International Women's Writing Guild
Attached is my first and only poem. Thank you for the prompt.
Learning to Love Myself
because I was ashamed of my immigrant parents,
I was afraid to bring friends home
because I shunned conflict,
I found uncertain joy in the company of others
because I refused to share my life story,
they assumed I was one of them
because I was not one of them,
fear displaced trust
because my native-born children gave me a legitimacy
I would not claim for myself, I thought I had arrived
because I still longed to belong
something was missing
until I heard someone ask ‘what is the meaning of life?’
because I searched for the answer
as if my life depended on it
because I had devoted the last third of my life
to painting, writing, listening, reading,
learning that life has meaning when beauty abounds
even when Guernica portrays pain and injustice
because openness allows love to thrive
I must love myself first
Brava, Constance and Alice , for posting here! Among the first to do so :)
Constance, your first poem, wow! Your use of biblical and literary allusion is so smart and effective a metaphor for leaving a relationship, and the anaphora of "because" keeps the utterances in the reader's body/feeling even as the intellect is making sense of the references. I love the phrasal symmetries, too: "it tests, it tries, it transforms" and "both saviors and sinners." Beautiful cumulative effect down the page.
Alice, what I notice right away is the jam-packed music of repeating sounds: the "sh" in "ashamed" and "shunned, "the "fr" in "afraid" and "friends," the "nd" in "friends" and "shunned," the "un" in "shunned" and "uncertain," the long-u in "refused" and "assumed." And this: "life has meaning when beauty abounds."--then closing on the repeating "v" of "love" and "thrive," the humming motor of that.
Thank you both :)
~Marj
Email (quickest response):writers@iwwg.org
Mailing Address:
IWWG
att: Michelle Miller
22 Parsonage St #293
Providence, RI 02903
telephone: (518) 290-1636
NYC Address:
888 8th Avenue, #537New York, NY 10019