ASH. by Brandon Michael Dominguez A project submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS IN ENGLISH WEBER STATE UNIVERSITY Ogden, Utah April 12, 2016 Ej^ John Schwiebert Critical Introduction Brandon Dominguez Ash Spring 2016 Dominguez 2 My writing becomes a writing of necessity; I cannot choose what I wish to write. The words simply rise to the surface. My mother passed away a few weeks before the fall semester began, and it may very well be the most pain I will ever feel. Of the experience, I later wrote, "We were acting out what most parents and their children deal with for thirty years in just a couple months." The next few weeks were a catatonic blur. I was told to take time before the semester to deal with it. I did not. It was not until I began writing when the sheer gravity of the events began to wear down on me. The drawback to recalling painful memories or events to write about them is just that; you relive the moment. I struggled to get down something of value. The words failed to capture everything; they were not good enough. I do not know that I was far enough removed from the situation to write about it. That is what happens when you choose to write about grief. It is a funny sentence really; you don't really choose to write about grief. Thus, you don't necessarily choose to write the structure of an elegy. Rather, you must. In The Art of Losing, a collection of poems of grief and healing, Kevin Young writes, "No one wants to write an elegy. I presume we simply must, the death of someone dear—or even a stranger—calling forth words that fail to explain, but sometimes provide our only comfort" (XV). However, in terms of structure, there is not a clear example for me to follow, or one that I felt would capture what I wanted to write. I wanted a structure that would complement the subject matter. Researching this structure, as well as a Matt Rasmussen's Black Aperture^ The Poet's Companion by Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux, Sean Bishop's The Night We 're Not Sleeping In^ Gregory Orr's Concerning the Book that is the Body of the Beloved, Ed Hirsch's Gabriel: A Poem, Kevin Young's Dear Darkness, Sarah Howe's Loop of Jade, Todd Kaneko's The Dead Wrestler Dominguez 3 Elegies, "Building the Emotional Image," with Natalie Diaz and many other individual poems, provided insight and possibilities in showcasing this grief I wanted to express. Though I could not pinpoint the direct benefit of reading each work, reading them only gave me more content to draw upon. Bishop's tone, Howe's line, Rasmussen's description, and Kaneko's narrative all contributed in uncountable ways. However, I had still not narrowed down a clear definition of the elegy. That is why I turned to research on the elegy structure. Not structure in the sense of what type of stanzas to incorporate or how long the lines should run, but how to capture the feelings and emotions fighting to be heard. D.A. Powell's chapter, in Michael Theune's Structure & Surprise, provided much of my background knowledge in analyzing the elegy structure, the poetic greats worth noting, and some insight into where the structure could evolve. "The structure of the elegy is difficult to pin down; in fact, the elegy is more a mode of thinking, or a complex set of conventions, than a single structure" (qtd. in Theune 83). Thus, the elegy seemed an adequate structure to begin experimenting with. The familiar lamentation of W.H. Auden's "Funeral Blues" was a good starting point, though I could never match his prowess. His capacity to rhyme the lines so effectively eluded me. "Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, / Prevent the dog fi-om barking with a juicy bone. Silence the pianos and with muffled drum / Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come." I attempted this sort of tone in my poem, "That Day, My Earth." I attempted to make everything experience my grief and pay respects to the person I lost. As Theune describes of "Funeral Blues," "The speaker of this poem not only wants to express his own suffering, he also wants everyone and everything to express it for him ..." (91). This is something I attempted to emulate. Domlnguez4 I sought to capture the emotion of an elegy and play with some of the tropes. I was attempting to bring my mother back out of obscurity and call for others to mourn, all familiar aspects of an elegy. However, elegy is not necessarily defined by these tropes. As Young notes, "[CJontemporary elegy is the desire to represent the experience, to re-experience it through language—^to evoke, that is, and not just describe, the pain of passing" (XVI). That is what I am attempting in this semi-elegiac collection. Each poem reveals an aspect of my mother's life, or at least my interpretations. I was careful to not speak for my mother, for fear of misrepresenting her. I wanted to experience to be as natural as the writing process. I wanted the process to unfold in a natural way and for my thoughts to be traceable. The structure follows briefly how I am living through the grief. As Young notes, "In a way, the process of grief, I have found, can mirror that of writing; it is surprising, trying,... and at times heartening; grief can prove fellowship with others interested in the experience" (XVI). I wanted the narrative to follow my emotions as I wrestled with memories in an attempt to understand the grief. I experimented with pacing, punctuation, and description to showcase those emotions. Whether or not it is effective, I cannot be sure. I weighed the effectiveness with all of the supplemental texts I had been reading and attempting to emulate. The poet who most affected me was Matt Rasmussen. Rasmussen's Black Aperture shattered my previous conceptions of elegies or poems on the subject of grief. The manner in which he describes loss and pain, how it affected him and those around him, and the relatively simple language he uses to convey complex emotions permanently altered the way I write. The collection is a recount of all the events surrounding his brother's suicide, particularly in this section of "Elegy in X Parts," Your brother is dead, but you don't know yet. Domlnguez 5 Your father enters the locker room— his face carved from pale wood. You can imagine the tools used to shape his expression. Except his eyes. Those are unfashioned. They say what his wooden mouth can't. (33) The words Rasmussen uses to paint this stoic image of his father, one which seems quite realistic, is painful and effective. Comparing his father to wood carving creates in my mind an absolute image of a person: an unemotional man who cannot hold back tears. However, emulating Rasmussen's style proved to be difficult. His metaphors were fresh and changed the way I viewed the same, common images. I could not quite capture his style completely, but I feel his work influenced every poem in my collection. The instance where I see his style in my writing most is "Lord of Ash." Playing with imagery and allowing my mother to be represented by different images opened up many ideas for me. In the conclusion I describe, "[R]ough, gritty, fingers pinched the filter / and choked her silent / he flicked his cigarette—^her ashes fell at his feet." This particular poem showcases my attempt at original metaphor by thinking of my mother's ashes and how the image could be mampulated for other situations, rather than just the cremated remains. The image of ash is one I hope to still further develop, and is one I struggled with for the better part of the collection. Dominguez 6 Breaking free from cliche or straightforward metaphor is something I strained to do with this collection. Though my metaphors were not quite as rich as Rasmussen's, reading his poems vastly improved my writing. In the beginning, my biggest concern was finding a grounding metaphor—^like Young's southern food and culture—to help carry the weight of such a heavy subject. This led me to research Todd Kaneko's The Dead Wrestler Elegies. I did not want the poems to be exploitative, in the sense of exploiting the reader's emotions. Sad events are inherently sad and will produce such emotions. Simply stating them or retelling the story only achieves half the goal I was seeking. I wished to create an experience worthy of everything I have gone through, and worthy of being an elegy to the single most important person in my life. The narrator couples an experience he and his father enjoyed— watching pro-wrestling—^with the pain and grief in his father's death. He traces various experiences and attaches to them moments in the professional wresting world. In one poem, "Long Live the King of Hearts," Kaneko uses the death of professional wrestler Owen Hart in relation to this father's death. "Because my father watched the Blue Blazer on television that night he fell from the rafters and died. Because we both wanted to believe that a man can fly... Because when my father's heart gave out, he fell off his barstool and hit his head on the floor" (71). When I first encountered Kaneko's collection, I considering adopting a similar style and spent weeks attanpting to discover a suitable theme for my project. This was a fiuitless endeavor, though one poem survived: "An Ode to Hair Metal." In it, I attempt to create something similar to Kaneko's elegies, something that might possibly shift the focus from death and dying or cancer even, and instead place it on a subject the reader wouldn't normally associate the themes with through references and images. Dominguez 7 The vanous references I make in the poem harken back to the mid to late eighties: a time I can only vicariously experience through old photographs of my mother and her life before motherhood. Some of the events are exaggerated slightly, but most are based off of facts. For example, in the following lines I make reference to a few different bands and lyrics, '^vhere John Francis Bongiovi, Jr. takes her hand / and they set off on his steel horse into the still / of the night she's driving again." At times the quotes are directly from a song or two, others are subtle hints of word that, I feel, have the automatic connotation to all those great songs. Words like "sweet child," to me, will always have that history, and my intention is the reader might feel the same nostalgia in with those lyrics. The nostalgia for a time lost in time. The other theme that started to rise to the surface was that of the hospital or medical procedure. This theme, though lending itself to the exploitation of the word cancer, I could not keep every aspect out of my work. Thus, my poems constantly found themselves in the hospital setting or making reference to one. Much like that part of my life, sitting in the appointments with my mother and watching each treatment take a little more from her, the hospital was always hovering over every thought or emotion I had. Whether we were currently in the hospital—for check-ups, infusions, or scans—or scheduling the next visit, it seems the hospital followed everything we did. Sean Bishop's The Night We 're Not Sleeping In^ provided numerous insists and ideas for this concept. Bishop's collection follows the sudden death of his father, and the subsequent difficulties involved in dealing with the loss. He opens the collection with "Terms of Service," which begins his—often sarcastic—approach to his grief. The signed agrees to breath, to the lungs' soggy bellows. To ni^t's eight-hour wake, the little deaths of sleeping-with. To drink. To eat at predictable intervals. And grow hair. And grow wiser. And gimpy. And old. Dominguez 8 The signed agrees to like ice cream. To unfold himself at dawn for coffee in the nook. (1) Already, Bishop's lines set the tone for the rest of the collection as he finds—or attempts to find—^humor in such a depressing time of his life. In one instance he begins a poem with "Dear dead dad" (28), in another he acknowledges "Dear fat sagacious angels" (8). His humor was not one that I could yet master, though it is an effective way of approaching such a heavy topic by deflecting the emotion. The hospital setting is heavily packed, but it's where my mother and I spent countless days trading seconds for minutes. The treatments would take hours, and usually an entire day was made out of it. On the good days, we could talk and pretend like it was all normal. On the bad days, my mother would usually sleep, and I would just watch her or attempt to distract myself. From there, my poem entitled with simply my mother's name, "Victoria" was bom. In this poem, I explored what exactly the chemotherapy was doing for my mother. The very first treatment—^nearly eight years ago—^lefl her hands and feet completely numb, something that only faded slightly but never full recovered. She didn't lose much hair the first round, but she cut it off in anticipation and because she could not bear to watch it fall off in large chunks. Before she started her battle, people would consistently ask if we were siblings—she prided herself on her youthful image. In another poem I describe the effects the chemotherapy had, and how in hospice care at her apartment, she seemingly aged thirty years in three months. These were the heavy images too loaded to stand on their own. Thus, I sought other images and metaphors I could use to deflect some of the inherent heaviness. This poem, perhaps, has a similar creation story to the ode as I hunted for an accurate grounding metaphor. My main example for this, and the one I sought after most, was Rasmussen. Dominguez 9 Everything from his images to the title of his collection, Black Aperture, fit so perfectly with his theme. I could not discover a suitable metaphor for the entire collection, but I did manage to get a few poems from it. The closest I foimd was the image of ash. At first it seemed too obvious to me; my mother was cremated, my step-father smoked like a train, and everything he touched—^literally and figuratively—^turned black. This was an idea I feel I could still expand upon. I did stumble upon it accidentally, to which Dr. Joseph responded with, "The poem needs to develop this metaphor in order to earn the leap being made here." This opened up a completely new problem. Not only did I need to discover a fresh metaphor and describe it accurately, but I also had to earn it, which was not an easy feat. At first, I did not quite understand how I could cam a metaphor. Natalie Diaz's podcast entitled, "Building the Emotional Image," revealed to me some methods of constructing images that are true the poem and thus true to the readers. When I think of ash or see ashes there are two images that will forever come to mind, and those images made found their way into my project: cigarette ashes—^like the ones that followed my step-father around everywhere he went—and my mother's ashes that I held in a rose-embossed um. As Diaz states, "I have to rebuild [the image] in a way that every time I say it on a page, every time I say it out loud, I know what it means." She does not stop there. She forces you to completely destroy an image so every time you use it again it is fresh and different, and to build an image worthy of the emotion you are placing on it. "Build the emotional image, and you won't have to rely on emotion language." That line ruined me. That line was the reason I was feeling as iff was exploiting my writing and my readers. I was writing emotional language, and my images were flat. Identifying a problem is the first step. However, I do not know if I am yet capable of creating emotional images. But I did my best. The image I tried to recreate was that of ash and Domlnguez 10 all the traits associated with it, including my step-father's black-stained fingers from smoking and the ashes from his cigarettes. In the house of my childhood, everything my step-father touched was covered with grime. His hands were perpetually soiled. The thought process followed that naturally I could trace from the cigarette to the hands and thus, the other symbol appeared. Hands were a vivid part of many memories. The final poem of the collection looks closely at one particular memory—^my last seconds with my mother. She was not entirely conscious and struggled with every breath. As I laid there with her, I held her hand. At first it did not seem as if she knew I was present or holding it, but each time her body jerked with each breath, her hand closed, slightly. This was the most painful of the poems to write; it describes my thought process in trying to discern whether or not my mother knew I was there when she passed. As I recounted memories, as I wrote the ones that stuck out most to me, I picked key moments to represent enough of what transpired to paint a picture of who my mother was, what our relationship was like, and how painful seeing their marriage was for me, not to mention how painful everything must have been for my mother. In the collection, I try to draw connections to perhaps discover the root of all the pain and suffering or to pinpoint the exact moment in time when everything went wrong. If we could go back to that instant and change the decisions made, would things have tumed out differently? I do not know if I wrote a collection of elegies. I do not know if I properly destroyed the images enough to rebuild them completely new. I do not know if what I have written is worthy of how dear the subject matter is to me. What I do know, is that I wrote poems that were true to me and true to the emotions and issues I was dealing with during a difficult and transcendent Dominguez 11 time. I tapped into an emotional well of memories to draw upon and attempted to paint a picture of my, and my mother's, life. Works Cited and Bibliography Addonizio, Kim and Dorianne Laux. The Poet's Companion. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1997. Print. Bishop, Sean. The Night We're Not Sleeping In. Louisville, Kentuck: Sarabande Books, 2014. Print. Diaz, Natalie. "Building the Emotional Image." Tin House Podcasts. 2 November 2015. Podcast. Hirsch, Edward. Gabriel: A Poem. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2014. Print. Honum, Chloe. The Tulip Flame. Cleveland, Ohio: Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2014. Print. Kaneko, W. Todd. The Dead Wrestler Elegies. Chicago, Illinois: Curbside Splendor Publishing, 2014. Print. Orr, Gregory. Concerning the Book That Is the Body of the Beloved. Port Townshend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press, 2005. Print. Rasmussen, Matt. Black Aperture. Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press, 2013. Print. Dominguez 12 Theune, M. Structure and Surprise: Engaging Poetic Turns. New York: Teacher & Writers Collaborative, 2007. Print. Young, Kevin. The Art of Losing. New York: Bloomsbury U.S. A, 2010. Print. Young, Kevin. Dear Darkness. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008. Print. Brandon Dominguez Ash Dominguez 2 An Ode to Hair Metal Whoa oh oh oh sweet child of mine my mother and Axl Rose screamed in their duet when she rose— Pine-sol in hand—^ready to tackle the entire mess -of-a-house by day's end. It was a different time—1987 and she's driving down Washington blvd, the Monte Carlo with the windows down, unaware of my existence—^her imperceptible passenger—I'm sure she imagined something far from a cubicle or filing taxes somewhere where there are no taxes, and John Francis Bongiovi, Jr. takes her hand and they set off on his steel horse into the still of the night she's driving again but this time there are two of us in the back seat kicking and screaming against the back of her seat, we weren't trying to annoy—^us boys—^we were just responding to the rhythmic pounding from the speakers behind our backs, in the trunk two 6X9's reverberating the same sweet devotion of a single mother of two searching Dominguez 3 for something she can't quite pin down but she'll settle for someone willing to take on just a little, enough so she can catch a breath or two becomes difficult, 'welcome to the jungle, baby—hvX this is a different jungle where doctors and nurses really do -wanna watch you bleed as the saw blade cuts brittle bone deep into— now you have to be awake for this part. This is what's causing all the pain and discomfort—a little blurred vision or loss of periphery. They'll take just a little— about the size of a golf ball— they'll later tell us, as she sleeps. I'm sure she imagined something more for herself before she dropped out of college. Before she walked into the Internal Revenue Service knowing it would be the last job she ever had. Before her two children she had before the age of twenty-two—she gave that up when we were bom. In another world she never left, she left on the bus and toured, singing Dominguez 4 from backstage, waiting for Tom Keifer to take her home in a diamond-studded gown instead of a thin, hospital linen—^blood stained and faded. If I knew the deal she was making when she gave birth, when she gave up on even the faintest dreams of leopard-skin pants and too much hairspray, I would have declined Dominguez 5 Burning a pack of Camels a day Inhaling great puffs into his leathered lungs, immune to the flames that singed my mother to tears He's watching pom in the living room, while she sleeps, while the whole house sleeps. Just him and the television making love under a blue light Dominguez 6 Parricide Every night I smashed his face with my fists xmtil his teeth shattered like porcelain nativity sets my mother arranged perfectly every Christmas but woke to find him still there leeching onto her body, sucking every breath straight fi*om her lungs and filling them with smoke, His charred fingers appeared as black specks the doctor pointed to while mumbling words too long to pronounce but indicated something worth checking out, just in case Domlnguez 7 Endoscopy Okay, Victoria, this won't hurt a bit. You can even watch as the camera goes left then right through tunnels of decisions and dives deeper into the past as fast as the forceps pinch this skin or that and take a sample of that black ness there that mark marks the difference between healthy lungs and yours but don't worry, you won't feel it you don't have any nerves here when you leave here this will all be over and we'll know more about what is causing all your pain, or what you could have done to prevent it. Do you smoke? If you do, we would strongly suggest you go back and reconsider Dominguez 8 every decision you've ever made to find the reason why this is happening to you. There must be some reason to the randomness of random acts of God that leave some untouched and others begging for one more year Dominguez 9 Lord of Ash My step-dad sat and smoked in a plastic lawn chair but in the laundry room, not outside— a compromise between he and my mother that started in the driveway where the fumes might not have reached the deepest recesses of her lungs Where they eventually metastasized and left black soot on every wall and black prints everywhere he touched— a thigh, a hand, a neck. Rough, gritty, fingers pinched the filter and choked her silent. He flicked his cigarette—and at his feet, her ashes fell. Dominguez 10 Victoria In 1812 the Grande Armee made its way across the Russian border, pushing eastward, deep into their Mother Russia. In response, and to their surprise, the retreating army began burning down everything in its path— 1 read, sitting across from her at the Infusion unit of the John Huntsman Cancer Institute, which sits atop a hill overlooking the city. She stares out across the vast expanse of trees and houses, hooked to her is a 100 Ml bag of something 1 can't pronounce, nor would 1 want to. Whatever is inside that bag is supposed to kill targeted cells, but might kill others in the process, as evidenced by the hair collecting in the bathtub drain Napoleon's army was met by nothing more than scorched earth—^Fallen trees, or others standing weakly in the ash. Deserted cities. Barren wastelands. She doesn't speak on the way home. The only way 1 know she isn't asleep is when she suddenly heaves forward and vomits into the travel bag they so hospitably gave her on the way out, or else a shopping bag we left in the glove box for such occasions. She rests her head against the glass, staring out the window. Moscow—once the thriving heart of their Mother—^lay buried in ash. What remnants Dominguez 11 remained were nothing useful or sustainable. The only decision left to make was retreat. The last time is different. No infusions, check-ups, or appointment settings. Her decision was made. Preparations were made. The nurse would come twice a week—for as long as she needed. The next few weeks were thirty years of aging compressed into three months. It was difficult to explain to my grandparents what was happening— why we couldn't take her to the Emergency Room—^what it would do to her. What prolonging would mean. Having realized he had conquered nothing, the Emperor began to retreat. His troops fled, leaving Mother Russia to decide if it was all worthwhile. When they came and took her from her bed, I watched them wheel her out in a black bag—^not quite zipped up all the way. Domlnguez 12 The Day, My Earth When you died, everything waited. The barking dogs knew to stop their barking. The drivers in their cars turned their keys without parking. The pigeons on the balcony bowed their heads. I'll wait in the other room the talking nurse said. The clock rested its hands and the oscillating fan turned away out of respect. Bight years of battling a faceless enemy, hooked up to machines and their incessant beeping, rustling nurses— the impossibility of sleeping in a hospital, sleeping at all with that constant clamor. The sounds you hear when sound stops. Domlnguez 13 The Exchange My mother fell through all stages of life into my arms. I helped her from the couch into her bed that she never again left on her own until fat men with soft hands took her and left— instead— arose Dominguez 14 Carried out the back door past the Deacon muttering some hymn about carrying and thought no cross would ever be heavy as her urn before they lowered it down, my grandmother unscrewed the lid and placed, inside, a rosary Dominguez 15 The process of loss Smile and shake hands with each guest. Where would you like the tribute to display? Great pictures. The first time everyone will speak of her in the past tense. Everyone watching you, try to sum up an entire life in a few words you can hardly read as your eyes begin to blur. The words make it hard to swallow and your tongue feels fat as an awfiil taste rises from your gut. Acidic, words like she would be happy to see you all here. She should be here. Domlnguez 16 Hands I couldn't tell you the time she passed away because the clock hanging on the bedroom wall had a dead battery or no battery at all— maybe taken to power the remote control— No, there must have been some life left because I swear I saw her hands twitch every time she took a breath—or tried as her back arched under the blanket while I lied next to her, staring at the clock If you asked me again I'd say it definitely moved because I felt it—^her hands— trying to finish the final dance. A closing pirouette letting me know—