Finding my subject matter.

My nice friend Josh praised some poems I read at the grad student poetry reading the other night, and while I appreciate his praise and vastly respect his advice, I am frustrated with my work nonetheless. I feel like I'm stuck in a rut where all I can do is the white trash poem. Okay, so white trash is my thing, and I love a good jarring line about a son smoking pot with his mom as much as the next person, but I keep wondering if I can successfully execute any other type of poem. Because I've been trying, and I don't think I've been successful.

Here's the poem I turned in for my poetry workshop this week:

The Problem of Evil

Unlike other avian,

The male emu neither eats nor drinks

Nor defecates. For eight weeks

He incubates greenblack eggs,

His fertile spouse breeds others

Lays everywhere.

The Father

Is easy to overlook in

Child-rearing is

Easy to blame when a bad egg hatched

Scrapes deep marks in forearm skin

With the force of filed nails.

I do not believe in God every day,

And I won’t blame him

Desire, deep water,

Evil inside my piece of the universe.

The male,

In order to feel adequately masculine

Must distinguish and differentiate

Himself from others.

Now, it seems to be working at getting around to something, some idea about how evil happens in the world but it's not fair to blame it on God. Perhaps maybe it even wants to suggest that evil is not the problem the poet should address; perhaps there's an issue darker than evil. Monda read the poem and told me it wasn't finished yet, and she's right--like usual. I knew that it needed more when I turned it in tonight, and that's bothered me all night. So I revised, and what do you know? The poem seems to get at the heart of a deeper issue much better, but guess what theme pops up in it--the trashy family.

Maybe that's what I'm supposed to write about at this point in my life. It's much easier to process the situations I've found myself in with relationship to my family when I'm so far away from them. I just don't want to become a trope; I don't want to become a poet who can only write one poem.

Anyway, here's the revision. Which do you like better?

The Problem of Evil

Unlike other avian,

The male emu neither eats nor drinks

Nor defecates. For eight weeks

He incubates greenblack eggs,

His fertile spouse breeds others

Lays everywhere.

The Father

Is easy to overlook in

Child-rearing is

Easy to blame when a bad egg hatched

Scrapes deep marks in forearm skin

With the force of filed nails.

I do not believe in God every day,

And I won’t blame him nor

My father for

Desire, deep water,

Evil inside my piece of the universe.

My mother

Is a woman who cannot make

Herself happy. She works

Scantily and lives on charm.

Two men love her and

She is a she-bird on the move.

The problem of evil is

Not my father’s.

He takes her back each time

Her other lover squanders his

Affection on some addiction.

She is not wrong

For wanting love.

They are not wrong

For loving.

The male,

In order to feel adequately masculine,

Must distinguish and differentiate

Himself from others.

My mother’s lovers

Are different men,

Not bad men but

Opposite in respect to

All things but

The problem of love.