Course:Normal Distance by Elisa Gabbert
| CRWR 501P 003 |
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| Advanced Writing of Poetry |
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“Normal Distance”
This is the collection of poetry that inspired me to focus on my poetic apprenticeship. Normal Distance is a really surprising text: in how Elisa Gabbert surprises the readers in both her choice of words, and how she arranges these words. The facts, statements, essayistic qualities, combined with her constant questioning of time, human existence, and language make this collection have a conversational tone whilst subtly attacking our perception of what is “supposed to be.”
“I heard more babies are born when there’s a full moon and “no one knows
why.”
A few days later I heard it’s a myth.
I heard the are land tides – and this is true – the moon pulls the land up.
Simone de Beauvoir said, I cannot appropriate the snow field where I
slide.
The fundamental ambiguity: How am I unlike the field, when I am like
the field, to the field?
(Not like anything at all.)
I wonder if mothers are tidal – if there are tides in the womb.
Grave and gravity don’t share the same root.
-- Excerpt from the poem, "You Don’t Get to Decide How to Feel About Not Having Free Will"
This collection is really what prompted me to go across my “threshold” in poetry. What was I allowed to write? How much distance can I keep between myself and the “I” that speaks in poems? Need there be a distance when I write of statements that I don’t believe in? These lines that Gabbert writes feel so distant yet so intimate at the same time. It seemingly consists of the everyday yet there's a also a cosmic quality to it. In the latter half of the poem she writes:
“Do our experiences belong to us? Are they a property, “like a hat”?
(Wittgenstein says no.)
It tempts me to go really deep into questioning what I’ve always taken for granted. Sometimes I think the “I” in the poem is used to make the process less uncomfortable. That by distancing the two speakers, I the poet can be more experimental in trying things out. Can I be asking trivial questions, stating doubtful facts, or answering questions using another author’s name, presumably with no evidence to back it up? What am I risking in these lines, what am I giving up, and what am I getting in return?
This is what prompted me to think about disruption; not only in form in poetry or thoughts in my mind, but also deeper into my belief systems. What are some disruptions that can shake up what I believe in, and can they appear in my poetry?
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