Young Writers Society

Overview - I'm hoping to start a new collection here of poems mostly centered around family objects or objects that are connected to family stories for LMS!

Themes - nostalgia, family, separation, home, dying + resurrection, faith, family

Characters:

* Leslie (1890's) - my great-granduncle who passed in his 20s from TB
* Great Grandmother M - married to Great Grandfather W, a bit of a "wild woman" but lived a very hard life
* Great Grandfather B (1850's) - my great-grandfather who farmed land in the Midwest and moved to the US from Germany as a young man.
* Great Grandfather W (1940's) - another great-grandfather who worked in mines and went into the Navy in WWII.

* Souvenirs
* Project Notes

* son threshing in harvest (pre-project)
* how to begin to weave a basket (9/7/22)
* a wild woman; a burning stake (9/16/22)
* water-logged lungs (9/25/22)
* hymnbook, sea vessel (10/2/22)
* a sailor's goodbye; a draft letter & a quilt to hold (10/9/22)
* naming weeds; and other things (pt 1) (10/16/22)
* naming weeds; and other things (pt 2, 3, & 4) (10/23/22)
* where we've been planted (10/30/2022)
* vegetable gardens and heirloom tomatoes (11/4/2022)
* lessons to my children; from my mother; or my past; or my future; and to you again. (11/12/22)
* gravedigging & homecoming (11/20/22)
* a missing teaspoon (11/27/22)
-- post LMS --
* recipe cards and restaurant reviews (1/30/23)
* dust to dust to dust (2/20/23)

hymnbook inscriptions: copying of a traditional verse/epitaph, written down by my 6th great grandfather in context of a faith statement. it reads,
"When I am Dead and laid in Grave
and all my Bones are Rotten,
When This you See Remember me,
when others all are Forgotten ~ "

Object Ideas
> underwater basket weaving
> passport
> draft card
> covid test
> crucifix
> letters
> post-card
> hymn
> photograph(s)
> album
> farm land
> stolen home-land
> fire-damage
> river-stretched lungs
> hooded eyelids
> obsidian & other precious rocks we tossed in our flower bed
> african violet
> the piano
> luggage bags
> dead fish
> painted vanity
> baptismal banner
> flowering tree
> a stolen cat
> broken vehicles
> silverware set missing exactly one teaspoon

Thank you very much @looseleaf! I am so passionate about ancestry research that I've got a lot in my brain that could work for poetry; I hope some of it actually gets out on the page though; that'll be the trick! Thanks for the well wishes!

Here's a poem I wrote a while ago that is obviously not part of this project - but is what I'd like some of the poem's themes to aspire to.

son threshing in harvest | the winnowing fork

This poem is told from my take on an imagined POV of my great-granduncle Leslie in the early 1900s, who I've written about previously here. My family has a basket he wove while in quarantine in a tuberculosis sanitarium. Before the days of antibiotics there wasn't so much of a cure for tuberculosis - so while in sanitariums people would sometimes learn to basket-weave, make jewelry, paint etc. It's a bittersweet thing to think about. I never knew him, but often think about him. An edited picture of him is at the bottom of the poem. lit center link



quarantine tasks | woven basket
(content warning: dying)

This poem blends some themes from a few different people. I am a descendant of someone who was killed during the Salem Witch Trials and so am alluding to that a little here. The "heirloom" of this poem is more symbolic rather than literal - but would be the burning stake of judgement thrust upon women and especially upon mothers to be "(good) mothers". The poem isn't a value judgement on the subject - as the poem says 'people aren't characters", I am only attempting in the poem to present the complexity of this particular inheritance. I drew the little bird illustration on the side. lit center link



a wild woman, and a burning stake
(content warning: fire / death)

This one is very abstract and may not be clear in how it's connected initially to the collection. I am writing here about the idea of a family tree that has echoes of "familiar deaths" - in my own (known) family tree two people have drowned in a river, and we've had three house-fires. I believe there's some sort of meaning and carried over impact of these event. This poem is maybe also a bit of a metaphorical reflection on the inheritance of generational trauma.





water-logged lungs
(content warning: death)

it is easier [in the hardest way,] to forgive
a river than a fire for stealing a person away.
no one wants to burn alive;
but drowning can be subtle;
can be calm; can be three
generations [heavy] with water-logged
lungs, & [heavy] river-roots, &
[heavy] with no plans to move
from the flood-plains -

& death seems to always echo
in this family tree, in ways that feel like
symmetry; inherited fatal-flaws that catch
the fabric of time like a snagged edge of tapestry,

& i am still unraveling myself
from you; and you; and you. and
you're still holding on.

& sometimes i wonder
if i wouldn't choose the fire
if only so the river-tide wouldn't sweep up
all this [heavy] silt-sieved grief [again].

There are some Lutheran hymn-scholars, who compare the relative importance of the Bible and hymnbook to the sun and moon. If a person coming from overseas could only keep one book between their hymnbook or Bible, often people might choose the hymnbook, because the Bible could be found more easily and the hymnbook would enable them to continue to be able to worship. We have some very old hymnbooks and Bibles in my family - and I'm intrigued by the idea that some of their owners weren't able to read them. So why hold on to them? The poem explores this theme of the importance that these heirlooms like books can take on beyond just their utilitarian purpose - which I also touch on in this napo poem from earlier this year

Side Note: in some of my poems where I'm saying "great grandfather" or "great grandmother" I'm not necessarily talking about my great-grandparent, but may be speaking of an earlier relative or a combination of relatives. Thanks! Also the opening epitaph I found on top of a faith statement for another ancestor and it appears to be a traditional verse people have used in many places, not sure of its origin.






hymnbook, sea-vessel

my great grandfather owned a single book;
couldn't read, so no sense weighing down tables
with impractical things, a shelf is for a lamp,
a counter for rising bread, arms for tilling land,
a book... an endless unknown, a forgotten magic, a hope
his book served no utilitarian purpose, and yet
for its lack of use, was his most prized possession
a sturdy German Hymn Book, that had immigrated oceans
filled with the psalms he hummed in partial remembrances
to the tune of seasons changing, and somewhere among
the pages he swore he could hear his mother singing;
and in a way, the book he couldn't read, became infinite
his weathered hands brushing the pages that curled
at his fingertips, when the rain came late, or the child
became sick, or when the prayer couldn't be uttered aloud,
and again he'd hum his psalms and trust the One for whom
these words were written for would receive them all the same
as years tipped over the horizons, and the pages baked
with decades of summer-sun, dog-eared and worn-with love
like smile-lines stretched across harvest tanned skin,
seven sons learned to read, but the hymnbook
they solemnly agreed was not a book to be read,
but a instrument to be played, a blanket to stretch over,
a boat to carry you home when you'd forgotten who you were.

and so I gingerly trace these pages turned sea-vessel,
turned prayer and I try to hum along to the psalms.

One of my great-grandfathers served in the Navy in WWII - after 4 generations of his family living in a very small, remote section of land, he was sent away from everything he knew to distant countries and islands and I wonder what sort of shock that was for him. To go from never having seen a lake, or leaving his state, to sailing the ocean. His wife was only 23 and had a baby at home when he first left. I can only imagine how challenging it was for those young people fighting in the war and how that affected the rest of their life. The poem is told from the imagined perspective of the person leaving for war (aligned left) and the person staying behind (aligned right). My own immediate family has many people who've served in the military, much respect to anyone who has experienced this sort of family separation due to war or deployment first-hand. lit center link Some of the "unafraid of drowning" themes pick up from my 2021 NaPo Week Thread.





a sailor's goodbye; a draft letter & a quilt to hold

revised version

10.25.22

naming weeds; and other things (pt 1)

my grandmother; my mother's mother,
could name every plant like a well-known friend,
greeting the purple milkweed and the marsh marigold,
and asking the sweet-ferns how the corn lilies are doing
i could almost imagine the flowers knew her too,
answering in polite reply to her questions as she worked,
pushing new soil across trailing roots, and humming
at creased leaves, noting the sun was bright, and
the summer long.

and isn't there a love to naming things?

so i would follow, gingerly patting dandelions and
calling out imagined names to the weeds and grass,
hoping i might enter into this conversation,
and hear where the sun goes at night,
or what the crickets prepare for dinner,
or why the seasons change.

My maternal grandmother left me two items that I very much cherish - a gold baptismal necklace (that has a wild and beautiful story to go with it) and a miniature Lutheran hymnal with my name imprinted on the cover. I was always really happy to carry it around as a kid, because I knew it was a "special" and important book, and I think also could discern as a child that prayer and hymns placed one in a holy setting. Hymns are quite important to my spirituality. I have another poem about my grandmother and hymns from NaPo 2020. To me, there's something very comforting in knowing I can sing some of the same songs that my grandparents, and great grandparents etc. sung about their faith. I can't ask them what they believed, but surely one wouldn't sing a song that one didn't believe - and so through our shared hymns, we learn and perhaps one could say, we even pray together. Also bonus: here's a recording of me reading parts 1-4

---





naming weeds; and other things (pt 2) (10.23.2022)

my grandmother; my mother's mother,
was particular about the way the sun should rise,
how the grass should grow, how the seasons ought to stir
and everything in between - not unkindly, i'd like to think;
but matter-of-factly; in the way of knowing
what you want and who you are. that if
the water wasn't boiling before she returned
from the field with the crisp sweetcorn in her hands,
then the corn was not fresh enough, that on Easter Sundays
you didn't tap your toes in the pew to the hymns, that you
said what was meant, and kept quiet about the rest.

some would like to call a rose prickly,
but those are just the ones who know nothing about flowers.


naming weeds; and other things (pt 3) (10.23.22)

as a child i didn't know what to do with my name;
it stumbled on my tongue and caught in my throat -
it felt like a dress i could never grow into
and i sometimes would look around my shoulder
to see if it belonged to someone else.

i wanted desperately to be someone else.
someone bold, someone loud, someone brave,
someone who could carry her syllables
and correct people as they misplaced them,
instead of apologizing for the misunderstanding.


naming weeds; and other things (pt 4) (10.23.22)

my grandmother; my mother's mother,
was particular about the names of things,
of every flower and hymn, of country roads,
and family trees, she scrawled names like poems
into address books and photo labels, holding every name safe.

when my grandmother; my mother's mother,
was preparing to pass -
she bought a small leather hymnal
not too unlike the one my great-grandfather carried
from Germany, but with the pages bright
and free from coffee or tobacco stains,
and had my named printed on the cover
in small golden letters - bold and sure.

and now when i am uncertain of how the syllables should fall
or catch the edge of unknowing,
i picture those letters printed on the cover - bold and sure,
and particularly mine.

after all my grandmother kept the names of everything,

and isn't there a love to naming things?

"my great grandfather's farm was split clean between seven brothers; broken limbs from a single tree, and i believe that some places have fault lines that become engraved into your bones."

where we've been planted

in the summers my mother, sister, and i
would grow a vegetable garden in the community garden plot;
a plotted section of soil 12 by 12 feet,
and my mother would reminisce about her childhood
the sunburn, and the calloused fingers, the dizzy turns
through the cornfields, and learning to drive on a tractor
and the promise of harvest, all would become nostalgic
fairy tales we would hold on while covering tomato seeds,
and over-watering our tipping green beans;

the seed takes on what you give it; my mother would tell us
the soil, and the sun, and the water, and the love

and i would wonder if we too were seeds, absorbing nutrients
and wonder how far our roots stretched out -
if we listened close enough could my great grandfather's farmland
still be reached by stretching finger tips,
could my grandmother's hands reach through memory and time,
and create a flower garden from these uneven rows,

and was i planted here, along the river floodplains
or on the sun-turned fields that my mother still longed for.