Pangea
By Me (Emily)
The bones in my head will stop moving by the time I’m twenty-five. Some days I can feel them getting tighter as I get further and further away from infancy. The plates encasing my brain shift as if tectonic. Call me Pangea.
In some ways I look forward to the click of my skull locking into place. Each time it slips, my body shakes and I have to duck under the nearest door frame or table. I try to be structurally sound but one time a boy broke my heart. It was a 6.1 on the Anterictor Scale and my foundations cracked just a little bit.
I like diving into the trenches, though. If I hold my breath and close my eyes and jump, I can get to the bottom of my brain. I retreat deeper into the rivets or the crinkles, swimming from the left to the right and then back, my headlamp shaking frantically against the light gray-matter walls. Synapses could fire at any moment so I move quickly. I watch as thoughts and memories flit past me. They’re always in a rush. I can never stay for long because the pressure of skull on brain becomes unbearable.
At birth, the skull is made up of forty four separate elements, fissured and cracked. They start moving the moment the brain internalizes its first memory. Mine were set into motion at age three. I was playing pretend. Whole worlds are constructed when the brain can breathe.
When I turn twenty-five a heavy metaphor will fall on me and I’ll no longer be tectonic. That’s how life goes. But I’ll miss Pangea.
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The question I asked myself throughout the night was: what is the worth of a public of poetry? I asked a few people and they responded with “are you asking what is the value of art?” There was a note of incredulity.
No, I said. Art is invaluable, everyone knows that, I said.
In that moment I couldn’t quite express to them what I was trying to ask, but I think I can now. The public of poetry isn’t necessary persay. People could write poetry, keep it for themselves, and be fulfilled by it. That’s what I do. If they’re really talented, like Billy Collins, they could publish it in a book and create a public around said talent. But what was the purpose of me standing in front of an auditorium of strangers (all of whom were a public gathered around the famous poet) to read my poetry?
The night started off with determining the order of speakers. The organizers and founders of The Thunderhead Writers Collective introduced themselves and thanked us “deeply” for participating in this event. Their names are Molly and Kelsey. We sat back in the auditorium, and then we spoke. The audience clapped after everyone, and at the end Molly and Kelsey went onstage to thank the audience and the speakers again. Afterwards, the audience told the directors of the Thunderhead Writer’s Collective that they would have liked to hear more and thanked them for organizing the opening. This public is a very appreciative one.
The topics of poems and their speakers ranged in length, formality, age, and content. There were a few high schoolers who wrote about feeling like they don’t fit in. There was a man who wrote an elegy for his father. One shopkeeper wrote a humorous piece about a particularly unpleasant customer. One woman wrote about the evolution of herself, all the aspects of her being. There was a poem about the last moments of life in which the author’s mother reflected on the beautiful horses she saw outside her room. Mine was about growing up, I guess. I was trying to make sense of this nagging feeling that my personality becomes less changeable the older I get. I was trying to come to terms with that.
Rhetoric in Civil Life defines civic engagement as “engagement (that) occurs when human communication generates new areas for discussion, when people are willing to accept the risk of being wrong (and accept correction of their views), when people affirm a commitment to engage one another in discourse, and when creative forms of communication create social connections among individuals” (14). Rereading that first chapter helped to frame the public of poetry, from the speaker’s perspective, at least. All the poems were using language to ascribe meaning to things in our world. In the case of my poem, I used symbolic language. By bearing our personal feelings, we were forming connections to individuals who could empathize. Very likely, many individuals in the audience had experienced the pangs of not fitting in as a teenager, the loss of a loved one, or the process of growing up. These aren’t necessarily new areas for discussion, but they become so much more urgent and immediate when a speaker is onstage. I try to avoid thinking of my teenage years, but those girls onstage brought me back to that moment of my life and helped me appreciate how far I’ve come and how far they will come. We stood onstage and presented the “webs of significance” we ourselves “have spun” (19) in our lives.
I don’t think the concepts of narrative surrounding a public quite fit in with poetry. They need to be engaging. Well, I guess they don’t need to be but it’s certainly more fun to watch someone who is excited and engaged. Poet laureates, such as Billy Collins, help create public memory with their poems about public events. This event showcased poems about personal memory, which were interesting in themselves because my narrative isn’t the same as everyone else’s. Poetry can be vivacious, but it doesn’t always have a plot or character development or shape public memory. So why do people engage in poetry?
Billy Collins had an interesting answer in the Q & A session after his poems. He said that poetry spurns poetry. The more a person reads poetry, the more they want to contribute to the public. He said that different poets communicate with each other across time and space, paying homage to each other, addressing opinions, and (in Collins case) dissing each other. Within the sphere of poets, there is a definite public. Within the sphere of people watching/reading the poets, the only issue I can see that unites them is a love for the genre, or a love for a particular poet.
After seeing Billy Collins, I understood why a packed auditorium would spend money to come see him. A public can be formed around entertainment and admiration. Billy Collins fit the bill. He was outrageously witty. With one turn of a phrase, he turned a beautiful piece into something humorous and the audience burst out laughing in accord. My boss told me she has a crush on him.
When the other openers read their poems, the auditorium was two thirds empty. Most of the people in the audience were there because someone they knew or loved was going to share their poem. Billy Collins was there, which was pretty neat.
In this case, I don’t think the public was formed around poetry. I think it was formed around people, specifically those who were presenting, and especially Billy Collins himself.
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