They tried to make me go to Rehab…

…and I said, “Sure, OK.”

It takes me a while to work my way to the truth. Or at least a somewhat stable version of it.

I am in rehab, an all be it outpatient one, but rehab nonetheless. The few friends I am in any kind of contact with are dealing with this fact in very different ways. One wants to take me drinking. One traveled 4 hours by train to take naps with me. One comes to my house for dinner and brings pie.

But how to I deal with this? I should be writing lots of great poetry.

I’m not.

I am trying to remember to take my meds. I am trying to remember they are good for me, and that I should stay on them. All but the week’s supply is padlocked into a great big black box I have no access to. I also receive a phone call every evening to tell me to take my medicine and charge my cell phone. If this new protocol fails to keep me on meds (and prevent another fist fight and an ER visit for a broken hand – or at least severely contused hand), people I don’t know will come to my house twice a day and watch me take the pills. Then they will ask me to open my mouth and move my tongue around.

I am trying to remember to shower everyday and get dressed. I am trying to put my clean clothes away and pick all the clothes up off the floor of my new bedroom. Almost all of the socks I own are underneath my new bed.

I am trying to slowly chip away at the mountain of paperwork I have to fill out because the poorer you are, the more paperwork you have to fill out.

I have learned if I drink the smallest amount, I will laugh until I begin weeping followed by a spiral that will probably end in physical violence to others or myself.

I have learned I have not really slept well for the last 20 odd years, that Ambian is a precious commodity never to be squandered, and that sleeping meds will be my new best friend hopefully very soon.

I have learned to admit to my bitterness over having to leave school and that no one really seems to care as much as I think they should.

And of course, I have come to appreciate that the times I can spend in the company of other people who have experienced psych holds and The System are actually a relief. I can use a shorthand–no need to explain myself or explain why I am such a shadow of my former self.

And finally, I think about how much time must pass before I can no longer call myself a poet and what to do with a life that has no purpose.

What Satan Says

Sharon Olds’s first book of poetry was published the year I was born. She writes of the “erotics of family love and pain,” as Alicia Ostriker puts it. Olds has had 11 collections of poetry published and has won prestigious prizes and awards for her work. And I knew nothing about her!

I can’t quite get past that fact.

I began this practicum by reading Olds’s first book Satan Says. Then I read it again. Personally, I found the book difficult to read, more than a little disturbing, but irresistible in its horrific beauty. The speaker’s (or perhaps speakers’) repeated references throughout the collection of loving the cock of the father before and above all others—for instance, lines eight and nine in the poem “Reading You” where the speaker says, “Man, male, his cock that I have loved / beyond the others, beyond goodness, so far beyond [.]”—struck me as incredibly risky and brave.

I found myself interacting with the physical object of the book as well, carrying it around the house as I was puzzling over a thesis for my first essay or staring at the cover thinking about the import of the words. This has happened to me before when I read Empire of the Senseless by Kathy Acker. Somehow, the book becomes more than a mere vehicle for the words.

I also found it incredibly difficult to write about Satan Says. I tried picking my favorite poems, the ones I was most drawn to, and then tried to figure out what elements of craft were pulling me to them. Nonetheless, I kept bumping up against content and personal resonance. It took me a good week before I caught my breath enough to really sit down and choose a poem as the first critical review is limited to only one poem from a collection.

Reading this book actually spawned a poem, which is currently in revision. I am definitely a fan after this book! Reading Olds has given me permission to write about topics I have been writing around for over a year.

Here is the poem I ultimately chose:

“Night Terrors”

She has so strongly this sense of someone coming after her,

someone so dark or dressed in dark clothes,

some man so angry, so clever, there is no

chance of survival.

.

Every night she tries to think of something that would

get him to spare the children.

.

Every night she feels him outside the house,

eyeing its surface milky as a body,

the strips of its roof like hair oiled and combed,

all the stiff apertures

Victorian, like a frightened woman

on her wedding night, like her own mother entered and

entered by that man she hated, his hair

black as the polished barrel of a gun.

Whew! Creepy much? My thesis was that Olds uses non-uniform or abrupt lines and complex figurative language to build a fragmented, composite imagery in her poetry that is both grounded in reality and disturbing.

So for this first packet to my mentor (did I mention my mentor is Jan Beatty!!!!!), I still have one more commentary, another short critical essay, and a formal letter to write, all due by February 11. Up next for my critical writing: The Essential Etheridge Knight by Etheridge Knight. But I am still a few days away from receiving my books, so I will be working on the only other book I have (borrowed from my mutual best friend Dorina Pena, fellow rockstar warrior poet and lover of Jan Beatty)–Loose Woman by Sandra Cisneros. I think it will be a refreshing change of pace and will ensure I don’t become too tempted to slit my wrists. Laughter is a good thing.

*Note: This blog is meant for edutainment purposes only, and to that end, I may occasionally use some literary license. The author would also like to point out that she has not yet been graded on the strength of her thesis, and if you plagiarize it and get a crappy grade, it is all your fault.