should suffer the same
fate
He suffered for you
Without question
I do not hate easily
But I hate you wholeheartedly
Such cruelty is never
left unnoticed
Kharma will help you
pay your debt
That is the only comfort
I have
John, thank you for your poem. I’m so sorry mine is so depressing…. I just needed to get this off my chest. I cried when I read this story.
40
If you shoot a man
and he dies 40 years later
are you a murderer?
40 years, a paraplegic
v. 15 years in a cell,
time served to think about
what you did as a young man
stupid man
driven by greed
and the rush of adrenaline
that comes with robbery.
Was it worth it?
You know it wasn’t, now.
But still,
they’ll try to make you serve
40 years more,
til’ your long and dead
and gone.
Now who’s the victim?
Man who served time for shooting cop charged again
Sorry also about the misspelled words, I wrote it in a bit of a flurry.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article2941864.ece
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/09/07/2026566.htm
(You have to read both. You’ll see why.)
The War
He steps from hiding,
reveals himself
to the cameras of the world
and the eyes of security.
Anyone can see
that beard is fake.
What kind of stunt is this?
The threat is real.
Weapons are ready.
All we know
is that we can’t understand
that kind of mind.
It’s not normal.
What a mad new world
when that sort of person becomes
a media celebrity.
In this wary, wintry September
should we frown or laugh?
[...] then there are my poetry posts… I’ve stalled at Assignment #3, which was to write about issues. That one is definitely on the back-burner for now while I [...]
I love men.
I love the stillness of them
Their lack of agitation
When they shake off
Their workaday
Clothes
Their ability to not
Talk, to not repeat
Their thoughts
Over and over again
Their lack
Of doubt.
Men are peaceful.
But there are times
When they need
To think beyond
Their words
Beyond
Other men’s words
Times they need
To see the
Queen trapped
In the corner
Of the chessboard
While they laugh
Albeit humourlessly
At another joke
At the Queen’s
Expense
While she shrivels
Beneath the gaze
And turns to ivory.
Women talk
But men hear
Men’s voices
Like dogs
It’s all
In the pitch,
Bitch.
When they
Are not funny
Why won’t you
Snarl at them?
The news story I chose, Sexual harassment in Wadadli – Where do we draw the line? The key lines are, “Have we then as men and women facilitated an environment where people get away with such deeds that to some this has become the norm? Or is sexual harassment a cultural phenomenon that has to be defined according to the socialisation of the men and women in that environment?”
Rosemary: I really like your poem, but don’t agree with your sentiment. I guess that what’s Issues Poetry is all about.
Jim: I found yours really interesting. I like the starkness of it and the angle many others would not see.
Sandra: I had to read the article to understand the context of your poem and then the anger and the pain made sense to me.
John: I love they way you personified Popcorn, which is funny but also made a serious point about a broader issue.
Oops – sorry – link location
[...] third assignment from 30 Poems in 30 Days. Writing about [...]
Sandra: Yes, you did embrace your dark side with that poem but I work in Chandler so i know exactly how hot it has been I think I saw that on television. Very sad.
Jim: 40 years. I can’t get behind it. Too many intervening factors over 40 years for a single action to be considered murder. I just turned forty and lord knows the number of times I’ve almost gotten myself killed over the years. You can’t be responsible for a person’s entire lifetime. Good poem.
Rosemary: Great topic. It seems stupidity and fame go hand in hand these days. I would have liked a little more detail in the poem. Without reading the article I would not have known what was going on.
cerebralmum: The ongoing war between the sexes appears to have become an quagmire, and I suspect we have no exit strategy. Thanks for the poem, tightly written as always.
Yes, you are all quite right. My piece is unrealised and would need a lot more work to get where I was trying to go with it. As for agreeing with my sentiments – well if I’d done it better, you might have understood I wasn’t overtly espousing any particular sentiment, I was trying to make some points via ambiguity. Really you did have to read both articles, and even that was probably not enough unless you’d seen the TV news in Australia, with the Chaser lad divesting himself of Osama-style beard for the cameras. The Chasers are very well known here, but probably unheard of o/s. Many people laughed about the way they made their point (which was about security); the authorities frowned sternly and pointed out they could have got themselves or others killed. The piece as it stands could apply to either that situation or the real Osama’s newly-black beard and his latest video. Except that “frown” is really too mild a word to describe a reaction to Bin Laden himself, and any laughter would surely be rather bitter. So it was altogether an over-ambitious attempt which would indeed need the inclusion of a lot more background detail to stand on its own. I’ll probably have a go eventually – and without this exercise would never even have thought of it, so I’m grateful.
It doesn’t matter
They cut off the water for drilling in Nevada
Engineers will just truck it in spite off
Imagine, a nuclear waste dump den
Underground, waiting for the right fault to shift
Waiting, quietly, in time to be forgotten
Like land mines in the middle east drift
Sleeping giants slumbering in mock peace
Nuclear Waste dumps surround us, don’t ask
Don’t tell, the trucks pass me on the highway
The news reports only cover long distance rifts
They are building new highways here, for trade they say
While less than 60 miles away lumbering trucks part the night
They dump and spin the facts for the right under our nose
Profiteers in small towns get taken by big city brokers that hose
The dumb minded that stayed behind holding the power to
Wash away the wise, the intellectual, with daddy’s money
Made by Buffalo Hunters, clod hoppers, cows,
And pools of black gold
cw 9/07/07
I think I have all my poems in the right place now. Sorry for the repetitiions.
Connie: The second line doesn’t read quite right. Is that intentional? As for the radiation, you can’t fight 50 years of Nevada tradition. that state yearns to glow.
Hi John,
The off doesn’t belong . . . I probably meant it to be “of” but then that is ending a line with a preposition, which probably doesn’t mean much in poetry, but always feels like a confrontation with authority. A lot of this poem feels awkward to me . . . .
Well, radiation is to Nevada as war is to the planet, 50 years is to forever as impossible is to peace . . . don’t ask me, I just wish I knew the answers, which I am told, always come before the questions. I just can’t let go of that phrase of yours that peace is impossible . . . . I just can’t believe that anything, anything ever is impossibly impossible. I have done and seen done so many things that people have said were impossible, that I believe, I believe, that given the right window, or making the opportunity, or taking advantage of the situation, or creating the situation, that absolutely anything has the ability, potential, to become. We limit reality with labels and definition. We have no idea what could be, or even is in the eye of the universe.
Connie:
I do enjoy limiting things with definitions and labels. I can’t deny that.
Jim,
not only did I feel the almost overwhelming emotional sadness, but your poems shot out of the screen. WONDERFUL!!!!!
Rosemary,
I agree, I understand your peom and I feel that it has character, but needs to say more. A reallity not many people can acept, but a reality no one can run away from.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haile_Gebrselassie
Sorry this one is a little short:
A Goal Breaker
Running faster and faster
yet pacing your heart beat
heart races but pacing your steps
joy fills your body
never stopping
a painful bliss
feels so good
you’ve passed, you’ve made it
[...] Poetic Issue4 October 2007, the poet @ 8:53 pmWhile working my way through John Hewitt’s 30 Poems in 30 Days blog posts, I found this gem: Another key to writing issue-oriented poetry is to remember that the [...]
Rianon: It’s a nice start.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/edmonton/story/2007/11/21/bonnyville-crack.html
Not sure if I did the link correct.
Story is about a 13 year old girl that gets charged for crack possession along with a 68 year old woman and 2 others ( 24 and 25 year old women who are apparently the mothers of all the kids in the house )
Heal Child
Past the park
A child on a slide
Shouts with glee
An innocent thrill
Past the field
A ball bouncing from foot to foot
Shouts of glory
A goal scored
Past the lake
A line in the water
Shouts of triumph
A story to be told
Past the tracks
A slap of the hand
Pleas of mercy
A story that won’t be told
Past the shuttered window
Money changing hands
Inhale deeply with a sigh
Horrors unfold
You sweet babe
Oh gentle child
Come…
Let me take you to the park
Let me take you to the field
Let me take you to the lake
My eyes see what you have lost
My heart lays no blame on you
My feet will take you away
Not to the prisons
Not to homes of neglect
But to fields
To rivers
To woods
Come child
Time will heal
Loving hearts will heal
See what should be
The world can still be yours
Girl in Prison
She sits in a corner,
Perplexed.
Why is she here?
Her ancestors have cursed her.
Unknowingly, they doomed her,
And so here she is.
A rude rule these poor folks had.
They’ll banish you to a bedraggled bed
To waste away and never return.
You’ll be around,
Physically, that is.
But your mind will be on vacation,
In a cruel, polluted, grimy resort
On a quiet black sea.
Of course,
The girl hasn’t boarded Coach 214,
Headed straight to Hotel Dead.
She’s still observing.
Who knew the poor could achieve so much?
i am very young but always love poetry and poems but i just never found how to write one i need you help!!!
O, Fixer of Problems
You caused me happiness
You’ve mended my broken heart
My wounds you’ve sealed with that sweet smell of love
O, chocolate
How you make my life full
Full of love, joy and peace
Full, of laughter, calories and stomachaches
Though later you will be disposed of
With a series of yogilates and crunches
I still come back to you
Over and over again
For comfort in deep valleys
And to celebrate on high mountain tops
O, chocolate
How sweet are you on thy lips
How fat are you on thy hips
Chocolate, o, great fixer of problems
I salute you
–Trinity Jackson
Hardwired
“HP Breakthrough Could Spawn Computers That Don’t Forget”
–TechNewsWorld
You knew me back in the day,
when it was all about the games
in bright primary colors,
riddles designed to train a young mind
but easily worked through,
or easy enough, comparatively,
before the trickier games my uncle brought,
worlds of simulated strategy to confirm my rightful place
in the realm of geeky preteens,
games where you managed a space ship, say,
then suddenly, just when you had control,
a dozen ships, and then the whole fleet at once,
and you kept silent, remembering it all,
the hours that went into those scenarios
when I ought to have been studying,
though even those games waned eventually,
giving way to the newer and subtler play,
the early AOL days, but you had nothing to say
about that, either, as I kept digging through the mail
for another free trial diskette,
uninstalling, reinstalling,
hungry to find the lost girls of the Midwest,
each of them pretending to be
as lonely as I was pretending to be,
as lonesome for the pleasures of the flesh
that, it seemed, we were all so very unjustly denied,
and so we bemoaned the limits of the early internet,
the stuttering slowness of communication
that made your breath catch
when you thought someone might be typing to you,
the fact that you couldn’t reach through a monitor
and touch a cheek, touch skin,
but you didn’t judge, you just remembered,
as it came time to draft a bar mitzvah speech,
which you probably know even though the original
was never delivered, having been rewritten
in entirety by my father, who felt I ought
to include a larger thank-you section,
and the early poetry I wish you would forget,
and the bad scifi novel I drafted,
the plot of which even I’ve forgotten,
though I’/m sure you can spit it out as easy
as recalling my first experiments with Quicken,
hypothetical numbers of what I might earn,
and then Money, during the early greed of understanding
that there was so much beyond my parents’ means,
and believing that I could make the impossible mine,
limitless wealth,
if I only planned it all right,
before I verged the other way,
toward fantasy,
playing baseball with made-up teams,
trying to win in a game where there was no prize,
all the while utterly failing to explain
“the internet” to my parents,
despite the many speeches on the subject
I drafted on your earliest word processing programs,
and maybe I lost all of my documents each time
I upgraded software, back then,
but you haven’t forgotten a single word, have you,
from the Get Well card for my first girlfriend,
to the time I crafted an entire website
in a desperate attempt to woo a girl,
to the nights I spent in college writing papers
arduously defending sudden (and fictitious) viewpoints
on metaphysics, or the genius of Herodotus,
or whatever,
making any old claim in order to earn the respect
of professor’s who patiently explained by email–
and surely you remember the moment
that everyone suddenly had email, even mom and dad–
that I had written a great deal of brilliant nonsense,
signifying nothing, and you must remember
the CDs I used to play through your speakers,
over and over,
whether to escape the loss of a hypothetical girlfriend
or, eventually, because that noise began to signify something,
something bigger than I had words for,
and maybe you missed all the time I spent learning to dance,
because I’m sure that the sum of all the emails I sent about it
never fully encapsulated the wonder and simplicity
of step-step-dou-ble-step,
but after I first danced with her,
whom I would later marry,
I’m sure you alone remember which friends I boasted to first,
just as you remember when the boasting
became something else,
the ceaseless nervousness of knowing a girl
whose goal, plainly stated, was to marry me,
back when I couldn’t imagine
what possible appeal I had,
but you didn’t care about that,
you just remembered it, and remembered
all of the emailed conversations, years of them,
as I came to terms with love, and with its limits,
and in all of that, I wonder, did you notice,
because I’m sure I didn’t,
the first moment I was genuinely happy,
or is that analysis still beyond what your hardware
can put together? I mean, is it just remembering
everything forever, and if so is that enough?
What use is it,
knowing the code for the senior project
I put together in computer programming,
or the software I built for Microsoft,
for now-defunct product lines,
to pay off my college debt,
or even the software I wrote for sheer joy
(the auto-expanding comic book website project)?
But if you’ve forgotten anything lately,
I’m sure you can look it up elsewhere,
because it’s all in distributed databases now,
and any competent hacker can probably tell you
the moment my Google queries switched over
from the usual background noise
to “cheap diamonds,”
to “wedding caterers,”
and then “shadow on her lungs,”
“Hodgkin’s”,
“outcomes of ABVD in treating stage 2B lymphomas,”
“false positives on PET scans,”
and still later, after some offline time,
to “pregnancy after cancer,”
to “child’s sleep schedules,”
to “baby’s first solid food,”
and most recently to “poetic forms,”
an odd choice that sends me full circle,
between the hours spent writing code for corporations,
to where I’m now writing this formless poetry,
to see if I can remember my life,
or at least a little bit of it,
on my own.
Being social was once to
speak with people
do things with them
see your friends and
exchange laughter.
The internet has silenced us
We cannot laugh or emphasize words
Our tongues are mute
Our ears are deafened
to the sound of the human voice
We speak with many buttons
a transformer of thoughts into
cold, bitter text
and the world deems this
Social.
This disillusion invades our minds
It decieves us with
words from a silver tongue
It murders our sociality
What will be left of mankind when all communication
Has no character?
No emotion?
No life?
———————————
The article (I removed the link so my poem would post) was about the median of two extremes–joining an unsocial network with little communication or joining a social network with alot of spam. My poem was inspired from the “importance” they placed on this subject of finding a median.
Marijuana Use May Raise Rate Of Heart Attack, Stroke
untitled
what a way to live
to spend your life in a daze
or am i wrong?
does immunity somehow come into play?
for some it’s a tool
medication, an escape
for others a hobby
when there’s nothing at stake
but still the theory much hold to be true
impacts us all through internet and news
should we bother or care
what they do
how they spend their life
or leave them to dream
at least they’re happy right?
and is that the case
or do we assume?
maybe there’s deep down misery
and even some gloom
so to each their own
may God be with you all
life isn’t perfect
we all will fall.
[...] I came across this prompt (and why, of course, I put myself back even more in this challenge by not doing a poem about it [...]
Our Little African Girl In A Pink Tutu
What happened to the tiny little African
girl in the tattered pink tutu?
A caring celebrity wanted to know.
As she recalls seeing her peer out
the mud-streaked window of a car rattling
down a dusty unpaved road in Congo.
She was one of the many refugees
fleeing from a not so forgotten war.
Just a war that no one seems to give a
damn about anymore.
Who is that tiny little girl in the
filthy tattered tutu? She is me and
She is you…she is our blond
haired blue eyed little angel that
we would move mountains to rescue.
How can we eat our gourmet food and
snuggle up at night in our warm cozy bed,
when our little girl is so hungry and
has no safe place to rest her little head?
Why do you think people don’t pay more
attention? The celebrity ask? Do you think it’s
because it’s so hard to figure out the good guys
from the bad?
How did she ever come across such a
thing as pink tutu anyway? Is it the
cast off cloths of the world that wind
up so very far away?
I am so very grateful to all the
celebrities in the world. Thank you for
giving a damn about the refugees and
about our little African girl.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/16648
Wow. Great Poems, hard to say which one was best since they’re all really great. Thumbs UP!
I came across this article about the last Titanic survivor. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12675494/
Titanic Memories
I remember…
Mother calling my name,
Carrying us to a little boat.
Father smiles as they lower us away from him.
Cold water and air,
Chilling my bones.
Women crying as the unsinkable ship disappears.
Splashes of desperate men,
Hypothermic, dying in the water.
Screams, pain, no one is smiling.
I am small,
I don’t understand fully,
But I know that something is horrible wrong.
A ship!
Blankets, warm and dry.
Frantic searching.
Some reunited, others despairing,
Like Mother.
Squeezing us to her,
Mother cries, her tears a fountain of grief,
Sinking into my heart.
My father and three brothers, gone.
Three of us remain.
A piece of me lost with my twin,
Lost under the sea.
My heart compresses,
Producing tears,
As memory fades into the present.
Please tell me what you think! Thanks!